Barnett’s ‘Cats Turn Into Kitty Corps

UCLA has won 17 consecutive games and is seeking its first national title since 1954.

Notre Dame is 6-1 and bidding for its first Rose Bowl appearance since 1925.

Georgia is 16-4 the last two years after going 11-12 in 1994-95.

Texas is 6-2 and already bowl qualified after a 4-7 campaign in 1997.

Common denominator?

Northwestern Coach Gary Barnett could have been leading any of the above charges.

“The reasons I stayed are still here,” Barnett said Tuesday from Evanston, Ill. “I based my reasons on what was here, not what was somewhere else.”

Three years removed from Northwestern’s miraculous Rose Bowl run and two after a we-were-no-fluke, follow-up Big Ten title, Northwestern finds itself slumming in an old haunt: the Big Ten basement.

Was it that long ago that Barnett and his kids frolicked in La La Land, that Barnett cozied up on the couch next to Jay Leno, that the alma mater of Chuck Heston and Julia Louis-Dreyfus embraced the nation in a lavender love fest?

Reality check: The only Purple coming to Pasadena any time soon is Kansas State.

Tired of being the most sought-after coach in America, Barnett made a commitment to Northwestern that may now seem more like a self-imposed sentence.

After Texas made a run at him last year, Barnett appeared before reporters and emotionally expressed he was going to honor his 12-year contract at Northwestern, for better or worse.

The better, 1995 and ‘96, has been well-chronicled by the purple bloods turned out by Northwestern’s fine sportswriting program.

The worse?

Northwestern is 2-7, 0-6 in Big Ten play, with a good chance of going winless in the conference with remaining games against 5-4 Purdue and 6-1 Penn State.

A federal gambling probe launched into the school’s basketball program is now focusing on Barnett’s 1994 squad.

Distraction?

“I don’t think so,” Barnett said. “If it is, it’s been real subtle.”

In 1995, Northwestern posted its first winning season in 24 years.

Now, the sobering flip side:

* Northwestern could be the first Big Ten school since Illinois in 1954 to go winless in conference play two years after winning the title.

* In his last two years as Northwestern coach, in 1984-85, Dennis Green won three Big Ten games.

* In his last two years, 1990-91, Francis Peay won three Big Ten games.

* In his last two years, Barnett has won three Big Ten games.

Yet, Barnett is insulted at suggestions the program he inherited in 1992 and turned around has taken a turn for the worse.

“I don’t know what it was like here before,” he said. “I know what it was like in ‘94, ’93 and ’92. And we’re a lot better off than in any of those three years.”

Hard to believe Barnett suddenly became Kevin Gilbride. You think that wasn’t a miracle Barnett led in 1995? Not one player from that Rose Bowl team will be playing in an NFL game Sunday.

The bottom line is Barnett knows what went wrong, and most of us don’t.

“If I looked out there and said, ‘Man, we’ve got no players and there’s nowhere to go,’ I’d say things have changed,” Barnett said. “I don’t see that.”

Barnett says this year’s team is more talented than his 1995 and ’96 Big Ten champions, a windfall that produced bumper recruiting crops in 1996 and ’97.

Because of injuries, however, 19 players have logged playing time for the first time.

The Northwestern defense has held ground in the rugged Big Ten--”No one has beaten us up,” Barnett says--but the nation’s 105th-ranked offense has been abysmal.

Here’s why: Four of the Wildcats’ returning five starters on offense this year were lost to injury, forcing Barnett to play three redshirt freshmen and one true freshman in the offensive line.

The Wildcats are fielding a true freshman at receiver, and two tailbacks and two quarterbacks with limited experience.

Knute Rockne doesn’t beat Ohio State with that lineup.

“We knew the backups were young,” Barnett said. “We didn’t think we’d have to play them.

“We knew if we had to play them we’d be in trouble, and that’s just exactly what happened to us. We got caught in a cycle.”

One of the hallmarks of the 1995 Steve Schnur-Darnell Autry-Pat Fitzgerald-led squad was its discipline. That team almost never beat itself with mistakes.

This year’s squad averaged 10 penalties a game in one stretch and has had an opening-drive penalty on offense in each of the last five games.

Barnett has to remind himself that the fruit of that Rose Bowl was seeded in 1992’s 2-9 season.

Yet, Barnett’s hopes of getting Northwestern back in the Big Ten race by next season appear wildly optimistic.

Last Saturday’s 29-5 loss to Michigan State badly shook Barnett’s resolve.

