COMMENTARY

By Matt Hayes

updated 9:07 p.m. ET March 18, 2004

We're two months into the college football off-season, and already I'm fed up with the garbage piling up at the feet of my one, true sporting love. It's eating me up inside. As my dear friend Dennis Miller likes to say, Look, I don't want to go off on a rant, but ...

Holy Mother of Pigskin, what was Bobby Bowden thinking? His friend and coaching comrade Gary Barnett was suspended by the Colorado administration after making insensitive remarks about former Buffs kicker Katie Hnida, who came forward with a story of sexual misconduct and abuse from her days in Boulder.

Now you know and I know Barnett wasn't suspended just for saying Hnida was an "awful" player who "couldn't kick the ball through the uprights." He was punished because, ultimately, the head coach pays for the sins of the program whether or not he is aware of its misdeeds. So Bowden, standing up for his friend Barnett, told The State newspaper in Columbia, S.C., "I did not understand how a young lady can say she was abused, or whatever it was, two years later. At the time, why don't you go report it? So it makes me say, 'Well, did it really happen like that?' "

At least Bowden didn't go Bobby Knight on Hnida and say something outright repulsive. He simply took one step sideways by questioning Hnida's credibility.

We don't need football coaches, who get paid millions to draw plays in the sand, publicly playing Judge Judy. I could be wrong, but there may be a scant conflict of interest there.

Speaking of conflicts and interest, Congress decided last week it would enter the burgeoning firestorm that is college football recruiting. The sex parties, the drugs, the schmoozing and boozing. Sounds a little like one of those Capitol Hill mixers to me. Then again, someone has to say something -- anything -- about the Miami Hurricanes' ongoing feigned ignorance (read: stupidity) in the case of star recruit Willie Williams.

Williams has been arrested 11 times since 1999, including the weekend before national signing day for three separate incidents during a recruiting trip to Gainesville, Fla., home of the Florida Gators. He's currently under house arrest in Miami, attending school while wearing an electronic ankle bracelet so the local police can monitor his whereabouts. And, drum roll, please: Miami still hasn't pulled its scholarship offer.

Apparently, 'Canes officials are waiting for an even dozen arrests to insist that Williams should really, probably, eventually think about redshirting his first season.

Meanwhile, NCAA president Myles Brand is puffing out his chest while college presidents and athletic directors bicker over a BCS pot that's about to grow with the addition of a fifth BCS game. Apparently, that's what's important here, folks -- not some 18-year-old recruit under house arrest poised to accept a free education from one of our nation's universities.

Next thing you know, Brand -- as inspiring leaders go, the NCAA's answer to Jimmy Carter -- will show up in the Middle East, hoisting the arms of Ariel Sharon and Ahmed Qurei and announcing a sixth BCS game in the West Bank. Scott Cowen and the Presidential Coalition for Athletic Reform then will sue the United Nations to allow non-BCS conference participants.

Student-athletes, right? Right.

Just last week, Brand stood on his soapbox and pontificated that college sports "is not a business, it's an education." Meanwhile, the NCAA recently reported revenues of $433 million as a tax-exempt, non-profit organization with 357 employees. For his part, Brand took home a salary of $763,000 as the nation's leading blow --

Wait! Willie Williams' ankle bracelet just went off.

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