It’s a Rocky Return for Neuheisel

Washington Coach Rick Neuheisel can take the Mile High road back to Boulder this week because, by all battlefield accounts, he won the word war.

He’s young, talented, rich, brash and there’s nothing anyone in Colorado can say or write to dispute the facts.

Neuheisel returns to Folsom Field Saturday for the first time since he left Colorado two years ago to accept a million-dollar offer to coach in Seattle.

Neuheisel acknowledges Washington at Colorado will “probably not be a love fest,” but his success since his departure has diminished the case against him.

The knock on Neuheisel in his four-year run at Boulder was that he was a flimflam man, a candy-coated kid handed the golden reins of a team he inherited from Bill McCartney.

Neuheisel got ripped for reading a scripted farewell note to his players and having the gall to accept a job that more than doubled his salary.

Some predicted Neuheisel would be exposed at Washington, and that he has been.

Last year, he became the first Washington coach to lead his team to a bowl in his inaugural season, with only an overtime loss in November at UCLA denying the Huskies a Rose Bowl bid.

Washington finished 7-5 without having a first-team all-conference player for the first time in 30 years.

This year, Washington is 2-0, ranked No. 9 and coming off a program-enhancing victory last week against Miami.

Colorado is 0-2, but why pile on?

“I had a great experience at Colorado,” Neuheisel said in a conference call this week. “I’ve got nothing but good things to say about my time there. And if people are bitter I left, then that’s part of college football. There’s a lot of passion associated with college football. And if that passion manifests itself in a distaste for me, I’ve got big enough shoulders to handle that.”

Neuheisel’s return is surprisingly lacking in luster.

The passion play was acted out last year, when Colorado visited Washington in September and, in dramatic fashion, Neuheisel took his new players and defeated his former ones, 31-24.

That was the game Neuheisel had to win. Washington was 0-2 at the time and its coach faced a first-year credibility crisis.

That was the game in which Neuheisel proved he wasn’t an ogre in the minds of his former players who, en masse, stood in line after the game to exchange emotional hugs with their former coach.

“I don’t think you’ll see or hear half the hype that was out there last year,” Colorado Coach Gary Barnett, Neuheisel’s successor in Boulder, said. “This game’s going to be played on the field, nowhere else.”

Neuheisel’s problem Saturday is convincing his team it is not as good as it thinks and that Colorado is not as bad as it looks.

The Huskies should have learned something from last year’s two major meltdowns.

A week after a 47-21 romp at Oregon State, Washington returned home and got flattened by Arizona State, 28-7.

Than, a week after a rousing 33-25 victory at Arizona, Washington blew a Rose Bowl chance with a three-point loss against UCLA.

“It’s human nature to relax, take a little respite,” Neuheisel said. “I worry about that incessantly. We can’t afford to go one step back. If anything, we have to take our emotional level one step higher.”

BATTLE FATIGUE

In a strange twist, injuries to two key Notre Dame players could end up buying Bob Davie more time in South Bend.

With defensive end Grant Irons lost for the season because of a dislocated shoulder and quarterback Arnaz Battle out at least six weeks because of a broken wrist, first-year Athletic Director Kevin White faces a dilemma.

How does he evaluate Davie now?

Davie figured to need eight wins this year to keep his job, but does a 7-4 record with the backup quarterback suffice?

“It provides no safety net for me or this football team,” Davie insisted this week of the injuries. “That’s not even in the equation. And to tell you the truth, I don’t know that I need a safety net or this team needs a safety net.”

We’ll know more when pass-happy Purdue comes to South Bend this week, but you can almost compare Davie’s situation to USC Coach Paul Hackett’s plight last year.

Hackett was 2-0 when he lost starter Carson Palmer for the season in Week 3 and the Trojans finished 6-6.

But how could you lower the boom?

This year, with Palmer back, USC is 2-0 and ranked No. 10.

Here’s what we know about Notre Dame:

With Battle in the lineup, Notre Dame beat Texas A&M; by 14 points and took No. 1 Nebraska into overtime.

What now?

Notre Dame turns to sophomore quarterback Gary Godsey, who has never taken a snap in a college game.

