Boulder – Gary Barnett reluctantly stepped down as football coach of Colorado on Thursday, accepting a $3 million settlement and ending a tenure that was riddled by off-the-field problems but ultimately done in by recent bad results on the field.
Barnett said the decision was made by athletic director Mike Bohn.
“In the last 24 hours, Mike has made a decision to change the football coach at the University of Colorado,” he said. “I respect that decision, I didn’t like that decision – I didn’t resign my position – but I wholeheartedly accept … the decision.”
Barnett pointed to a resume that includes a Big 12 Conference championship, several Big 12 North titles and conference honors as coach of the year.
“I would deem that a success. Other people might not,” he said.
Bohn apologized for media leaks this week and “how this played out” in public, then said the school had to honor its obligations – a clear reference to the size of the settlement. Raising his voice in excitement, he also spent a few minutes urging recruits to consider Colorado.
“I’m going to do everything I can to bring a great football coach to Colorado,” he said.
Choking up and pausing, Barnett thanked his players and fellow coaches. He conceded he was disappointed in the decision and that as little as three weeks ago he was looking forward to a contract extension. Colorado, however, lost three straight games by a combined score of 130-22.
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SOUND OFF
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“It’s pretty simple. We lost,” he said. “I think our team has been overly concerned about a contract extension … We ran out of juice, the well went dry.”
The Buffs (7-5) will face Clemson in the Champs Sports Bowl on Dec. 27. Barnett, 49-38 over seven seasons, will not coach the team in that game. Barnett essentially shrugged when asked about that decision, saying it was up to Bohn.
Cornerback Terrence Wheatley said he was disappointed and wanted Barnett to coach in the bowl game. Tight end Quinn Sypniewski called Barnett’s dismissal a “tragedy” and that the coach was upset when he told his team the bad news.
“He was upset. He spoke with emotion and with passion,” he said.
CU Regent Michael Carrigan said Barnett’s resignation was the best decision for both the coach and the university.
“We’ve implemented recent changes, but it’s important to have a change in personnel to really make the reforms lasting,” he said.
“Performance issues both on the field and off the field led us to believe it was a good decision.”
Another regent, Tom Lucero, said Barnett had become emblematic of the scandal surrounding the football program.
“It’s not necessarily fair at times,” he said. “But a change certainly can bring fresh air to the university.”
Gov. Bill Owens, who had insisted the university get a grip on things during the 2004 scandal, had not specific comment on Barnett.
“He trusts university President Hank Brown and the Board of Regents to do the right thing,” deputy press secretary Mark Salley said.
The decision ended a fairly rapid – though not all that stunning – reversal for Colorado, which appeared ready to offer Barnett a contract extension as recently as a month ago.
The coach said he pretty much thought the extension was a done deal when the Buffs began the season 7-2 and appeared to be rolling toward their fourth Big 12 North title in five years.
Many figured it was only a matter of a state audit of Barnett’s football camps, due out next Monday, that was holding things up.
Things changed, though, as Colorado ended up winning the division title, but backed into it without winning another game.
After a humiliating 70-3 loss to Texas in the Big 12 title game last Saturday, Barnett conceded he didn’t know why his team had been unable to recover from a loss to Iowa State three weeks earlier and said, “We all know this is a pretty fragile existence.”
Nobody was more in touch with that than Barnett, an assistant at CU for Bill McCartney during the heyday of the 1990s, who went onto Northwestern and turned that lagging program around.
He was brought to Colorado, ironically, to help spruce up the image of a program that had earned something of a renegade status under Rick Neuheisel.
At first, Barnett was successful. By the end, though, he found himself in the center of a sordid recruiting scandal, which resulted in an investigation that concluded drugs, alcohol and sex were used to entice recruits to the Boulder campus, though none of practices were sanctioned by university officials.
No charges were filed, but Barnett got into further trouble when he used derogatory terms in talking about kicker Katie Hnida, who came out with allegations that she was raped by a teammate in 2000.
Barnett was suspended by the school in the spring of 2004 and had restrictions placed on his recruiting, which have since been eased.
When Barnett returned from his suspension, he still had his job, but the president, chancellor and athletic director were all soon gone. Still, his future looked secure with the strong start to this season and an apparently good relationship with Bohn, who was hired last spring to replace Dick Tharp.
But the inability to get the contract extension done – Barnett changed agents just a few weeks ago – left both parties in an awkward situation.
Barnett couldn’t legitimately recruit with only a year left on his deal; no players want to play for a lame-duck coach. CU, on the other hand, faced the decision of buying out Barnett’s contract and then hiring a new coach. Apparently, the idea of handing a new contract to a coach whose teams had been badly beaten over the last three games simply didn’t seem plausible for Bohn.
Barnett would have been owed about $1.8 million if he had been fired, $1.6 as part of a backloaded performance clause in his contract and about $200,000 for next year’s salary.
He wound up with an extra $1 million as a result of this week’s negotiations – meaning the cash-strapped school has to scrape up the dough to get rid of the coach who, in the oddest twist of all, found it was the performance between the lines, not outside of them, that proved his undoing.
– Associated Press writer P. Solomon Banda in Denver contributed to this report.
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