I don't typically just post a question open endedly like this, but I honestly want to know. Which record bothers you more, Barry Bonds or Bobby Knight?

I know there are some people like me that don't care either way. I don't care if Bonds breaks the record of Aaron or not. To me the Hank Aaron record is a little like the Walter Payton rushing record. I hated that Emmitt Smith broke the mark at first, but then I realized that it was because he played for the Cowboys. Now, with some distance and a chance to shake my head at the fact that Smith danced his way back into the limelight, it doesn't bother me. I'm sure someone else will break Smith's record one day.

It would be easy to say that blah, blah Bonds and the record and steroids and fill in all the blanks, but that's not really true. The whole steroids thing to me is like the OJ case--you think something probably happened but there was not smoking gun, hardcore, no doubt evidence that sealed it up...at least that's what Bonds said in his new book, "Had I taken Steroids, This is how I would Have Taken Them." There are still a lot of people not 100% sold on the story, but that doesn't really matter. What the real deal comes down to is that certain people don't like Bonds. They are the same people that don't like Iverson, they don't like Owens, they don't like any player that stands out from the crowd for whatever reasons. You can throw people like John McEnroe in the pile or Deion Sanders. Some fans just don't like whatever vibe comes off of these guys, so they hate to see them succeed--whether through artificial means or otherwise. If baseball did a study and concluded that Bonds was the cleanest player to ever play the game, the amount of people pissed that he's on the verge of passing Hank Aaron would not shrink much.

The sam holds true for Bobby Knight, though the reasons people dislike Knight are a lot more obvious. I don't know if there is anyone that is a true Bobby Knight fan. Some people might like him or not dislike him fully,  but there might not be too many people that just love him unconditionally. As a Carolina fan, you'd think I'd be annoyed that he is about to pass Dean Smith. I'm not really. Smith coached five fewer seasons, so there is no comparison at all between the two. Had Smith continued to coach, Knight would have never caught him, nor would any other coach for that matter. His career mark would have been over 1,000 wins by now, which would be nearly double that of Coach K, who is the only other active coach at a legitimate shot of one day surpassing Knight. Does being the all-time leader in career wins make you a great coach? You can't, to a certain extent, take away what he has accomplished. However, Knight is precariously close to falling victim to Woody Hayes syndrome. Hayes might have gone down as one of the greats and certainly was a solid coach, but once you slide down that slope, it's hard to regain any sense of forgiveness. The slightest slip now and Knight might not be considered great by anyone, even if he wins 2,000 games in his career.

Like I said, it doesn't bother me one way or the other. Records are not really a measure of much. The person is really what people will remember when everything is said and done.