“I know talent-wise, this team is more talented than the team we took to the Rose Bowl,” he said. “More good athletes, those sort of things.

“But that team took three years to mold itself and have the kind of chemistry it had. This team would have to work real hard to get that kind of chemistry that fast.”

This team has to work really hard not to finish 0-8 in the Big Ten.

ONCE, THEY WERE GIANTS

Now, they’re potential giant killers. Michigan and Arizona State rank as two of this year’s major disappointments. Both were preseason top-10 picks before 0-2 starts put the kibosh on national-title talk.

Yet, no two schools will have a bigger influence on their conference race.

In the Big Ten, Michigan has rallied to 6-2 with perhaps the ugliest six-game winning streak in the history of pigskin.

The Wolverines have won four Big Ten games by a total of 38 points--roughly the margin Kansas State runs up at the half on nonconference opponents.

“I’m not in a very good mood,” Michigan Coach Lloyd Carr said in the aftermath of last weekend’s 15-10 win over Minnesota, in which the Wolverines amassed minus-23 yards rushing.

Cheer up, Lloyd.

With wins in the next three weeks, Michigan can snuff the life out of Penn State, Wisconsin and Ohio State, win the Big Ten title and return to Pasadena.

Michigan’s offense remains as painful to watch as the WB Network, but the defense is finally starting to resemble last year’s top-ranked unit, giving up only one touchdown in October.

In Tempe, Arizona State is 4-4 after consecutive wins and can play spoiler in the Pacific 10 race and become bowl eligible with closing victories against California, Oregon and Arizona.

The Sun Devil resurgence can be traced to the newfound confidence of quarterback Ryan Kealy.

Demoted for the Stanford game Oct. 22, Kealy came off the bench to rescue the Sun Devils in a thrilling, overtime victory.

In the five quarters since he has returned to the lineup, Kealy has completed 30 of 48 passes for 401 yards, with five touchdowns and no interceptions.

A MOMENT OF SILO-ENCE

We honor Nebraska’s apparent fall from national dominance in the following paragraphs with the promise not to interject any more cheap farm references such as combine, bugeater or hick.

With its home loss to Texas last weekend, Nebraska (7-2) fell out of the Associated Press top 10 for the first time since the 1993 preseason poll, ending a remarkable streak of 95 consecutive weeks.

Dare to guess how many games Nebraska has lost in the 1990s?

Thirteen. For all the trouble they caused in the Lawrence Phillips era, and with last year’s debacle of coach Tom Osborne’s orchestrating his retirement in order to win the coaches’ share of the national title, Nebraska will be remembered as the team of the 1990s.

No one, short of a snoopy, big-city NCAA inquisitor, can take away those three national titles.

This much is fact: Nebraska fans are the most knowledgeable and respectful in the country.

After Texas’ win in Lincoln, which ended a 47-game home winning streak, Nebraska gave tailback Ricky Williams and the Longhorns a standing ovation as they left the field.

“I’ve never seen any fans like that,” Texas Coach Mack Brown said. “The scoreboard after the game said, ‘Congratulations Texas, good luck next week against Oklahoma State.’ I’ve never seen anything like that. I thought we were at home.”

TWO-MINUTE DRILL

* Wisconsin fans, enough with the e-mail. You are wrong on this. The Rose Bowl is not, repeat, is not obligated to take the 11-0 Badgers if 11-0 Ohio State is lost to the Fiesta Bowl. Wisconsin would, however, win the Big Ten tiebreakers and advance to Pasadena should it finish in a 10-1 tie with Ohio State.

* Charles Woodson won the Heisman Trophy last year with his Chuck-of-all-trades performance on national television in Michigan’s 20-14 win over Ohio State. This year’s Heisman was won last Saturday, when Texas’ Ricky Williams rushed for 150 yards against Nebraska. Cade, Tim, Michael, Daunte, Donovan, we have lovely parting gifts for all, but this year’s Heisman winner will be adorned in dreadlocks.

* The nation’s hottest quarterback headed into November? The vote here is for Chris Weinke, Florida State’s 26-year-old sophomore. Since throwing six interceptions on Sept. 12 in a loss to North Carolina State, Weinke has thrown 202 passes without an interception in seven victories.

* Rose Bowl officials must be privately celebrating UCLA’s drop to third in this week’s bowl championship series rankings. Gee, what a shame if the Rose Bowl has to settle for 11-0 UCLA vs. 10-1 Notre Dame in Pasadena. FYI: The schools have met twice, in 1963 and ‘64, the Irish winning both games.