A converted tight end, Godsey is a pocket passer in an offense that was designed for Battle’s option skills.

If Godsey falters, the Irish are left with three freshman alternatives--Carlyle Holiday, Jared Clark and Matt LoVecchio.

Davie can be faulted for not having a capable backup ready behind Battle. This happened because, in 1998, he promised C.J. Leak the Irish would recruit no other quarterbacks if he committed. Leak agreed, but then bolted to Wake Forest.

THE EYES OF TEXAS

Controversy? What controversy?

Texas Coach Mack Brown had plenty of ammunition to counter the raging Chris Simms-Major Applewhite quarterback debate in Austin.

Brown could tick off the names of starting quarterbacks who have been injured already: Battle (Notre Dame), Drew Henson (Michigan), Cory Paus (UCLA), Steve McNair (Tennessee Titans), Troy Aikman (Dallas Cowboys).

Brown says when he heard Notre Dame’s Battle had broken his wrist, he turned to his wife, Sally, and said, “That’s more reason that what we’re doing is right.”

Simms started for Texas last week against Louisiana Lafayette, but was pulled after the Longhorns fell behind, 10-0. Applewhite was remarkable in relief, leading seven consecutive scoring drives and finishing with 315 yards and four touchdowns.

Applewhite deserves to start this week at Stanford, but Brown says both quarterbacks will play.

“The times are changing in college football, and a lot of people are having trouble changing with it because of this star mentality at quarterback,” Brown said. “They want it to be ‘a guy’ and we want to hold him up in high esteem and then beat the heck out of him if he has a bad day.”

HURRY-UP OFFENSE

North Carolina State scored three fourth-quarter touchdowns Saturday to beat Indiana, 41-38, in Bloomington. Now that, Indiana, was a choke.

Hey, maybe they can open Saturday’s game at the Rose Bowl with a debate on global warming . . . No. 3 Michigan and No. 14 UCLA are not only good teams, they are two of only three schools that rank in both this week’s Associated Press top 25 poll and U.S. News & World report’s latest listing of the nation’s top 25 academic universities.

Michigan and UCLA are tied for 25th in the magazine’s ratings.

Ripley’s alert: Cincinnati, Northwestern, Rutgers and South Carolina are all 2-0. The schools’ combined record last year was 7-37. Cincinnati hasn’t been to a bowl game since 1950, Northwestern is 2-0 for the first time in 25 years, South Carolina entered the season riding a 21-game losing streak and Rutgers had won eight games in four years.

With South Carolina suddenly soaring, you figured it wouldn’t be long before Coach Lou Holtz started sandbagging his team.

“I don’t think we’re as good as some people think and I don’t think we’re as bad as I think,” Holtz said.

The Gamecocks celebrated home wins over New Mexico and Georgia by tearing down the goal posts. Holtz joked that they should leave the goal posts down for Saturday’s game against Eastern Michigan.

“I know where they are and when we kick the ball I’ll tell the official whether it was good or not.”

Last word (maybe) on Notre Dame fans pawning their precious tickets for last week’s home game against Nebraska. “We could play a junior high game in Lincoln and that wouldn’t happen,” Nebraska Athletic Director Bill Byrne said. “When we were driving in, fans were selling use of their bathrooms for $3. If you wanted to use paper, it was $4. The profit motive is everywhere in the U.S. and it’s alive and well in South Bend.” Reaction: Ouch.

Florida senior Jessie Palmer starts at quarterback against Tennessee this week, but his hold on the job at best is tenuous. After Palmer missed an open receiver during last week’s rout of Middle Tennessee, Gator Coach Steve Spurrier turned to freshman Rex Grossman on the sideline. Spurrier’s recount: “Basically I said, ‘Rex, did you see that guy?’ and he said, ‘Yeah.’ ” I said, ‘Can you hit him?’ And he said, ‘Yes, sir.’ And I said, ‘Well, go in there and hit him,’ and he went in and hit him for a touchdown.”

Our bravery-under-fire award goes to the Mid-American Conference, which is 3-6 against the Big Ten and 1-1 vs. the SEC.