By Pigskin Pete

        Collegiate football at the Division I  level carries the seeds of scandal with economic and emotional impacts unrivaled by other institutional activity.  These seeds have just sprouted some very ugly growth at two major universities, Colorado and Washington....and the blame in both instances extends clear to the top.  As a university president, you must remain attentive to who and what is happening in your athletic department.  Lack of administrative control begs for unfavorable press and sanctions from the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

Washington let athletic director Barbara Hedges manage a slipshod football program for  years,hiring a coach, Rick Neuheisel, despite a slew of NCAA infractions during hiswatch at, ironically, Colorado.  Hedges did a good job of raising funds for new athletic facilities, but fund-raising for Huskyville is no great challenge.  Neuheisel again drew unfavorable NCAA attention for recruiting practices at his new job, but earned a raise from Hedges and a million dollar plus loan for a new lakeside home before illegal gambling and lying on his part finally forced Hedges to shove him out the door.  Facing new NCAA scrutiny and accusations of “lack of institutional control”, Husky powers accepted Hedges’ early resignation, but publicly lauded her AD achievments.

Now the UW faces demands for answers from its own Pac10 conference and the NCAA in hearings scheduled for March and June.  Head coach Keith Gilbertson, who succeeded Neuheisel, has to date been given no responsibility for the transgressions of the Neuheisel administration.  Clearly, Hedges was inept and inattentive for years and the same could be said about her superiors.

Buffalos Led to Slaughter

Moving on to the Colorado Buffalos, Head Coach Gary Barnett has been placed on “administrative leave” by school president Elizabeth Hoffman as scandal, whipped up by national press coverage, swirled around his program.  No less than six rape accusations have now been filed by females invited to recruiting parties held for high school athletic hero visitors in the past three years, plus a rape claim filed by former Buffalo female kicker Katie Hnida (now kicking successfully for the University of New Mexico).  This latter situation was compounded by a Barnett press conference where the coach declared Hnida was an “awful” kicker and, “after all, she is a girl.”

So Colorado now faces an NCAA investigation into its recruiting practices which apparently have been condoned (or ignored) by a coach who was pursued by such storied programs as NotreDame, UCLA and Texas before succumbing to Colorado’s blandishments.  There were no sanctions suggested during Barnett’s Northwestern sojourn.  However, the atmosphere he entered

in Colorado can certainly be termed different than the attitude surrounding the Northwestern campus, which has been described as the Big Ten’s equivalent of Ivy League schools.  In fact, a study by  Ivy member Princeton’s publication, The Review, published a student survey that ranked Colorado as the numero uno “party school” in the USA, ranking it third among all major schools in marijuana use and that 63% of Colorado students binge drink hard liquor, a figure 20 points higher than the national college average.

A current Colorado assistant football coach, Pat Fitzgerald (star linebacker on Barnett’s Northwestern Rose Bowl squad) says that its “unfair to indict coach Barnett...because it goes deeper than that...it’s a direct reflection of society, that we need to do a better job educating our children about what is and isn’t acceptable.”  Yes, Pat, but hiugh school grid prospects are at a very impressionable age and succumb easily to temptation obviously created by institutions of higher learning that seem to condone scandalous activities.

Both  the Colorado and Washington problems are an obvious result of school administrations condoning or ignoring atmospheres of winning at all costs (and it will cost these schools). Here at home, the University of Oregon has accomplished a transition from gridiron doormat to national football prominence, with winning encouraging wealthy alumni to fund expensive and creative new facilities.  Oregon State is attempting to keep pace, but needs more alumni dollar support to get there as quickly as Oregon has managed.

Our local schools to date have shown that administrative controls from above have kept their football rise to prominence free of investigative scandal...a lesson that their brethren in Seattle and Boulder should have known before they carelessly condoned activities that are now national
 headlines.

© 2004 Oregon Magazine