Bob Knight compares steroids to Gatorade on ESPN

For some reason, ESPN has been trotting legendary college basketball coach Bob Knight out to provide analysis on baseball in recent days.

Knight is a close personal friend of St. Louis Cardinals coach Tony La Russa and a somewhat entertaining human being, but other than that, I can’t imagine why he’s being given a mouthpiece to discuss baseball.

Yesterday, the “Baseball Tonight” gang had Knight on to talk about Mark McGwire’s steroid confession.

As you might expect from a close friend of Tony La Russa, ol’ Bob wasn’t too quick to impugn the slugger.

“I have a different approach to performance-enhancing drugs than a lot of people do,” Knight said. “My question is: Who decides what can be used and what can’t be used?”

Fair enough question, but then Knight really lost it.

“Gatorade is a performance-enhancing substance. It replaces electrolytes in the human body that are used up during extreme exercise, so I’ve always had a real skeptical approach to all of this performance-enhancing stuff.”

There’s absolutely no way that Knight can’t see a difference between Gatorade and steroids, is there? He’s just playing the role of cranky contrarian, right? Please tell me that’s all this is.

Knight went on to say that McGwire should have been a first-ballot Hall of Famer and that he got bad advice before his infamous Capitol Hill appearance.

Anyone out there care to defend Knight or ESPN’s decision to have him on a baseball-related show please step forward.