Barnett Faces Tough Questions

The questions can’t be asked because they can’t be answered.

Are Colorado football players guilty or not? Should some Colorado football players be suspended from the Buffaloes’ Fiesta Bowl game against Oregon or not?

Coach Gary Barnett has made it clear. He will not talk about the allegations of rape and sexual assault made by a female Colorado student about several of his players and high school recruits.

What is known is that there was an off-campus party in Boulder on Dec. 7. In attendance were an undisclosed number of Colorado football players and high school recruits who had come to town for a look at the program and to meet current players.

Nearly a week after the party, two women went to campus police to say they had seen a third woman, a co-hostess of the party, sexually assaulted by several of the men at the party. There had been heavy drinking, the witnesses said. The men who had allegedly assaulted the woman were Buffalo players and recruits.

On the eve of the Fiesta Bowl, where the Buffaloes will play Oregon in a game in which the winner could earn a share of a national championship, there is an uneasy quiet about the incident.

An investigation is still being conducted by campus police. Several women’s groups have protested, saying campus police may have dragged their feet, hoping to keep all the facts quiet until after the big game. Campus police have reacted angrily and pointed out that the two witnesses purposely came to them and not to the Boulder city police.

And Barnett has been put in an impossible position.

So far no names have been made public. If Barnett suspends players, their names are immediately public. If they are innocent, they have had their reputations unfairly hurt.

But if the players are guilty and they play in Tuesday’s game, it will seem as if the results of a football game outweigh any emotional or physical damage done to a young woman.

This is not the same as when Tom Osborne allowed Lawrence Phillips to play in a national championship-impact Fiesta Bowl for Nebraska. Phillips dragged an ex-girlfriend out of an apartment and down some stairs by her hair. This act was witnessed by other people. The woman herself accused Phillips. Phillips served a suspension but then was welcomed back to the team and helped Nebraska win.

At the time, Osborne defended his action and said Phillips was better off in school and with the football team. Osborne never mentioned whether the Nebraska student body, especially its female members, was better off with Phillips around. It was an outrage that Phillips played in a bowl game. It was an embarrassment that Nebraska allowed Phillips to stay in school.

So far at Colorado, no guilt has been determined.

Four men sat in a Phoenix-area hotel hospitality room Saturday. All four wore Colorado shirts. They are Buffalo fans and were celebrating the holidays by coming here from Denver for the Fiesta Bowl. They were angry because an Oregon fan had made a derogatory remark to them about the “bad citizens” on the football team.

The four men agreed that any woman who went to a party populated by college football players deserved whatever happened. “It’s just common sense,” one said.

And then all four laughed.

The scene was disturbing on many levels.

What an insult to the very large percentage of college football players who would never consider the behavior alleged to have taken place at this party. What an insult to women. What a smear to an entire college football team, the team they purport to support. What a negative statement about themselves, that they would root for such a team.

Before Colorado left for Phoenix, senior safety Robbie Robinson told local newspapers that his fear was an entire team had already had its reputation ruined. “It’s unfortunate,” Robinson said, “because whether it is true or not, it puts a blemish on our entire program.”

In his statement about the accusations, Barnett said that “only one player who has played with any degree of regularity for our team this season has been intimated in the allegations that surfaced two weeks ago concerning a sexual assault.” Barnett also said he had that athlete take a lie detector test. In his statement, Barnett said, “the results indicate that the student-athlete was not complicit in this alleged activity.”

Whatever happened at the party--heavy drinking, sex, either consensual or non-consensual--harm has been done. It has been done to innocent people. Maybe that will turn out to be some football players. Maybe it will turn out to be the alleged victim. Maybe it will be a campus police department, accused of abandoning its duty and favoring a sports team.

And now Barnett has no right thing to say.

But maybe there is something right to say for the future.

When Rick Pitino took over a scandal-ravaged University of Kentucky basketball program over a decade ago, he issued a singular team rule. Pitino said that no UK player could be seen in the company of adults other than family members, coaches or university personnel. Pitino wanted to end the practice of UK alums and hangers-on packing themselves into the locker room. He wanted to keep players away from agents or program groupies eager to pass cash for the honor of hanging with Wildcats.

Unfair? Maybe, but it was a team rule and if you wanted to play on Pitino’s team, you followed the rule. It worked.

What if college coaches had a rule forbidding players to have sex at parties, forbidding them to participate in group sex, forbidding them to attend off-campus gatherings where alcohol was being served? It might be the end of he said, she said. A coach wouldn’t have to wait for a police report or an official arrest. A player couldn’t say the accuser “consented” because it wouldn’t matter.

A coach can speak before trouble happens. A coach can make rules and enforce them. A coach can have an effect on something besides a game. A coach can help young men understand right and wrong. A coach shouldn’t have to wait for the police report. In college a coach should be the police, the father figure, the man in charge of everything his players do. He should be all this for the good of his team, his players and himself.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com.