Gary Barnett, Please Come Down From the Mountain.

Gary Barnett, Colorado Buffaloes’ football coach, “resigned” yesterday. The resignation comes because his team was getting its ass beat by conference rivals… not because of all of the sexual harassment issues that have popped up over the past few years. The losing 70-3 is worse, then, than the multiple and sordid sex charges levied against the program.

They would have fired him but, from this Denver Post article:

According to Barnett's contract, a firing would have required:

* An "intentional and material" violation of the contract.
* Conviction of any criminal statute or "for any act of moral turpitude."
* An intentional and material violation of any NCAA regulations that he should have had knowledge about.

CU leaders worried that Barnett could have sued CU for a lot more money than his contract said he's entitled to, perhaps up to $4 million. Administrators were mindful that former CU coach Rick Neuheisel won $4.5 million in a wrongful-termination lawsuit this year against the University of Washington, where he was the football coach.

If I were President of the University of Colorado, I would ski a lot more, be older, tell people to stop checking the weather channel for powder conditions and read some classic literature, and I would have fired this ass clown a year ago. Except then, he would have gotten his paycheck and some money for pain and suffering.

After one slick jerk (Rick Neuheisel) brings the NCAA watchdogs down on your football program, maybe it’s time to hire a complete angel, not Gary Barnett, whose Northwestern players were accused of a point-shaving scandal. And when your new coach is rumored to have sex parties for Colorado recruits—and while that happens all over the country, other schools aren’t so publicly found out—and follows up that scandal with multiple rape and sexual misconduct charges against both players and assistant coaches… that guy has to go.

From Neuheisel through Barnett, a timeline of poor behavior and no institutional control. The hits just keep on coming.

Quotables:

From last Thursday, pre-firing:

“We withstood every piece of scrutiny,” Barnett said Thursday. “We held our heads up high and came out of this thing clean.”

-Gary Barnett. Deluded.


At the top of my list of Gary Barnett affronts is his treatment of Katie Hnida, who came forward with allegations in response to three other women who levied charges against the Buffaloes. Former New Mexico player and first Division I-A female kicker Hnida kicked a few extra points and found herself subject to harassment after telling the media she’d been raped by a player. Barnett’s response:

"It's a guy's sport. (Players) felt like Katie was forced on them. It was obvious Katie was not very good. She was awful. You know what guys do? They respect your ability. You can be 90 years old, but if you can go out and play, they'll respect you. Katie was not only a girl, she was terrible. OK? There's no other way to say it."

-Gary Barnett. Bastard.


Katie kicked a few extra points later, at New Mexico, shown in the photo. Her timeline is here. There was no call for disparaging her like that. But Barnett needed to cover his tracks:


At 8:31 a.m., Barnett sends an e-mail to Tharp that read: "How aggressive shoould(sic) I be re; katie .... sexual conquests by her etc."

-Gary Barnett. Weasel.

Soon after there was a mention in the media that Hnida had gone topless with some of the guys in a hot tub. Hm.

An aside: there may also be a money issue; the firing may have been delayed by the lack of funds in the Colorado program to buy out Barnett’s contract, and from IRS audits of Barnett’s football camps for youth, where the money was never quite accounted for to the level of accounting standards.