Barnet being fired.

[TheKiD]

ESPN is reporting that the Univerity of Colorado will be holding a press conference tonight in regards to the status of their football program. It is expected that they will announce the firing of Head Coach Gary Barnett.

 

Nothing is official yet, but should be after the press conference tonight.

[born red]

He has resigned

[huskergar]

I live in Colorado and they say he was fired. They had to pay like 1.8 million to get him off contract. I was hoping they wouldt fire Barnett, as he was a horrible coach. Just look at his overall record at CU. Also CU's recruiting class this year is a waste. They have 1 3 star recruit and the rest are 2 or below. CU Sucks

[Huskrz65]

Bottom Line on ESPN reads that Barnett has resigned. Press conference @ 7:30 CST on ESPN.

I really admired him when he was at NW and what he did for that program. Sad.

[huskergar]

Looks to me that CU covered up that he was fired so they dont get embarrassed. (again)

[kramer]

Barnett steps down, gets $3M settlement

 

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) - Gary Barnett stepped down as football coach of Colorado on Thursday, accepting a $3 million settlement and ending a tenure that was riddled by off-the-field problems but ultimately done in by recent bad results on the field.

 

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Barnett bows out

After a Colorado career saturated with controversy and a thrashing at the hands of Texas in the BIG 12 title game, Buffaloes head coach Gary Barnett humbly steps down.

 

 

Barnett's attorney, John Rodman, told The Associated Press that "CU made the decision to go a different direction and Gary has made the decision to step down as football coach."

A news conference to be attended by Barnett and athletic director Mike Bohn was scheduled for later Thursday evening.

 

The Buffs (7-5) enter the Champs Sports Bowl, Dec. 27 against Clemson, having lost three straight games by a combined score of 130-22. There was no immediate word on whether Barnett, 49-38 over seven seasons, would coach the team in that game.

 

"I think we're sad to leave the university but he is willing and is accepting the decision by the university, to the extent that he has a voice in that issue, and they were good enough to come to us and talk to us about it," Rodman said.

 

Thus marked a fairly rapid - though not all that stunning - reversal for Colorado, which appeared ready to offer Barnett a contract extension as recently as a month ago.

 

The coach said he pretty much thought the extension was a done deal when the Buffs began the season 7-2 and appeared to be rolling toward their fourth Big 12 North title in five years.

 

Many figured it was only a matter of a state audit of Barnett's football camps, due out next Monday, that was holding things up.

 

Things changed, though, as Colorado ended up winning the division title, but backed into it without winning another game. After a humiliating 70-3 loss to Texas in the Big 12 title game last Saturday, Barnett conceded he didn't know why his team had been unable to recover from a loss to Iowa State, three weeks earlier, that started the losing streak and said "We all know this is a pretty fragile existence."

 

Nobody was more in touch with that than Barnett, an assistant at CU for Bill McCartney during the heyday of the 1990s, who went onto Northwestern and turned that lagging program around.

 

He was brought to Colorado, ironically, to help spruce up the image of a program that had earned something of a renegade status under Rick Neuheisel.

 

At first, Barnett was successful. By the end, though, he found himself in the center of a sordid recruiting scandal, which resulted in an investigation that concluded drugs, alcohol and sex were used to entice recruits to the Boulder campus, though none of practices were sanctioned by university officials.

 

No charges were filed, but Barnett got into further trouble when he used derogatory terms in talking about kicker Katie Hnida, who came out with allegations that she was raped by a teammate in 2000. Barnett was suspended by the school in the spring of 2004 and had restrictions placed on his recruiting, which have since been eased.

 

When Barnett returned from his suspension, he still had his job, but the president, chancellor and athletic director were all soon gone.

 

Still, his future looked secure with the strong start to this season and an apparently good relationship with Bohn, who was hired last spring to replace Dick Tharp.

 

But the inability to get the contract extension done - Barnett changed agents just a few weeks ago - left both parties in an awkward situation.

 

Barnett couldn't legitimately recruit with only a year left on his deal; no players want to play for a lame-duck coach. CU, on the other hand, couldn't really afford to pay Barnett what it would cost to buy him out, then fork out more to hire a new coach.

 

But apparently, the idea of handing over a new contract to a coach whose teams had been outscored 130-22 over the last three games simply didn't seem plausible for Bohn.

 

Barnett would have been owed about $1.8 million if he had been fired, $1.6 as part of a backloaded performance clause in his contract and about $200,000 for next year's salary.

 

He wound up with an extra $1 million as a result of this week's negotiations - meaning the cash-strapped school has to scrape up the dough to get rid of the coach who, in the oddest twist of all, found it was the performance between the lines, not outside of them, that proved his undoing.

 

---

 

Associated Press writer P. Soloman Banda in Denver contributed to this report.

[born red]

Barnett said in his press conference that he did not resign. They did not give out any names for possible coaches, but ones that I have heard are Mariucci and Pelini as some of the big names. It sounded to me like Barnett will not be coaching in the bowl game. I wonder where he will end up...maybe Missouri?

[benjibean1]

Barnett has been released or fired or however you want to look at it from CU.

 

Link here

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=2252252