You really need to delve deeper into Neuheisel before bashing him. I can understand misgivings as his record is certainly not perfect, but it is clear that most of the RN bashers are not fully informed.
In this case it was ONE player, and it was a bureaucratic error in the registrar's office that Neuheisel had NOTHING to do with. It was considerably more innocuous than the similar but much more widespread problems that landed GT on probation.
From the New York Times:
"Colorado has forfeited all five football victories in 1997 after acknowledging an ineligible player participated in games. Darren Fisk, a fullback and linebacker, was in his fourth year of competition, but it was his sixth year of college enrollment, which violated National Collegiate Athletic Association rules.
Athletic Director Richard Tharp said Fisk was allowed to participate because of an error in record-keeping by the registrar's office. Colorado's 1997 record fell to 0-11 from 5-6. (AP)."
Link:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E07E3DF1730F934A35750C0A96E958260
This is once again an exaggeration. Colorado received a very light probation four years after he left and it is clear that what he was doing was fairly common practice. He got caught speeding too many times, not running a crack house.
Moreover, he did not get into any trouble for recruiting problems at Washington.
Gary Barnett is much more responsible for Colorado's problems than Rick Neuheisel is. Barnett had bigger infractions, and an inferior record over a 7 year span so it can't be blamed on Neuheisel's recruiting.
In fact if you check the depth chart of Barnett's best team in 2001, it was a team laden with seniors and rs-juniors, with most of the key players being Neuheisel's recruits including QB Pesevanto and RB Cortlien Johnson.
It wasn't Neuheisel that got those programs into shambles, it was awful hires after he left combined with AD mismanagement. Barnett because he was dirty, and Keith Gilbertson because he was not a good coach.
That may be.
But a couple of really good seasons followed by a return to where we have been recently -- 6-7 wins with the NCAA sniffing around -- still sounds like a big improvement to me.
And by the way, the probation we got after O'Leary was much worse than what Colorado got for Neuheisel.
If you add up Neuheisel's total resume, he had five seasons about like Gailey or O'Leary pre- and post-Friedgen, and he had three seasons that would be comparable to GT's three best seasons since the 1950's: 1998, 1990, and 1966.
I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty awesome to me.
GT fans would be ecstatic and walking on cloud nine if Neuheisel posted the record at GT that he did at CU and U-Dub.
He's got a better and cleaner record than O'Leary, and for most GT fans the recent glory years are the O'Leary years.
Of course it is. Or at least it has serious designs to become one.
Stanford, NU, Vandy, Wake and other academically excellent non-football-factories just do not fire squeaky-clean winning coaches for not winning enough. Period.
The clear aim is to make us a big time program, otherwise why fire Gailey?
