Columnist Dean Juipe: Coach bails on program in hot water

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at [email protected] or 259-4084.

Sleazy, that's the word that comes to mind.

Not that Gary Barnett himself is sleazy, it's just that there's something sleazy about the way he bailed out on Northwestern for the greener pastures of Colorado.

Barnett, 52, is a college football coach of some repute. He took over Northwestern's moribund program in 1992 and had the Wildcats playing in the Rose Bowl in 1996 and the Citrus Bowl the following year.

He also signed an 11-year contract with Northwestern in '96.

But now, after a season in which the Wildcats were 3-8 and after their program is devastated if not irreparably tarnished by a point-shaving scam, Barnett has abandoned the lilting ship. Despite the fact he contributed to its apparent demise, Barnett got off with the women and children.

It's insult to injury that he then goes to Colorado with a huge pay increase.

Northwestern alums are furious and they have a right to be. And they're not the only ones who feel Barnett should have stuck around to stabilize a program he once spoke so dearly of.

When he arrived at Northwestern, the football team had not won more than four games a year since 1971. Barnett, said to be a control freak of a coach, built a successful program and received widespread acclaim during the consecutive bowl years.

Barnett, and Northwestern, were hot, and he rejected job offers from established football powerhouses like Texas, Notre Dame and Georgia.

A 5-7 record in 1997 was excused by graduation losses, yet last season's awful record tells a different story. It says the pipeline sending high-quality recruits to Evanston had dried up.

That's forgivable. But this is not: Barnett either turned a blind eye toward the point-shaving scam that may have involved as many as 14 of his players, or he failed to recognize it out of incompetence or neglect.

As it is, four ex-Wildcats were indicted Dec. 3 after a federal inquiry into doctored games, and the feds have questioned 10 others without yet filing charges. Already looking at jail time is the school's career rushing leader, Dennis Lundy, who, it's claimed, intentionally fumbled a ball near the goal line in a November 1994 game with Iowa. Lundy was believed to be behind in his debts to a student bookie and was persuaded to rig at least one game to square his situation.

(Northwestern also had a 1995 basketball point-shaving scheme surface in recent months, as guard Dion Lee and center Dewey Williams have gone to prison for participating in at least three fixed games. Lee was the catalyst, again because he was in debt to a student bookie.)

It isn't a lovely picture and it's even more disturbing because of Northwestern's stature as one of the country's leading academic institutes. Ideally, assuming Barnett simply failed to see what was happening with some of his players, he would have felt the need to stick around and help repair the damage that occurred on his watch.

He wasn't being forced out and he was being paid $480,000 a year despite a career record of 35-45-1.

But then Colorado called with its head-coaching position available after Rick Neuheisel moved on to Washington. If offered Barnett a five-year deal at $710,000 per.

He took it last Friday and paid Northwestern a $250,000 buy-out fee.

It was another case where money won out over principle.

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