It’s Rocky Mountain High for Barnett

Gary Barnett wasn’t a candidate for the Notre Dame coaching job. He is not being courted to replace Mike Riley as the San Diego Charger coach. Barnett isn’t the hot, young, quick-fix, charismatic, get-him-on-the-phone-now prospect on the speed dial of every college athletic director who even mused about hiring a coach.

Barnett is 55. His reputation was smudged a bit when he bailed out of Northwestern only three years into a 12-year contract and only days after e-mailing his players that he would not be taking the Colorado job two years ago.

But then Gary Kubiak changed his mind after accepting the Colorado job. And, honestly, Barnett said, Colorado was the job of his dreams. It wasn’t the Notre Dame job that had been dangled before him. It wasn’t the Texas job that he had practically been forced to interview for. It wasn’t any of the NFL jobs, the ones where general managers had just about kidnapped him so they could talk to him.

Colorado was where Barnett’s heart was. It was where he had been a happy assistant to Bill McCartney. It had mountains and it had his soul. And if you don’t believe him, if you were a Northwestern player who felt betrayed or a Northwestern president who felt used, then Barnett will politely say that he prefers to remember all the good things about being at Northwestern and will point to all the people who do understand that in this world, in this profession, as a coach, it is wise to always try and better your position.

As Colorado is poised to play Oregon today in the Fiesta Bowl, Barnett has bettered his position. The 10-2 Buffaloes have a small chance of claiming a share of a national championship. Barnett has moved the Buffaloes smartly away from the misery of a 3-8 season a year ago.

He ignored the mutterings of Colorado faithful as they wondered whether it had been worth stealing Barnett from Northwestern. Barnett stayed quiet when his team lost its opener to Fresno State. It was a loss, having come immediately after the 3-8 disaster, that seemed to signal a continuing downward spiral. If not a moment of triumph, at least it wasn’t evidence of disintegration. Fresno State, we discovered, wasn’t so bad. Neither were the Buffaloes.

“People were writing us off and writing off Coach Barnett,” senior guard Andre Gurode, a co-captain, said. “I know there were doubters after Fresno State. But I think it’s a credit to Coach Barnett that the team didn’t doubt. There was nobody on this team who didn’t understand where we were heading.”

What Barnett brought to Colorado, Gurode said, was a sense of purpose, discipline, hard-headedness and toughness.

Barnett had replaced another defector, Rick Neuheisel. Neuheisel had been stolen from Colorado by Washington. Neuheisel had taken his players on camping trips and inner-tubing expeditions. Neuheisel had played guitar and sung songs to his players.

“Coach Barnett was a lot different,” Gurode said. “He expected us to sit up straight in meetings. Coach Neuheisel was more like one of the guys. Coach Barnett, he didn’t seem like the kind of man you approached real easily. But he understands what it takes to make a good football team. I think everybody here knew how hard it had been for him to do what he did at Northwestern. I think we all figured if he could win at Northwestern, he could win here.”

What Barnett had done at Northwestern is legend, the taking of the Wildcats to a place of fairy-tale dreams, the Rose Bowl game. It had been said that men would land on the moon before Northwestern would go to the Rose Bowl. And they did. So it was said that men would walk on Mars before Northwestern would go to the Rose Bowl. But they didn’t.

Of course the man who engineered this miracle would be a popular choice for other jobs. If it seemed wrong, somehow, for Barnett to have been interviewing for other jobs every day--and that is how it seemed to the people at Northwestern--Barnett stands by his behavior.

“I didn’t go after any of those jobs,” Barnett said. “I was contacted. And I listened. I always said I would listen to chances to better myself and my family.

“When I left Northwestern there was kind of a generational split. The older players, the upperclassmen, understood what I was doing. The younger ones didn’t at the time.”

The toughness Barnett showed his players, he shows everyone. Practices are closed to the media. Barnett has a legendary hatred of the Internet and all the gossip it encourages. According to the Denver Post, Barnett publicly challenged two alums, accusing them of disseminating untrue rumors in a Colorado chat room during a weekly fan luncheon. The Colorado sports information director had his pay withheld for a month for speaking to the media about a dispute between the running backs coach and a tailback.

Barnett’s methods work. That is indisputable. If Nebraska beats Miami in the Rose Bowl on Thursday, it is possible that Colorado, should it beat Oregon, could own part of a national championship. Barnett has consistently, quietly but emphatically kept pointing to Colorado’s 26-point victory over Nebraska last month.

“When I got up this morning,” Barnett said, “the importance of what will happen in the next 36 hours really struck me. I’ve got butterflies and I usually don’t get butterflies until two hours before kickoff.”

The enormousness of being so close to a national title, even a little piece of one, has made Barnett nervous. This is a change. Barnett admits it. Even when Barnett brought Northwestern to its magical Rose Bowl, he acted as if it were no big deal. As if it were expected. Just like all those phone calls from all those athletic directors. No big deal. Things truly are different.

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