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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2004-02-18

Speaking of Tin Ears. . .

Maybe while he's serving out his administrative leave, Gary Barnett can sneak in a little bit of course work. . . like, maybe, PUBLIC RELATIONS 101!!

Seriously, I'm not sure how anybody rose to the position he holds (or held) without some small degree of sense about things like this. What he said about Katie Hnida as a player may well be true--but you don't say that when asked about her rape! You say something like "Well, Katie was a real nice kid, worked real hard, and it just didn't work out for her at a major Division 1 Program. We wish her all the best." But, no. . .he has to go and throw fuel on the fire.

There are so many interesting questions about this whole situation.
1. The Leadership sets the tone. If Katie felt like she couldn't come forward with these allegations at the time, then it's safe to say the environment was somewhat hostile. As a leader, its your first job to take care of the people in your charge. Period.
2. Boys will be boys, and locker rooms will be locker rooms. But I've always felt that the leader's job is to change people, to help them improve themselves, and the "sport" was the medium--use the lessons of the game to improve the person to improve the team. Yes, a certain aggressiveness is desirable in a football player; but strong leaders emphasize the importance of taking care of each other, and projecting a positive image of the program to the public. Somewhere, these boys got the message that this sort of behavior was tolerated, if not accepted. There's a problem.
3. I wonder if Coach Barnett would be on leave if he was just coming off a 10-2 season with a Bowl appearance.
4. Remember Craig Ochs? The "best" QB CU ever recruited, who left the program two years ago citing the coaching staff's hostility to his religious practices? Makes you wonder, don't it?
5. For that matter, refer to Marcus Houston, a stud running back who CU recruited in the same class as Ochs. He left the program because the staff was hostile to his extracurricular charity and community work.
6. I understand that a major program expects a certain commitment from its players. That said, it tells you something about a program that starts to lose talented athletes who have well established strength of character.

I will be interested to see this play out. I hope for the sake of my alma mater that these allegations prove to be baseless.

But I'm not optimistic.
Posted by: Michael / 2/18/2004 11:51:00 PM

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