Buried among a staggering list of 180 acting roles played during Brian Dennehy's lauded career on film and stage was the part he wasn't sure he ever got just right: the role of a basketball coach in a red sweater.
Animated, fiery and controversial, Indiana University's Bob Knight would chastise reporters and burst out profanities at boys barely out of high school — that was the real life coach in the red sweater.
Dennehy, who died Wednesday at 81, was cast playing a fictional Knight in the 2002 ESPN made-for-TV movie "A Season on the Brink."
He called the experience portraying Knight "certainly the weirdest situation I've ever been in." Weird, he told IndyStar in 2002, to play this formidable coach who was equally loved and loathed, it seemed.
"There was no way to imitate him," Dennehy said in a telephone interview with IndyStar, two months before the movie's release. "Bobby Knight is the definition of sui generis."
Sui generis means unique.
Knight was certainly that in his three decades at the helm of IU, one that included chair-throwing, belittling players all surrounded by high-graduation rates and extreme success on the court, including three NCAA championship titles.
But as the years wore on and friction between IU and Knight grew, a firing loomed. It happened in 2000, just two years before the movie was released.
When Dennehy was asked if he would have fired Knight, he said yes. But he would have done it 15 years earlier in 1985, when Knight hurled a chair across the court during a loss against Purdue.
"The story has become about him and his temper and that's no good for him. It's a cliche about Bobby Knight, that he's his own worst enemy and he does these things to himself," Dennehy said. "But it's come to a point where it should be obvious even to him that the one person who gets screwed time and again in these diatribes is him."
Knight on movie: 'Doesn't interest me'
The movie "A Season on the Brink" was based on John Feinstein's book by the same name that chronicled the Hoosiers' 1985-86 season. It was a book Knight never loved. He despised the way it portrayed him, all the cursing, once saying it made him look like a "madman."
Feinstein answered Knight's criticism in an afterward in the paperback edition of the book: "I did not discover or write about a saint, but about a driven and brilliant coach: a flawed man, but a good man. I felt that way about him when I started the project. I felt that way about him when I finished it."
Dennehy was cast for the role in 2001, at the time Knight was coaching at Texas Tech. When asked about the movie and the man playing his part, Knight told the Associated Press: "That really doesn't interest me."
When Dennehy talked to IndyStar before the movie's release he had some strong opinions on the coach. Though he had never met Knight, he had studied him dutifully for the film.
"I think that Bobby's attitude has always been: 'I win basketball games. That should be enough.' Unfortunately, it's not. Certainly not when you're dealing with kids," Dennehy said. "And the times have changed. The world has moved to a different place. It may not be a place that I'm particularly crazy about at my age, but you either go with it or you're isolated."
Dennehy, who had already won acclaim for roles in "Tommy Boy" and the TV movie "Death of a Salesman," wrestled, he said, with capturing Knight in his entirety.
"So essentially, what it is is an interpretation of what we think Bobby Knight is — the good parts and the bad parts, the private stuff and the public stuff," he said, "and we hope to Christ we're able to pull it off."
After the movie was released, Variety magazine summarized Dennehy's performance this way: "Dennehy does an admirable job portraying a basketball behemoth, despite having none of Knight’s stoop-shouldered posture, whiny pitch, two-tone eyebrow or, most importantly, Knight’s legendary put-upon attitude. As much as he captures Knight’s zeal and rage, the isolated nature of the scenes impedes the development of a complete picture of Knight."
Follow IndyStar sports reporter Dana Benbow on Twitter: @DanaBenbow. Reach her via email: dbenbow@indystar.com.
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