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Since no one's beating down his door with offers to return to coaching, Gary Barnett is taking it upon himself to find opportunities. And he thinks the SMU job is one.
Barnett, the former Colorado and Northwestern football coach, told The Dallas Morning News on Saturday he has interest in the opening. SMU fired Phil Bennett a week ago. "I let them know it was a job I've always been intrigued by," Barnett, who currently works as a television and radio analyst, told the Morning News on Saturday. Barnett has discussed the job with a Plano, Texas-based search firm that is employed by SMU, the newspaper reported. "Anybody in coaching," he said, "knows what a thrill it is to coach in the state of Texas."The 61-year-old Barnett has been out of coaching since reluctantly reaching a $3 million settlment with Colorado in December 2005. His tenure with the program was fraught with off-the-field problems and ultimately done in by increasing losses on the field. Barnett told the Morning News he is disappointed to be out of the game now for a second season. He finished 49-38 in seven seasons at Colorado, with a Big 12 Conference championship, four Big 12 North titles and two AP Big 12 Coach of the Year honors. "It wasn't unpredictable," he said of his absence. "You make the most of it." His last game with the Buffaloes was a 70-3 loss to Texas in the 2005 Big 12 title game, a loss that essentially sealed his fate.Barnett told the Morning News he has no immediate plans to visit SMU. Barnett began as an assistant at Colorado for Bill McCartney during the heyday of the 1990s, before moving on to Northwestern and turning that lagging program around. He was brought to Boulder 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 the 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. And, later, so was he. "We withstood every piece of scrutiny," Barnett said in 2005. "We held our heads up high and came out of this thing clean." Information from The Associated Press was used in this report. |
