The most famous chair in college basketball history is the one that Bobby Knight tossed across the floor during a game against rival Purdue back in 1985.
You know the chair I’m talking about.
We’ve all seen the video:
But what happened to that chair? Gregg Doyel of the Indianapolis Star went looking for that chair, and he might have found it. He might not have, either. You see, the school originally bought 100 of those red, plastic chairs and, according to Doyel, only 16 of them remain.
The problem? No one knows whether or not one of those 16 is the chair. He explains:“A handful of people think they really have it,” Crabb says. “So many people over the years have mentioned it to me on emails or on Facebook: ‘I have the chair.’
“Do you? Really?”
Here’s what Crabb knows about the chair, and this is all he knows:
“After the chair went across the court, a manager picked it up and took it away,” Crabb says. “Later that day, the court was converted back to its practice settings — and the chairs were set on a rack and wheeled away.”
Wait. So you’re telling me the chair — sorry, the chair — is unaccounted for?
“It’s like the ending to Indiana Jones,” Crabb says. “The Ark of the Covenant is on one of those crates in a giant warehouse. But which crate? Nobody knows.”
The analogy comes out of Crabb so fast, I’m thinking he’s used it before. How many people, I ask him, have come looking for the chair?
“You’re the first,” he says.There you have it: One of college basketball’s most infamous pieces of memorabilia is lost to history.
