It was in plain sight.
When you walked into Scott Greer's home on Front Nine Drive on a golf course in Bloomington, Ind., as soon as the door opened, you would see it: a red, plastic-molded chair on a shelf above the entry way in between the kitchen and the living room.
And when the inevitable question was asked, the answer was, "Yes, it was THE CHAIR."
Those around Greer, the former Indiana tennis coach who died in 2022, knew he was a private man — but it was never a secret he claimed to have the very chair Bob Knight threw across the floor 40 years ago in an epic tantrum at Assembly Hall.
Although Greer displayed the chair in his office at Indiana until the day he left the school, no one at IU seems to have known the story.
Until Sunday.
In one of the more unbelievable twists, current Hoosiers men's basketball coach Mike Woodson honored the 40th anniversary of the chair-throwing Sunday by sitting in what he said was the chair from Greer during Indiana's upset of rival Purdue.
A story emerged that had never been publicly told before.
When Greer died, he willed the chair to Chip Hoskins, who is married to one of Greer's three daughters. Hoskins graduated from IU in 1987 and was a student at the time of the Knight chair-throwing incident.
Despite the fact Woodson had received the chair nearly two years ago, which Hoskins loaned to him as long for as he was Indiana's head basketball coach, Woodson said nothing. Indiana officials had no clue Woodson even had it.
Although several people had claimed to have had "the chair" before, the man who seemingly would have the most knowledge, Chuck Crabb, told cllct last week that authenticating the chair now would be impossible. Crabb was the PA announcer that day 40 years ago and Indiana's head of facilities from 1990-2022.
After Knight threw the chair five minutes into Indiana's 1985 game against Purdue, video showed an usher in a red vest picking up the chair and bringing it somewhere behind the basket.
"When it was in his hands, that's the last time I saw what was definitively the chair," Crabb told cllct.
So, what story did Scott Greer tell?
For that we go to Matt Corry, a longtime coach for the Bloomington South tennis team. Greer worked with Corry's squad as a volunteer coach from 2004 until his death.
"The story he would tell is that, while everyone was focused on Bobby Knight's tantrum, he was focused on the chair," Corry said. "And when the usher picked it up, from where he was sitting he could see where he put it when he brought it into the tunnel."
Noting the location in his mind, Greer told Corry and others that the next morning he came back, and the chair was in the same spot in the tunnel.
He didn't just take it, according to lore. He let everyone know he was taking it.
"He got the chair, and he got (Indiana track and field coach) Sam Bell and Coach Knight and all to sign off of it, took pictures with it," Woodson said after the game Sunday.
When reached, Hoskins told cllct that Greer, like most of Indiana's coaches, had his offices in Assembly Hall. When he got the chair, he got letters from others saying it was the genuine artifact.
"We have letters from (legendary IU soccer coach) Jerry Yaegley, (baseball coach) Bob Morgan, the men's gymnastics coach and, yes, even Bobby Knight," Hoskins said.
Still the mystery remains for many.
The estate of Bob Knight put out a tweet during Sunday's game: "Don't believe everything you hear," with a picture of a chair, perhaps intimating Knight's family has possession of the chair.
Attempts to reach Knight's son, Pat, by cllct were unsuccessful.
Hoskins said he's not looking for any money. He simply wants to tell the story to preserve the legacy of his father-in-law.
Right now, he says, he's leaning toward donating the chair to the school.
Darren Rovell is the founder of cllct.com and one of the country's leading reporters on the collectibles market. He previously worked for ESPN, CNBC and The Action Network.