Katie Hnida is an exceptional young woman by any objective criteria. Hnida was a soccer player who also loved football. And if you consider place-kicking playing football, she was pretty damn good at it. She was 27-28 in PATs and 3-3 on field goals her senior year in high school. She was invited to walk on at the University of Colorado by Rick Neuhisal who occupied the Chair of Football there in those days. In 1999, she was the second female to ever suit up for a Division I football game. Later that same year, she was the first woman to dress out for a bowl game. In 2002, she was the first woman to ever actually compete in a Division I game. By that time she had transferred to the University of New Mexico.
Gary Barnett inherited Hnida from Neuhisal when he took the Colorado job after Neuhisal left Boulder for the University of Washington. There was a difference of opinion as to why she wanted to transfer to New Mexico. Barnett at the time thought that it was nothing more serious than her not getting any playing time. Or as he rather infamously put it some time afterwards, “Not only was she terrible, she was a girl.” Katie had other reasons.
She said she had been raped by a teammate. She said she had been harassed. She became depressed. She felt she had to leave.
Last week, the University of Colorado fired Gary Barnett after about 8 years. The Katie Hnida mess-and the investigation it spawned, an investigation that uncovered the fact that recruits were being entertained by hookers during their official visits, among other hair-raising inducements- was not what got him canned. They never could prove that Barnett had any direct knowledge of any of the semi-criminal activities that were going on under his watch. This he somehow viewed as vindication of sorts. This is despite the fact that the President of the University, the Chancellor and the Athletic Director all resigned after these sordid activities were unearthed.
What got Barnett canned is what I refer to as the “Nolan Theory” which posits that you can be a high maintenance pain in the ass as long as you are winning and they don’t catch you with “ a dead woman or a live boy” in the immortal words of Edwin Edwards. No, they didn’t catch Barnett with anything but the Buffaloes did manage to get clocked in their last 3 games including a 70-3 shellacking by Texas. And this gave the Board of Regents the opportunity they needed to get rid of him.
It is funny now in hindsight. Barnett actually came to Boulder with a reputation as a reformer. It is true that he had done what many people had regarded as the miraculous in that his Northwestern Wildcats went to the Rose Bowl in 1997. But prior to turning around the Mildcats he had served as an assistant to the old Promise Keeper Bill McCartney Chair of Football when the Colorado Buffaloes were as well known for their off their off the field incidents as they were for their prowess on the field. Hell, McCartney’s daughter got herself knocked up by the quarterback. Talk about a metaphor!
Anyway, Barnett was there in those days and recruited some of those thugs. As Mike Lupica says, these guys don’t hire themselves. Whose idea was it to bring him back?
The Gary Barnetts of this world never learn. They never have to. He walked away from Colorado with 3 million in his pocket. He was not caught with a dead woman or a live boy. He will get another job in D-I because college athletics is a dirty business.
Katie Hnida went on to get her degree at New Mexico. She is a beautiful young woman who puts out that healthy glow God bestows on all healthy young people. It is my understanding that she gives talks on the issue of sexual violence. It would seem that she has pulled her life together. Good for her. As a man, I cannot imagine what she has gone through.
I hope that she lives a long and happy life. I hope she becomes a Mother and that she has sons. A young boy can learn a lot from a woman like her.
Merry Christmas, Katie Hnida. You are a better man than Gary Barnett.
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