Baskent Knights
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The Baskent Knights is an american football team based in Ankara, Turkey. It was established under the name of Başkent University on 1998. Baskent Knights is a university team, which is not under a management of any private sports club facility.
Baskent Knights was founded on 1998 with the efforts of Gokhan Bilgesu. Gokhan Bilgesu, who played college football for Gazi University football team for two years, decided to establish a new college football team to generalize football in Turkey. He established the football team under the control of the Athletics department of Baskent University and named this team as "Knights". Then, he started his coaching career in Baskent Knights on 1998. After the foundation of Baskent Knights, this team played football without protective equipments for three years and after 2001 with the efforts of all new players they brought football equipments to their team and by these efforts they were being the second fully equipped football team of their country. After the reaction of Baskent Knights the other 15 college teams also started to bring those protective equipments to their teams. On the year of 2002, the first standard college football season was played with the contribution of five teams including Baskent Knights.
In the beginning of the 2003-2004 season, Ozgur Irmak (former Gazi Warriors defensive player) became the second coach of Baskent Knights. Until 2005, Baskent Knights was not a successful team as general. But under the leadership of senior players and under the management of Ozgur Irmak, Baskent Knights increased their performance by the end of 2005. With the special efforts of the senior players -Ahmet Söyletir (QB)-Burak Dursun (QB)-Emre Başyiğit (LB)-Tolga Onuk (DL)-Cem Özparlak (RB)and by the approval of the athletics department managers, Eric Smithson started his coaching career in Baskent Knights on 2006. Under the management of Eric Smithson and his assistant Cameron Dadgar, the team significantly increased its performance to not only obtain its first winning season (8-3) but to also be finalist in the Turkish College National Championship Game. Baskent Knights barely lost the 2006 National Championship in what was considered one of the most exciting games in Turkish College football history. In the fall of 2006, Cameron Dadgar, who was the assistant coach in the 2005-2006 season, took the management of the team and led the Knights to another playoff season in 2006-2007.
Baskent Knights used Navy Blue-Grey-White colors until 2004. In 2004, Özgur Irmak, who was the head coach of Baskent Knights changed its color to Navy Blue-White-Orange and at the same year by the advice of the former special teams captain Tolga Onuk, the team changed their old logo to the current logo.
Baskent Knights is a standard college football team, which resumes their athletics facilities under the name of Baskent University and plays in the 1st college league conference in Turkey.
