Who would you rather have coach your basketball team, Bob Knight or Bruce Pearl?

Last March, when nobody knew anything about what Gary Barta was up to in the search to replace the fired Todd Lickliter as the Iowa men's basketball coach, at least a few Hawkeye fans wanted Steve Forbes to get the job.

Forbes was Bruce Pearl's top assistant at Tennessee, and Tennessee did plenty of winning under Pearl. Forbes is a Lone Tree, Iowa, native, so that was a selling point for those touting his virtues in Hawkeyeland.

I don't know if Barta ever gave Forbes as much as a call before he hired Fran McCaffery from Siena. I do know Forbes is in a less glamorous place today, as is former Iowa walk-on player and Tennessee assistant Jason Shay.

Pearl was fired on March 22 because of an NCAA investigation into the Tennessee men's basketball program. All of his assistants were cut loose, too. The new head coach there is Cuonzo Martin, who signed player Wes Washpun from Cedar Rapids Washington.

In late April, Northwest Florida State College hired Forbes as head coach and Shay as his assistant. NWFSC is in a town called Niceville. It's the home of the Boggy Bayou Mullet Festival in October. Trace Adkins will perform there.

The mullet isn't a reference to the unfortunate hairstyle choice by that name. No, this mullet is a fish.

Anyway, Pearl's other Tennessee assistant, Tony Jones, will be named the head boys' basketball coach at Alcoa (Tenn.) High School, just outside of Knoxville.

Pearl, a former assistant coach at Iowa, hasn't made his next professional move. It apparently won't be working for ESPN according to this Sports By Brooks report, which suggests Pearl is blackballed at the network because ESPN college basketball commentator Bob Knight "despises" him.

Which leads me to ask a question to all of you: Which would you prefer as your school's basketball coach, Knight or Pearl? And why?