Sporting News, The: A nightmare on easy street: an up-and-down decade: 'I'm not who people portray m

The boy with the blond hair and the porcelain face still wears those Washington Huskies gym shorts. They dent hang as low as they used to, and they're faded from countless spin cycles in the wash. They get smaller and life gets larger for Jack Neuheisel, whose few simple words spoke volumes about the complicated story that has engulfed his father and"family for the past year.

News helicopters flew over his house: his father hopped a neighbor's fence to escape the crush of media. Such things took a toll on Jack. Fourth grade wasn't so easy anymore, and school counselors wanted, to know why. Rick Neuheisel, the-former golden boy of "college football--fired at the height of his profession in June 2003--was summoned to Jack's school for a conference. "I don't like what they've done to him," said the 9-year-old, pointing to the most vilified man in the game.

"What could I do?" Rick Neuheisel says now. "I cried."

"We all "know the nickname: Slick Rick, the coach who bends NCAA rules and leaves destruction in his wake; who hit the big time too soon and got too big. He's arrogant and egotistical, selfish and superficial and always looking for the next big payday. How do we know this? Well, we just do. At least, we thought we did.

Neuheisel, who was fired at Washington for participating in an NCAA Tournament pool, is beginning to open up regarding his messy divorce from the school. Other details learned by the SPORTING NEWS cast Neuheisel in a light not quite as unflattering as we'd been accustomed to. Consider:

* The NCAA knew about his participation in the pool in 2002 but did nothing for a year. When it did act, an official called it the "most egregious" case of gambling in NCAA history.

* In 1997, the NCAA voted down an amendment that would have specifically outlawed participation in such pools, leaving NCAA compliance directors to interpret the rules--and that's the crux of Neuheisel's lawsuit against Washington and the NCAA.

* Neuheisel, thought by many to know no loyalty, turned down a lucrative job offer from Notre Dame two years ago to stay at Washington.

Says Neuheisel, "I'm not who people portray Me to be."

His history makes it easy to say otherwise. When the story first broke last year About Neuheisel's participation in an NCAA Tournament pool, his fate in the court of public opinion was sealed. He already had two brushes with the NCAA in his bag and only weeks earlier had been caught in a lie about interviewing for the San Francisco 49ers coaching job. Gambling, the NCANs unspeakable sin, ended any doubt about Neuheisel.

Newly appointed NCAA president Myles Brand already was trying to make his presence felt in an organization desperate for leadership. So before the facts were laid out, before it was revealed Neuheisel twice had been told by Washington's compliance office--by e-mail--that he could participate in such pools, Brand announced that if he were president at Washington, he would take "personnel action" with respect to Neuheisel. The head of the governing body that would soon investigate the gambling problem at Washington--a probe that grew to include 15 members of the athletic department--essentially told the university to fire its head coach.

Officials from the NCAA and Washington declined to comment for this story because Neuheisel has a wrongful termination lawsuit against both. Neuheisel also was restricted in what he could say.

"The University of Washington realized if the e-mail and the actions based thereon were the fault of the university, the NCAA was going to jump down their throat;' says Bob Sulkin, Neuheisel's attorney. "So here's your whipping boy--Rick Neuheisel."

They've built those shiny new professional stadiums on the banks of Puget Sound, but don't be mistaken: Seattle is a college town, with deep-rooted passion for the Huskies that outdates any pro sport. When Sulkin first was introduced to Neuheisel, he thought, "I was going to be representing Scott Peterson."

Neuheisel was a million-a-year coach by 37 and was a head coach at a major Division I school before that without having paid his dues. He was the good-looking guy with a law degree who once shot 74 at Pebble Beach.

But he also had those run-ins with the NCAA. Pac-10 coaches complained about negative recruiting, alleging Neuheisel bad-mounted other programs. His coaching fraternity, the American Football Coaches Association, censured him for a lack of contribution for his part in NCAA violations at Colorado. He once was called the next Steve Spurrier for his knowledge of the game and outspoken personality. But instead of using those attributes as a lightning rod for change, Neuheisel has become a thunderstorm of controversy. Much of which, he admits, he brought upon himself.

"I have been a big target of my own doing," Neuheisel says. "I haven't shied away from publicity. My actions with respect to building my program have been, at least relatively speaking, flamboyant. I invited the criticism. I was young, I was trying to do things differently and build a program, and I made some mistakes."

Says Grant Teaff, former Baylor coach and executive director of AFCA: "I don't think our profession has jealousy of someone who reaches that point of success. But coaches react to the way other coaches act when they have that success, no question."

