Friday, Oct. 11, 2002 | 10:02 a.m.
Steve Guiremand covers college football for the Sun. He can be reached at [email protected] or (702) 259-2324.
Washington coach Rick Neuheisel has a new nickname these days.
How about "Not-So-Slick" Rick?
Actually, the folks in Boulder, Colo., have a few other monikers for the former Buffaloes coach, who helped earn his old school two years of NCAA probation this week as the result of 53 "secondary" violations, 51 of which occurred during Neuheisel's four-year reign (1995-98) with the Buffs.
The printable ones are Liar and Neuweasel.
Neuheisel wasn't exactly the most popular man in Colorado to begin with, especially after he went into a dinner filled with key blue chip CU recruits and announced he had taken the head coaching job at Washington for more than $1 million a year.
Not long after being named Huskies coach he was found guilty of making improper phone calls to 10 Colorado players which resulted in self-imposed sanctions by the school.
Neuheisel claimed he was just saying goodbye to some of his ex-players. New Buffs coach Gary Barnett claimed he was trying to get them to transfer and follow him to Seattle.
Two weeks later, Neuheisel and his assistant coaches were nabbed making improper home visits to eight recruits during an NCAA quiet period. Each assistant and Neuheisel received a letter of reprimand from the NCAA and the school reduced Neuheisel's off-campus recruiting visits.
Do you notice a pattern here?
Surprisingly, the NCAA this week let Neuheisel off the hook when it placed Colorado on two years' probation, cut football scholarships for one year (2003 or 2004) to 20 instead of 25 and reduced official recruiting visits from 56 to 51 the next two seasons.
Oh, the NCAA did rule that Neuheisel could not make off-campus recruiting trips for the Huskies through May 31, 2003. Big deal. Washington already has almost a dozen verbal commtiments, including one from the top prospect in Nevada, Las Vegas High wide receiver Corey Williams.
The NCAA also has the power to impose penalties on any school that employs a coach found guilty of committing past NCAA violations. So basically the man in charge of the NCAA mess at Colorado got a minor tap on the wrist while the folks who had to clean it up are paying the price.
This would have been a good time for the NCAA to send a message to its members that they better do more than checking out possibly faulty media bios of coaching candidates before hiring them for big bucks.
Why not put the Huskies on the same two-year probationary period and pare their scholarships? After all, despite the school having a good idea it was going to be embarrassed publicly by Neuheisel's past NCAA problems, Washington gave Neuheisel a contract extension last month.
You might be able to understand some of his transgressions if he was some ex-jock who skated through college as a P.E. major. But Neuheisel has a law degree from USC and is a member of the Arizona and Washington, D.C. Bar Associations.
Neuheisel hasn't just broken NCAA rules on a repeated basis, he flaunts it.
Once around the Mountain West
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