February 19, 2004

WIDE RIGHT: Last year's Patrick

WIDE RIGHT: Last year's Patrick Dennehy case at Baylor marked (allegedly) the first teammate-on-teammate murder in NCAA sports history; now we've apparently had the first teammate-on-teammate rape. Katie Hnida, a kicker who a few years ago became one of the only women to play college football, now tells SI's Rick Reilly she was raped by a teammate at the University of Colorado; this follows allegations that strippers were used for recruiting parties at CU, and that one stripper was herself raped.
Buffaloes coach Gary Barnett previously did what was thought impossible -he took Northwestern to the Rose Bowl- but he's about to be a household name for another reason: asked for comment on the Hnida accusation, Barnett told a reporter "It was obvious Katie was not very good. She was awful... Katie was not only a girl, she was terrible. OK? There's no other way to say it." This is right up there with Baylor coach Dave Bliss trying to pin drug charges on Dennehy, the day after the player's body was found.
Barnett has been placed on administrative leave and, considering that the president of the university is a woman, I can't imagine he'll ever coach at CU again. And seeing as how the two previous coaches of the program have been Promise Keepers founder Bill McCartney -who once accepted a "fifth down"- and Rick Neuheisel, who committed 51 NCAA recruiting violations in four years, Colorado really knows how to pick winners.
As for the SI story, considering that Rick Reilly is the highest-paid sportswriter in America, it sure is good that he actually, you know, broke a story for once.

Posted by Stephen Silver at February 19, 2004 02:47 PM
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