For several years after the publication of arguably the greatest sports book of all-time, Assembly Hall was home to “The Feinstein Seat.” It sat high up in an end zone corner, isolated in the curious geometry of the Indiana Hoosiers’ gymnasium, far from the playing court below and the customary media seating.
It was named for Washington Post sports writer John Feinstein, and it was the place he was assigned to sit whenever he came to cover the Hoosiers.
This was not a place of honor. It was a banishment Feinstein received after writing A Season on the Brink, a groundbreaking work chronicling Bob Knight’s 1985–86 Indiana team. The book was a triumph of immersive journalism that captured Knight’s combination of genius and malevolence better than any work before or since.
The public ate it up. Knight hated it. Hence the creation of “The Feinstein Seat.” But making his job harder did not deter him from doing it; in a way it was a badge of honor.
What Feinstein, 30 years old at the time, did in that book probably will never be done again. He told as honest a story as he could without sacrificing his journalistic ethics on the altar of access. He did not let the subject dictate the story. He did not sell out.
Feinstein, who shockingly died Thursday at the age of 69, feared nothing as a writer and reporter. He bent for no one. Not even Bob Knight in his prime, who ranks alongside John Thompson as the most intimidating coaching figures in college basketball history.
A Season on the Brink ended up costing Feinstein his relationship with Knight, who always wanted more power and control than those in his circle. It also gave him a massive best-seller that launched a prodigious book-writing career, authoring more than 40 of them while still producing a constant stream of compelling stories for the Post.
Feinstein was the best author in the college basketball genre. He also was the best author in the golf genre. He made the Army-Navy rivalry a riveting topic in A Civil War. He did the same with the Patriot League in his book, The Last Amateurs. He became a one-man institution, holding court with equal authority at a Final Four coaches convention or on the driving range at a major.
Feinstein might not have created the genre of spending a season diving into a single topic and turning it into a book, but he perfected it. He grasped the granular detail that brought scenes and people alive. He wasn’t an exalted wordsmith who spun lyrical prose, but he was a ceaseless reporter.
Doing those books right required stamina and an inexhaustible amount of curiosity—showing up day after day for months, layering in observations and information, building relationships with the story subjects, living every up and down. He became affixed to teams without becoming a shill, an increasingly scarce quality in an era where information is often traded for positive publicity.
What many story subjects fail to realize is that the truth will almost always be more humanizing than damaging. A Season on the Brink didn’t cost Knight anything—Indiana fans still idolized him, and he continued to walk a fine line between motivator and bully for another 14 years at the school before crossing that line and getting fired. Letting a writer in and then telling that person what can and cannot be reported—or a reporter censoring himself—means creating a deception.
Feinstein wasn’t there for that. As a columnist, he cherished the freedom to both praise and condemn—and his condemnations could be vicious. He could be a savage critic of almost everyone in charge of college sports. He ripped coaches, athletic directors, conference commissioners and NCAA presidents.
Feinstein was president of the U.S. Basketball Writers Association from 1991–92, but in some ways he never gave up the gavel. He cared deeply about the association and remained active in most of its affairs—whether asked to participate or not. He was an absolute bull as an advocate for media access and seating at the NCAA tournament.
Feinstein was such a vociferous critic of the NCAA on those issues that it was occasionally necessary for whoever was the president of the organization at the time to smooth things over with NCAA officials behind the scenes. Feinstein didn’t do diplomacy on that front. Anything that inhibited the ability to tell an accurate and compelling story was intolerable to him.
Feinstein was part of a spectacular golden era of sports writers at the Post. The newsroom was an incubator of talent, filled with big personalities, and Feinstein was happy to spar with any of them—sometimes even in print. Getting him to move off a deeply held opinion was like moving a mountain.
Losing Feinstein unexpectedly hurts the sportswriting profession. Losing him at this time of year, with the excitement and drama of March Madness ramping up, seems especially cruel. He loved the tournaments.
Three-plus decades ago, Feinstein was among the first reporters to take tourney coverage to its extreme—he would cover games at a Thursday NCAA site, then hustle to a different site for Friday games, then back to the first site on Saturday, then return to the second site on Sunday. Disheveled and very much dressed like the Oscar Madison prototype of the shabby sports hack, his arrival at your tourney site was a big deal.
And he wasn’t done with the job. His last column appeared in the Post the day of his death, on Michigan State Spartans coach Tom Izzo. There will be a void without him going through the rest of this month, and into the April Final Four in San Antonio.
Maybe they can leave a seat at the Alamodome vacant for John Feinstein. A different kind of Feinstein Seat. He’s earned it.
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