Gary Barnett: embarassment of the Colorado frontier

It's finally happened. But for all the wrong reasons.

Gary Barnett is out as the head football coach at the University of Colorado – Boulder. ESPN is reporting that he has taken a $3 million settlement and agreed to walk away from the program he has so thoroughly disgraced.

Mr. Barnett did the unthinkable in February, 2004. When a string of sexual misconduct violations were lobbed at his team, the coach responded to the then-most recent – coming from the school's own former female place kicker, Katie Hnida – by saying, “I think she was a distraction, because at the end of practice we would have 20 media members there to talk to a walk-on kicker who couldn't kick it through the uprights.”

That's right – he responded to one of his own players' allegations of being raped by a teammate by criticizing her athletic ability. He went on to call football a “guy's sport” and suggest that players felt like Ms. Hnida was “forced on them.” Even with this tasteless word choice withstanding, Mr. Barnett should have been gone then. No settlement, no buy out – fired for cause and sent packing.

But, alas, CU apparently worships the unholy sight of a Buffalo victory above decency and morality. And so Mr. Barnett stayed.

Now that he can no longer win – his team having been crushed in their last three games – the school has finally seen fit to sending him on his way. Too little, too late. This scumbag should have been out of college football a while ago.

A few years back, on December 28, 2002, when CU was still respectable, they met Wisconsin in the Alamo Bowl. It was the last bowl game the Buffaloes played before Mr. Barnett shoved his foot down his throat. CU lost, but it was an overtime squeaker and one of the finer Alamo Bowls in recent memory.

It should have been Mr. Barnett's last stand.