Neuheisel never was a coordinator; he was Colorado's quarterbacks coach for one year before being named its head coach at 33. Four years later, he was the fourth-highest paid coach in college football--but he'd accomplished nothing compared with the men in front of him, guys named Paterno, Bowden and Spurrier. "I told Ricky;' former Florida coach Steve Spurrier said then, "how much are they going to pay you when you wm your first conference championship?"

Neuheisel strummed his guitar and sang Jimmy Buffett songs on his weekly television show at Colorado and took his players snow-tubing with a national TV crew in tow. He changed Colorado's successful run-oriented offense to a one-back spread and became only the fourth coach in history to win 10 games in each of his first two seasons. Four years later, he scrapped his offense at Washington and installed an option scheme to take advantage of multi-talented quarterback Marques Tuiasosopo--then brought the school its first Rose Bowl win in nine years.

But that daring, dynamic attitude didn't carry over so well into recruiting, not with the NCAA's confusing and ever-expanding rulebook. So the lawyer in him got creative. When the rules stipulated no face-to-face contact, he called recruits from his cell phone and told them to look out their windows as he drove by their houses. He was an avid practitioner of "bumping" a practice in which coaches "inadvertently" bump into players during non-contact periods. Only this commonly used practice--many coaches say it still happens--invariably includes more conversation than just pleasantries.

The NCAA rolled 26 secondary infractions of bumping during Neuheisel's CU tenure into one major infraction. But that wasn't enough to keep Notre Dame from pursuing Neuheisel. The school won't discuss whether it was after Neuheisel, or any one else--"I couldn't tell you for sure who had a conversation with whom, at what point or where," says Irish spokesman John Heisler. But after dismissing Bob Davie, Notre Dame did approach Neuheisel, seeking him to rebuild its floundering program. This wasn't a couple of phone calls, either. According to sources, a group of Notre Dame officials--including university president Rev. Edward Malloy and athletic director Kevin White--spent more than four hours in Seattle trying to convince him to leave the Huskies.

Instead of taking one of the most prominent jobs in sports and getting another substantial raise, Neuheisel stayed at Washington. Just as he stayed a year later after the 49ers offered him $3 million a year.

When Hedges fired Neuheisel, she said Neuheisel had lied to NCAA investigators and that he was fired "due to repeated incidences of dishonesty and participation in high-stakes gambling on intercollegiate athletics." But when the NCAA charged Washington in February with lack of institutional control, Neuheisel was not cited for lying to investigators. Moreover, in accepting Washington's self-imposed penalties, the Pac-10 didn't charge Neuheisel with a "show cause" edict, which would have required a league school hiring him to justify his employment or be penalized. Neuheisel and Sulkin are hopeful the NCAA won't hand down a show cause edict, which would place any school in the same circumstance.

Neuheisel and Washington went before the NCAA infractions committee last month, and Sulkin asked NCAA gambling czar Bill Sauna why the NCAA voted down an amendment in 1997 that would have eliminated the need for university compliance directors to interpret the gambling rule. Sulkin says Saum responded, "Because everybody knows the rule."

Dana Richardson, Washington's director of NCAA compliance,' didn't. Her e-mails in 1999 and 2003 to the athletic department specifically gave Neuheisel permission to participate: "The bottom line of these rules" she wrote, "is that if you have friends outside of (intercollegiate athletics) that have pools on any of the basketball tournaments, you can participate."

The NCAA's response: Neuheisel should have known better.

This is the same organization that specifically told Neuheisel after his refractions from the Colorado case in 2002 that he should not interpret NCAA bylaws and should strictly follow interpretations from his university's compliance director. Neuheisel, of course, says he followed the advisement of Richardson, who resigned in February.

Neuheisel and Sulkin also say the NCAA was told about Neuheisel's participation in the pool a year before it acted. Only after the NCAA contacted a confidential informant a year later--and asked again if Neuheisel still was participating--did the case move forward. When Sulkin asked Saum at last month's hearing why the NCAA didn't investigate earlier, he says Saum replied, "Because we didn't believe it."

Despite initial reports Neuheisel won $25,000 or more, Sulkin's official response to the NCAA claims that Neuheisel bet $3,600 in 2002 and $2,790 in 2003, and won a total of $8,409. If that's true. Neuheisel bet less than one quarter of one percent of his salary over two years on the pool. By comparison, a person with a $50,000 salary would have bet a little more than $50 a year.

"Everybody knows that rule."

"We didn't believe it."

"He should have known better."

Maybe Rick Neuheisel made his bed. But the NCAA had better get its bedtime story straight.