Can Boulder Be Stopped From Rolling Downhill?

It has been described as the “perfect storm” of scandals, a cloudy concoction of sex, drugs, alcohol, race, gender and a major administrative power failure.

Some say it could have happened anywhere, but it didn’t. This twister touched down in a posh, postcard town tucked in the Rocky Mountain foothills.

The University of Colorado hardly owns the collegiate football scandal beat.

Fourteen Ohio State players have been arrested since 2001 for charges ranging from robbery to felony drug abuse.

Miami recruited a high school player, Willie Williams, who has a rap sheet as long as a goal post.

Virginia Tech players recently were sentenced to jail time in a case involving sex with a minor.

UCLA and USC have had their share of run-ins with the law.

Yet, for many reasons, the Colorado story has resonated beyond the high plains.

Nine women have alleged they were raped by former Colorado players or recruits since 1997 -- although criminal charges have not been filed.

Gary Barnett, who was reinstated as football coach last week, may not have been “vindicated,” as he said, by an independent panel report on the crisis.

However, the report concluded no one in power “knowingly sanctioned” the practice of using sex and alcohol to lure potential players.

Why here?

Why Barnett?

Why now?

Well, it is Colorado.

“My kids lived through JonBenet [Ramsey], Columbine, and now you’ve got Kobe Bryant,” said Hillary Johnson, a stay-at-home mother of two who grew up in Boulder. “Everything is a stinking scandal.”

Boulder may not be Peyton Place, but it is a quirky, eclectic town of independent thinkers -- some call it “Planet Boulder” -- where disparate opinions are passionately expressed on bumper stickers and T-shirts.

Unlike football-crazed college towns such as Lincoln, Neb., Boulder is an anomaly in that it is not religiously attached to its football program.

One coach used the word “fragile” to describe the relationship between town and team.

The independent council created to investigate the sexual assault allegations reported “the tension between academics and athletics is particularly keen.”

Media coverage has been extensive, not only in the local Boulder Daily Camera but also in nearby Denver, where the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News fight for scoops in one of the last remaining two-newspaper cities.

Colorado President Elizabeth Hoffman said Thursday she feared the fight over this story had sometimes turned to “blood sport.”

She said, “This is not a soap opera or a cartoon or a caricature, these are extremely serious matters that deeply affect the people involved.”

The Boulder demographic, as noted in the report, may have added to the political powder keg. Of the 24,000 undergraduates on campus in 2003-04, only 448 were African American -- 40% of whom were on the football team.

Some say Colorado football has wrongly been singled out.

“Whatever they say happened here happens everywhere and everyone knows that,” said Colorado defensive back J.J. Billingsley, who is African American. “To categorize football players at Colorado as ‘these monsters,’ it’s just crazy. I’m not that.”

The Colorado story exploded in January when Boulder Dist. Atty. Mary Keenan’s testimony in a civil lawsuit was made public.

Keenan said she put the university “on notice” in 1998 to stop using sex and alcohol to lure recruits.

Her deposition was part of a lawsuit brought by Lisa Simpson and two other women, all of whom alleged they were raped by Colorado football recruits in 2001. They are suing the school claiming their Title IX rights have been violated. Title IX bans sex discrimination at schools that receive federal funds.

Keenan’s comments ignited a firestorm that back-drafted all the way to the governor’s office.

Another bombshell was dropped in February when Katie Hnida, a former Colorado kicker, said she had been raped by a teammate.

Trying to defuse that crisis, Barnett worsened the situation when he publicly denigrated Hnida’s playing abilities, saying in part, “Katie was not very good. She was awful.”

The next day, based partly on those comments, Hoffman placed Barnett on paid administrative leave.

The eight-member independent commission created to investigate the allegations held 15 meetings, called 56 witnesses, reviewed more than 20,000 documents, hired a private investigator and, on May 19, delivered its 51-page report to the CU Board of Regents.

The final “Independent Investigative Commission” report paints a salacious and scathing portrait of the football program dating to 1997.

It is critical of Chancellor Richard Byyny, Athletic Director Dick Tharp, Barnett and even of Hoffman.

The report indicated Byyny had “allowed the Athletic Department to operate autonomously for years.”

It concluded Tharp “evaded and ignored repeated directives to implement policy changes and failed to place appropriate boundaries around the football coach.”

It summarized that “Barnett has been widely praised for being a strong leader and a firm disciplinarian. He continues, however, to resist some recruiting changes and demonstrates an unproductive defensive attitude.”

The report made public an e-mail from Barnett to Tharp on the day the Hnida story broke, in which Barnett wrote: “How aggressive should I be re: Katie.... sexual conquests by her etc.”

The commission assailed Barnett for not reporting allegations of sexual abuse involving his players.

Assessing a claim from an athletic department employee who alleged she was raped by a player in 2001, the panel noted “undisputed is the fact that Barnett told Jane Doe he would support the player if the situation turned into a case of ‘he said, she said.’ ”

Barnett, like many coaches, preferred to handle football matters internally, and he was credited by the panel for handing out 48 suspensions to 34 different players.

Barnett declined an interview request for this story.

While the commission concluded the school used sex and alcohol to lure recruits to campus, it did not recommend anyone be fired.

Some who attended the public meeting between the commission and the CU Board of Regents called the event “a pep rally” in support of Barnett.

Joanne Belknap, a Colorado sociology professor, stood up and shouted support for the alleged victims.

