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Krieger: Barnett's cloud loses silver lining

Published December 8, 2005 at midnight

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With Gary Barnett, there was always another shoe waiting to drop, a counterweight for every success.

At Northwestern, there were two Big Ten titles, but also a betting scandal.

"It doesn't indict a program," Barnett said at the time. "It doesn't indict the school. It indicts the individuals. The stain is on the individuals, not on the school."

At Colorado, there was a Big 12 title, but also a recruiting scandal. Again, Barnett suggested, the stain was on the individuals, not on the school or his program.

Yet, when people talk about them now, they are the Northwestern betting scandal and the Colorado recruiting scandal. They are as much a part of Barnett's legacy as his conference championships.

He is like Joe Bfstplk in Li'l Abner, the man with the cloud over his head. And it's starting to rain again.

Several weeks ago, according to the report that begins on the front page of today's sports section, CU president Hank Brown received a copy of new allegations against Barnett by a former athletic department employee.

These are nothing but allegations for the moment, but they're serious allegations - influencing sworn testimony and tipping off players on drug tests among them. Without passing judgment on their veracity, they are proof of something CU should have known anyway: It will never be free of the recruiting scandal so long as Barnett remains on the job.

Whether the latest allegations played any part in CU's apparent reversal on the issue of Barnett's contract extension is impossible to say. But it does seem a little strange that athletic director Mike Bohn would reverse his position on Barnett's future based on a single game, which is the alternate story line.

Even after the Buffs lost at home to Nebraska 30-3, Bohn was explaining to anyone who would listen that Barnett had earned a contract extension.

If getting beaten badly by Texas in the Big 12 Conference championship was enough to change his mind, you'd think he would have withheld his endorsement pending that game.

But let's face it - it's much easier to blame ousting Barnett on wins and losses. To blame it on the ongoing soap opera of charges and financial audits is to invite a legal challenge from Barnett, at least until any of those charges is sustained.

The losses also make firing Barnett easier because they have sapped his support among football boosters. As it turns out, the Republic of Boulder isn't so different after all.

When Barnett was under attack by critics outside the athletic department 18 months ago, the football program's constituents banded together to fend them off.

When he failed those football fans on the field - and rather spectacularly, too - the same constituents that defended him so avidly abandoned him in a stampede you could hear all the way from Houston.

Each time Texas scored, another busload of Barnett's supporters fled. By the time they were done, so was he.

If you want to know why Barnett was so resistant to the recruiting reforms of 2004, this is why. How outsiders feel about your program never matters. So long as the football program's traditional constituents were happy with him, he was OK. As soon as they weren't, he wasn't.

Some of his former supporters are already blaming those recruiting reforms for the lack of talent on his team, but the truth is Barnett never set the world on fire as a recruiter.

In his best year, 2001, he had an outstanding senior class that was recruited by Rick Neuheisel. The talent level has been slipping ever since.

In the days of Bill McCartney, the Buffs were studded with blue-chip talent from California and Texas. That stopped long before the recruiting reforms, some of which have already been relaxed.

Nor could Barnett keep native blue-chip talent in the state, which left CU fans watching LenDale White play for Southern Cal, Kasey Studdard for Texas, Cory Ross for Nebraska.

Which is not to say CU is an easy place to recruit top high school football talent. Its athletic budget ranked eighth in the Big 12 in 2003-04, the most recent academic year for which figures are available. Its facilities seem fine until you visit Texas, Nebraska or Oklahoma.

Critics have been suggesting for some time that Barnett runs an undisciplined, unfocused program that allows for the sorts of scandals that have dogged him.

His supporters have argued the opposite is true, painting Barnett as an ardent and strict disciplinarian.

Barnett inadvertently provided an on-field metaphor for the criticism this season. Of 117 Division I-A college football teams, CU finished with more penalties (116) for more yards (1,040) than any team in the country, a traditional measure of a team's discipline.

He has brought great highs to his two high-profile college coaching jobs, but also terrible lows.

If it was not clear to CU before, it is now: The drama that follows Barnett like Al Capp's black cloud will not go away until he does.