Neuheisel Might Get Back in Coaching Pool

Rick Neuheisel walked into the downtown bistro, his hands stuffed deep into his coat pockets and his beige baseball cap pulled low. Most of the people eating didn’t recognize him, so they probably didn’t appreciate the irony of a man in the middle of a career meltdown wearing a cap that read “Relax.”

It wasn’t the type of grand entrance one might expect from a man who less than four years earlier coached the Washington Huskies to a Rose Bowl victory. But Neuheisel, fired in June 2003 for participating in a high-stakes NCAA basketball pool and initially lying to investigators about it, has come to embrace anonymity where he can find it.

“You kind of feel like you’re a zoo animal at times,” he said in a recent interview. “You can catch the stares. You can see the whispers: ‘There’s that guy.’ You try not to stare back. You kind of have to put your game face on to go out, let them know you didn’t let it bug you.”

The NCAA is expected to announce today its decision on Neuheisel’s case, closing the book on an investigation that took more than a year and will determine whether he can coach college football again. Sources familiar with the inquiry say Neuheisel will not be sanctioned because the university mistakenly condoned participating in NCAA office pools in an e-mail circulated to its employees. The NCAA also is expected to address today whether Washington will be punished.

Neuheisel said that the two NCAA investigators first looking into the case blindsided him and that he initially denied the gambling accusation because he was flustered. He said he asked for an adjournment, reconsidered, and then acknowledged that he’d participated in the pool.

Neither Neuheisel nor his attorney, Robert Sulkin, would comment on what they expect from the NCAA.

As Neuheisel waits to see what his future holds, this season’s Huskies are circling the drain. They are 1-5 and appear headed for their first losing season since 1976. They play at No. 1 USC on Saturday.

“I’m getting ripped up here in Seattle for having been a bad coach, a bad recruiter,” said Neuheisel, 43, a former UCLA quarterback. “Every time we lose up here, I’m the fall guy.”

When the Huskies are taking the field against the Trojans, Neuheisel will be driving home from a Pop Warner game. His son Jerry is the quarterback.

“I’ll be listening to the Washington game on the radio,” Neuheisel said. “I still know the guys. I still get phone calls from them. I want them to know that I’m there for them.”

Maybe he’s there in spirit, but Neuheisel said he hadn’t set foot on the campus in months. He and his wife, Susan, made a $100,000 contribution to the school back when times were good, and the school recognized that with a brick engraved with their names outside Husky Stadium. When the Neuheisels learned later that some passersby were spitting on the brick, the couple asked the school to remove it and replace it with one honoring Curtis Williams, the Washington safety who died in 2002 from complications of the injuries he suffered when he made a helmet-to-helmet tackle in 2000.

In many circles, Neuheisel has gone from toast of Seattle to persona non grata. He was investigated for recruiting violations at Washington a month after taking the job, and, in 2002, was found to have committed several violations while the coach at Colorado from 1995 to 1998.

In early 2003, he was reprimanded by Barbara Hedges, then Washington’s athletic director, after interviewing for the head-coaching vacancy with the San Francisco 49ers, then denying to her and reporters the interview took place.

“I have proven in my past that when I’ve made mistakes, I take responsibility,” he said. “But in this instance, I didn’t feel I had done anything outside of what was allowed. I was in a basketball pool with my friends that was approved by the university. I didn’t think for one second that I was doing anything wrong.”

Neuheisel wagered $6,400 in two years of college basketball pools with his friends -- amounting to a quarter-share of his team’s total wager -- and won both years, collecting payouts of $4,500 and $7,000. A memo circulated through the Washington athletic department in 1999 incorrectly stated that betting among friends in off-campus pools was within NCAA rules.

Neuheisel, whose 66-30 record and victories in the Rose, Cotton, Aloha and Holiday bowls would rank him among college football’s coaching elite, has for the last two years worked as a volunteer assistant coach at Seattle’s Rainier Beach High, and flies to New York for two days each week to work as a $1,500-per-show analyst for College Sports Television. All that traveling is good for something, though.

“I read a lot of depositions on flights,” said Neuheisel, who has a law degree.

Gone is the family’s $6.2-million house on Lake Washington; they downsized to cover the costs of Neuheisel’s lawsuit against the school for wrongful dismissal. That case is expected to go to court next year, and, by Neuheisel’s estimate, will cost him at least $1 million to prepare.

Gone is the prestige associated with being coach of one of the top programs in the country. And gone are a lot of people the Neuheisels counted as friends. One night, a couple of months after the firing, the couple made two lists: the friends who stood by them, and the acquaintances who came to their defense.

“The list was short,” Neuheisel said. “But I’m eternally grateful to those people that were supportive of our family. While I understand the others, it’s difficult to accept that those friendships weren’t what you thought they were.”

The couple considered moving out of the area, but ultimately decided against it, fearing they would send the wrong message to their three sons, ages 12, 10 and 7.

“My wife and I wanted to set an example that you don’t run from your problems,” he said. “You stand and take them head-on. The kids were well-adjusted in school and doing well. It didn’t seem fair to them to uproot them and take them somewhere just because Dad hit a bump in the road.”

When he’s not traveling to and from New York, Neuheisel spends weekday afternoons at Rainier Beach, an inner-city school where he instantly felt welcomed. He’s the quarterback coach, and his current passers include kids nicknamed Junior, Biscuit and Tubby.

“A lot of people, especially the cynical people in Seattle, wondered what I was doing it for,” Neuheisel said. “I just wanted to coach.

“It was kind of a media circus the first day I went out there. The principal called me in and wanted to make sure I was committed to this. She’d gotten a couple of phone calls from parents who thought I was grandstanding. I went to every practice, every game. I felt very committed.”

Likewise, he said, he’s committed to his pending lawsuit.

“It’s not just about what happened to Rick Neuheisel,” he said. “Institutions and bodies like the NCAA have to be accountable for what they do to people. Most people don’t have the wherewithal to challenge them. I’m standing up for more than just me.”