Knight, media play pepper

It’s easy to forget Bob Knight can be a fascinating conversationalist when his mood is right and the topic is of his choosing.

That is to say, when he’s in charge.

He opened his appearance at the Big 12 Conference’s basketball media day this week by inviting questions on the American League Championship Series. He got ‘em.

Five of the seven questions Knight took were about baseball, one was about horse racing, and he took a single question about his team.

In between, he carefully dissected how Cleveland and Boston have used their pitchers, lauded the St. Louis Cardinals’ performance during the reign of Tony La Russa and Walt Jocketty, and even took a question on Chief Wahoo.

There was one question he didn’t have an answer for: Can Cleveland beat Colorado if the Indians reach the World Series?

“If I knew whether the Indians could beat the Rockies or not, George Bush would be asking me how the hell do you get out of Iraq right now,” Knight said. “If I was that smart.”

He wrapped it up congenially.

“I appreciate you recognizing my exceptional talent in analyzing baseball here this morning. I want to thank you for that. And we’ll enjoy anything that you want to discuss relative to baseball during the coming months, just give me a call.”

Trivia time

How many active coaches besides Knight have reached the men’s Final Four as both a player and coach?

Good to the last bite

Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News lauded Joe Torre as “the great gentleman of modern Yankee history” for both his quiet excellence and his final coup, turning down the Yankees’ grudging one-year offer.

With that, Lupica wrote, Torre became the first manager to fire George Steinbrenner: “Manager fires Yankees. The Yankee version of man bites dog.”

Yanks for the memories

Excerpts from the top 10 reasons Torre quit, from the Late Show with David Letterman:

* Yankees wanted to pay him in Radio Shack gift certificates.

* Got caught stealing rosin bags.

* Joining cast of Broadway musical “Legally Blonde.”

* Wants to go someplace more peaceful -- like Fallujah.

* $5 million a year -- how’s a man supposed to live?

* Even Yogi Berra told him, “It’s over.”

Punch lines

Rutgers isn’t one anymore.

It’s about Time

Time magazine has joined the media fest over the Colorado Rockies’ run to the World Series, but the opening line of its story might be an exaggeration.

“Over the past 14 years, the Colorado Rockies were so awful that they could have signed Denver Broncos football legend John Elway to play left field and it wouldn’t have put any more fans in Coors Field’s 50,000 seats.”

We say folks in Denver might pay to watch Elway eat a hot dog.

Trivia answer

Only one, Billy Donovan, who played in the 1987 Final Four for Providence and has taken Florida to three Final Fours, winning two titles.

The only men to win the NCAA title as a player and coach are Knight, who played for the 1960 Ohio State team and coached Indiana to three titles, and retired coach Dean Smith, who played on the 1952 Kansas team and won two titles as coach at North Carolina.

And finally

Former Oklahoma football coach Barry Switzer on XM Sports Nation radio, discussing Nebraska’s move to bring back Tom Osborne as interim athletic director with Huskers Coach Bill Callahan under pressure:

“You know it’s kind of like mamma calling to son, ‘I need help, I’m in a crisis, I need you to come home and help me.’ ”

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