Bobby Knight

A Season on the Brink

Bobby Knight's 1985-86 NCAA season at Indiana is dramatized in this two-hour made-for-ESPN movie that first aired in the spring of 2002. In fact, it aired the night men's college basketball's "Selection Sunday" took place (when teams find out who will play in the tournament). Based on John Feinstein's in-depth and well-written book of the same name, A Season on the Brink is an adaptation that leaves much to be desired. Brian Dennehy stars as the red-sweatered Knight—and though Dennehy is a pillar of stage and screen, and though his performance as Knight enraged at his players, or the media (or whoever else crossed his path) is far from hackneyed—the material with which cast and crew had to work turned Feinstien's book into a farce. "It is cartoonlike, more shriek than Shrek, more avalanche than Snow White," writes Stan Hochman in his review for Knight-Ridder Newspapers.