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| St. William’s Heir |
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| Bill McCartney and Rick Neuheisel and CU Football |
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This is Dark Cloud on Wednesday, February 10, 1999. Say, while we’re all in a dither about the decline of Western civilization because of the Clinton Capades, perhaps we should glance – at least – at the other entrants in the Final Straw Before Satan Arrives in Style Category. Boulder the Damned, always itself a top entrant, has provided yet another one. It is college football and the people who administer it. To talk about college, which is to say amateur football, you need briefly to talk about professional football. Now, I never played football, but I became a Bronco fan in the early 1970’s when that team couldn’t defeat an all-girl pickup squad from Lamar high school, should that municipality’s educational requirements ever extend above calf roping and they open a high school. It was difficult not to love a team that played so often and aggressively above their abilities. What cinched it for me was a game against Seattle. The Broncos were down three or four touchdowns in the fourth quarter. The Broncos won it. That long forgotten game a quarter century ago, overshadowed by Super Bowls and Davis, Elway and Co., was one of the most exciting games I have ever heard, in any sport at any time. Nobody who heard it, or any similar ones, can ever be entirely convinced that pro’s play solely for the cash. There was pride and work ethic here. It was exciting and pointless both, since neither team could go to the playoffs that year. So now, in contrast, we arrive back in Boulder to talk about Rick Neuheisel, recently departed head football coach at CU, who is now accused by our university of breaking rules and trying to recruit CU players to follow him to Washington and play for the Huskies. Neuheisel, when he was elected to follow the saintly, revered Bill McCartney, was once offered to the adoring masses as a blonde wonderkind of offensive genius. He schmoozed with the best, and his youthful appearance and demeanor were so fawned upon I am sure many people were shocked to discover upon his leaving for Washington that he was in his 40’s. That was the least of their shocks, for now, according to the cowardly and groveling local press, Neuheisel, apparently, is a fiend in human form who somehow stole all good from Colorado, diminished the football program, and reflected badly upon the memory of the man who anointed him, the good St. William McCartney, the alcoholic, trying-hard family man, but coach of our once National Champion Buffaloes, and now head of a Christian fellowship group called Promise Keepers. Shame upon you, Rick Neuheisel. Of course, before he left of his own choosing, Neuheisel was under attack for not winning enough, for not producing a championship team. Amazing at times like this, nobody chats about whether the football team had fewer or more men in jail or under indictment for assault, or whether the coach’s daughter had been impregnated by one or two players unconfined by the joys of matrimony, or whether the team is actually composed of bipeds or premeds, or whether these guys have turned football into a learning experience or the experience, after which the slow decline into alcoholic delirium can be predicted. McCartney tried at least once to leave Colorado for a better contract elsewhere until the university, apparently in the person of then-President Gordon Gee, drew his attention to his word, his obligations, his contract and threatened to sue him blind. At that juncture, God spoke to St. Bill and he his way clear to keep his word, his obligation, and his contract. Of the two coaches, McCartney and Neuheisel, which is the more upstanding individual? Which one do Boulder Christians tell their children to emulate? Which is the chosen example of integrity at Chamber of Commerce Dinners, church socials, country club lunches? How come? Because McCartney won a national championship and Neuheisel did not, we laud the former and condemn the latter. In every category for which amateur athletics is supposed to be honored, Neuheisel produced and McCartney equivocated. For every category of honesty, at least previous to his removal to the lovely and distant state of Washington, Neuheisel was clearly the more honest man. But America, and especially Boulder the Damned, loves a canting hypocrite. The very definition of hypocrisy does not get any better than William McCartney. And this is a lesson in front of and learned by our hallowed children daily. Washington is so far, far away. |
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