Texas Tech men's basketball coach Bob Knight knows the biggest reason why his friend Bill Parcells announced his retirement Monday.
"How'd you like to coach Terrell Owens?" Knight said. "Terrell Owens would have gotten me out of coaching a hell of a lot quicker than he got Parcells out of it."
Parcells announced his retirement from football on Monday after 19 years of coaching, including the last four years as coach of the Dallas Cowboys. Knight said he and Parcells recently had a conversation about Parcells' coaching future.
"I told Pat (Knight) on Sunday when he asked me, I said, 'It's a 50-50 proposition whether he coaches again,'" Knight said. "That'd be a really tough grind, the National Football League. Everybody makes a big deal out of it, but in all the history of the National Football League, how many coaches do you think coached 19 years? Not a lot. So I think he coached a long time and nobody in the history of the game coached it better than he did."
Between them, Parcells and Knight have coached for more than 60 years and have won five championships.
"He understood the game, he understood what it took to win," Knight said of his friend. "He could've coached anything because he knew how to win. He knew what had to be done; you can't make mistakes, you gotta make plays when they're there. A lot of guys don't understand how to win and he understood that."
Knight said he agrees with Parcells' decision to step down.
"Why should you coach for 100 years?" Knight said. "I don't intend to coach 100 years. This is the third time he's retired. Each time he retired earlier he was a lot younger than he is now. He's 65 now, and there isn't anything in the world that is more visible or under more scrutiny in sports than the Dallas Cowboys."
Knight signed a contract extension in 2006 that will keep him coaching in Lubbock until 2012 - when Knight will be 72 years old. But Knight said he has no idea as to when he will stop coaching.
On Jan. 1, he became the all-time "winningest" coach in Division I-A basketball history when the Red Raiders defeated New Mexico 70-68 at the United Spirit Arena.
"I like basketball," Knight said. "I like being around basketball. I don't know, some day I'll just wake up and say, 'I don't need to do this anymore'."
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