In January of 1999, Bob Knight, then the basketball coach at Indiana, drew the ire of college basketball officials because of what he said to ESPN analyst Digger Phelps in a television interview.

“I mean, if we only knew the truth about games that were controlled by officials having gambling interests, I think it would be amazing,” Knight said to Phelps.

In response to that, Knight said he was, “blistered in a Philadelphia newspaper article by Hank Nichols and another guy.”

Nichols, who will retire after the upcoming season, has been NCAA supervisor of men’s basketball officials since 1986. The other guy? Gerry Donaghy, retired official who worked in four different Final Fours. Donaghy’s son, Tim Donaghy, is the former referee at the heart of the NBA-gambling-scandal investigation that alleges he fixed games. Tim Donaghy has pleaded guilty to two felony counts and faces a maximum of 25 years in prison.

Looking back Wednesday in Kansas City, Mo., on getting criticized by Nichols and the elder Donaghy, Knight shared that he mailed last Monday a copy of the 1999 article to Nichols.

“I said (in the interview with Phelps): ‘Why trust a 19-year-old kid to do what you want done when you can go to an official, and he can make three calls at the end of the game?’ Digger and I got crucified by Nichols and this guy’s (Donaghy’s) dad. And I wrote Nichols a letter to remind him of that. That was B.S. For somebody who’s in a position like that to say, ‘This could never happen, that’s impossible.’ That’s the most possible thing that can happen in gambling and sports, and I don’t care what sport it is. How many times have you seen a really questionable pitch called a strike? I could control an entire game from behind the plate. How about the back judge. How many holding calls? I really feel bad for David Stern and the NBA that it happened to them.”

Knight said that after Nichols and Donaghy’s critical comments of him years ago, Nichols wrote him a letter of apology.

“When I wrote to him (last week), I said: ‘I never asked you, was that letter because you lied to me or was it an apology?'”

Reacting to the Donaghy scandal in an interview with the New York Times in July, Nichols sounded as if he still maintains officials are the least likely of all parties to fix games.

“It’s such a tragedy for officiating,” the story read. “Players have fixed games. Coaches did this and that. Referees were always above that. Out of the blue, a thunderbolt. It’s once in a lifetime, in my lifetime, and it’s not good.”