COMMENTARY

By Steve Wilstein

AP columnist

updated 6:14 p.m. ET Feb. 19, 2004

Colorado football coach Gary Barnett looked as if he didn’t know what hit him.

In an atmosphere of anger, fear and outrage amid a burgeoning sex scandal, Barnett was tripped up by his own thoughtless words and knocked out by a school that found him a convenient scapegoat.

Barnett’s banishment Wednesday night took the form of paid administrative leave, a nice way of saying he’s out while the school and police investigate all the seamy allegations swirling around the football program.

Accusations of rapes by Colorado players, stories of alcohol-fueled sex parties to lure high school recruits — with every passing day over the past three weeks it became clearer that Barnett would take some of the blame. He would go down, it seemed inevitable, despite his claims that he had nothing to do with all the nasty stuff that may have gone on.

If he didn’t know what was going on, one side of the argument went, he should have. If he did know, the other side held, he deserved to be fired.

CU controversy Report: CU panel wanted to fire Barnett, but didn't recommend it Barnett relieved to keep job Barnett keeps job Wilstein: Barnett must rebuild reputation Borges: Buffs blew it on Barnett State won't file rape charges TSN: Offseason has been distasteful Wilstein: New recruiting rules don't go far enough Celizic: Boot Barnett Wilstein: Scandal is no surprise Wilstein: Barnett is symptom, not cause More on college football

Either way, Barnett was backed onto a cliff. He got pushed over, finally, not because of one of the above, but because he said the wrong thing the wrong way at the wrong time.

Talking about former Colorado kicker Katie Hnida, who alleged she was raped by a teammate four years ago, Barnett responded to questions about her talent on the field and why she transferred to New Mexico after the 1999 season.

“It was obvious Katie was not very good. She was awful,” Barnett said. “Katie was not only a girl, she was terrible. OK? There’s no other way to say it.”

There were plenty of smarter ways of saying it. Even if he didn’t belittle Hnida’s accusations, Barnett’s remarks smacked of callousness.

“They were extremely inappropriate and insensitive. Rape is a horrific allegation, and it should be taken seriously,” school president Elizabeth Hoffman said.

There was nothing in Barnett’s statement to suggest he wasn’t taking rape seriously, or that he was blaming a possible victim. But his impolitic comment gave Hoffman all the excuse she needed to sideline him and show she was taking action. Her own job, she acknowledged, was at stake, too.

After Hoffman’s announcement, a clearly shaken Barnett read a statement apologizing “for answering that question in a manner where I must have come across as insensitive.”

He said that he had sought to give Hnida a chance to be on his team and that he’s “very sensitive” to her allegations.

Barnett disagreed with Hoffman’s decision but said he accepted it, calling himself “a team player.”

Hoffman also said she was “distressed” over comments attributed to Barnett in a 2001 Boulder police report filed by another woman who said she was raped by a football player.

The report quotes an unidentified woman as saying, “She was told that Coach Barnett would take care of this problem and would make sure (name deleted) got treatment. She was also told that he would back his player 100 percent if she took this forward in the criminal process.”

Barnett said Wednesday night the report contained “some inaccuracies.”

Free video Barnett apologizes Feb. 18: Colorado coach Gary Barnett says he's sorry for comments he made about Katie Hnida's football ability. MSNBC

On Thursday, a half-dozen former Colorado football players defended Barnett, saying he provided discipline and morality.

“His rules were strictly applied,” Scott Nemeth said. “Gary Barnett is an upright, honest and moral man, and I stand by him as my coach, my leader and my mentor.”

Former quarterback Charles Johnson said the players decided on their own to show support.

“We believe coach Barnett is a man of high moral integrity,” Johnson said. “We believe he is doing the right things. A balanced story is not being told.”

It’s easy to point a finger at Barnett and assign him a share of the blame for all the ugly things that may have been going on with Colorado during his tenure.

It’s much tougher for school presidents, alumni, students and parents to look at themselves and ask how much they contributed to a campus culture that tolerates, even if it doesn’t condone, wild behavior by football players.

Colorado didn’t suddenly turn into a school for scandal under Barnett. It has been that way for decades.

“More kids drink every day, they stagger from party to party,” a dean at Colorado told Murray Sperber, author of “Beer and Circus: How Big-time College Sports is Crippling Undergraduate Education.”

In 2000, raucous off-campus parties at Colorado turned into student riots. Princeton Review recently declared Colorado the No. 1 party school, based on its students’ lack of studying and affinity for marijuana and alcohol.

Drinking and football go together on campuses all over the country like popcorn and movies. Coddled athletes in big-time programs assume a sense of entitlement that sets some of them up for problems. Rape by football players is not a local issue in Boulder, it’s a national travesty.

Nobel laureate Carl Wieman figured he had put the craziness of college football behind him when he left Michigan 20 years ago. Now he is looking at something that may be far worse at Colorado.

Wieman, a physics professor, said the furor over the football team has taken the focus away from the state’s vulnerable higher education budget.

“Out of that program, we regularly have issues that embarrass the university,” Wieman said. “That tells you that they occupy much too much importance. Something’s fundamentally wrong.”

Something is wrong at Colorado and at a lot of other schools. Division I athletic budgets are soaring, on average, at more than twice the pace of academic budgets. Winning on the field has eclipsed the fundamental goal of producing winners in the classroom.

Sacrificing the likes of Barnett for a few ill-chosen words won’t change that at all.

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