Later, during an interview in her office, she described the commission meeting as “depressing and enraging” and something out of “Alice and Wonderland.” She maintains that Barnett, Byyny and Tharp all deserved to be fired.

“There’s always been an unbelievable lack of accountability,” she said. “I think that’s what’s troubling a lot of us.”

Those in the pro-Barnett camp saw it differently.

Kim Moss, a mother of two daughters who leads the “Free Barnett” T-shirt crowd, said the coach was being made a scapegoat.

“It is not a football problem; it is a campus problem, a societal problem,” Moss said. “There are plenty of college coaches they could have found if the microscope was on them. It could be a lot uglier.”

The independent panel report clearly outlined a program that had lost its chain-of-command bearings.

The report detailed sexual assault charges dating to 1997, two years before Barnett became Colorado coach. It also confirmed that neither Byyny nor Tharp told Barnett of the 1997 case when he became coach in 1999.

There was much Barnett would come to know.

The Party

At the crux of the scandal is a recruiting party in December 2001, a period in which Colorado was flush with success after winning the Big 12 Conference championship.

Ten recruits visited the school that week and, according to testimony, at least one of them had sex with female students at the Omni Hotel.

Two other recruits told their player hosts they did not have sex and that CU was “weak” because they hadn’t “hooked up” with any girls.

The next day, Dec. 7, a party began at Simpson’s apartment with a shot-drinking contest.

The report stated the recruits engaged in “group sex” with women at the party, “although there is dispute as to whether the sex was consensual.”

One of the recruits who had complained about CU being “weak” was later accused of sexually assaulting Simpson at her apartment.

One of the hosts, who later pleaded guilty to contributing to the delinquency of a minor, said at his sentencing he thought his job as recruiting host was to “show them a good time.”

The investigation could not determine whether Barnett endorsed this policy, but stated “it is reasonable to believe Barnett and his assistant coaches knew or should have known about the use of sex and alcohol by recruits and hosts and of the potential for harm.”

The report noted that Nathan Maxcey, a recruiting assistant from June 2002 to July 2003, made 15 calls on his university-issued cellphone to Broomfield call-girl service. Maxcey told the panel the calls were related to a single, sexual liaison for him. Attorneys for the three call girls testified Maxcey paid at least $2,000 in cash to arrange sex for recruits at the Omni.

Maxcey has denied those allegations.

The Alcohol

The independent commission made clear the common thread in the assault claims: the abuse of alcohol.

Boulder was a dry city from 1907 through 1967 but has made up for lost time. The commission reported there are 60 bars, nightclubs and liquor stores that sell alcohol within a one-mile radius of campus.

According to one study, nearly 63% of CU-Boulder students have been classified as “binge drinkers.”

During a recent interview on the Colorado campus, Dr. Robert Maust, the school’s chairman on substance abuse, said sales of liquor licenses in Boulder were growing 4.4 times faster than the population.

“We’re anesthetizing our women and using them as bait,” Maust said. “This is nationwide.”

Maust said that “every bar we track that goes out of business is replaced by another bar.”

In one recent survey, Colorado was named the top “party” school in the nation.

Maust said the culture of drinking has to be changed on college campuses.

Last year, Maust said, he gave an anti-alcohol “summit meeting” speech to a group of Colorado sororities. Afterward, Maust said, he learned the sorority house with the best attendance at the meeting received a $100 gift certificate to a local bar.

At her news conference to confirm Barnett’s reinstatement, Hoffman acknowledged that abuse of alcohol was a serious problem at her school.

“That is not an excuse,” she said, “that is a frightening fact.”

Belknap, the CU sociology professor, agreed alcohol was a major problem but added, “I don’t kick my dog whether I’m sober or drunk. I don’t rape someone whether sober or drunk.”

Belknap does not believe Barnett deserved to keep his job as football coach, but she hopes the spotlight on the Colorado case will help lead to major reforms.

“I have to think things can’t be the same,” Belknap said.

She is sure of this much regarding Gary Barnett’s future.

“He cannot afford another rape report,” she said.

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Timeline

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Events surrounding the recruiting controversy involving the University of Colorado football program:

* December 1997 -- High school student reports she was sexually assaulted by two Colorado recruits at a party. No charges filed because witnesses can’t corroborate the allegations.

* Dec. 7, 2001 -- Colorado football players and recruits attend off-campus party; two women later say they were raped at the party, and a third says she was assaulted in a dorm room afterward. Prosecutors later decide against rape charges in the case.

* Feb. 10, 2004 -- Denver adult entertainment company says Colorado football players hired strippers for recruiting parties.

* Feb. 17, 2004 -- Former Colorado kicker Katie Hnida tells Sports Illustrated she was raped by a teammate in 2000.

* Feb. 18, 2004 -- Police release report in which a woman says she was sexually assaulted by a football player in September 2001 and that Coach Gary Barnett told her he would back his player if charges were pursued. No charges are filed. Barnett put on paid leave for comments attributed to him in the police report and for disparaging Hnida’s athletic ability.

* May 6, 2004 -- Colorado faculty suggest overhaul for athletics department, saying situation has become “intolerable.”

* May 19, 2004 -- Regents’ panel releases final report: evidence of sex, alcohol and drug use to entice recruits, but no suggestion that university officials condoned misconduct.

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Associated Press and Times Wire Services