Character In NBC’s Parks And Recreation Hilariously Channels Bob Knight, John Wooden

by Glenn Davis | 4:18 pm, January 21st, 2011

Last night, NBC’s outstanding comedy Parks and Recreation returned from a long hiatus with a terrific episode, which is good news. But the better news is, thanks to sly references the show made to two iconic college basketball coaches, we can post about said episode.

Quick plot summary: the parks department of a fictional Indiana town returns to business after a long, budget-shortfall-related layoff, but the town’s finances are still bad enough that there’s hardly any budget for them to do anything. One exception: recreational youth basketball (though the league can only have two teams). The coach of one of the teams is Ron Swanson, the spectacularly-mustachioed parks department leader who is generally against any and all government activity – but gets really into coaching.

Coaching homage #1: John Wooden. Wooden had his legendary Pyramid of Success. Swanson has the Swanson pyramid of Greatness. It’s not all that dissimilar to the Pyramid of Success, but has way more items. And way, way crazier (and, therefore, funnier) items as well. Our favorite building block of Swanson’s pyramid (that we saw): “Old wooden sailing ships.” Here he is describing it – some of which aired last night, some of which didn’t:

Coaching homage #2: Bob Knight. When coaching, Swanson dons a red sweater. Being that the series is set in Indiana…well, it’s not hard to figure out the inspiration. But in case there was the slightest shadow of a doubt, during the game when Swanson’s team is victimized by a barrage of terrible/nonsensical calls by the referee (a jealous, clueless colleague of Swanson’s), he flies into a rage, and, well (skip ahead to 2:50 if pressed for time)…

This, of course, spawned that moment. A very strong season debut for the program overall, and if you’re not watching the show due to its comparatively weak first six episodes, we can’t emphasize enough that it’s an entirely transformed beast these days. And again – old wooden sailing ships as a principle by which to live your life. What more could you want? Well, maybe for “old wooden sailing ships” to actually be a super-ultra-sly John Wooden homage in and of itself.