COLORADO FOOTBALL Belknap says Barnett likely won't be fired

The professor thinks the coach will be retained, but monitored more closely.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
After University of Colorado sociology professor Joanne Belknap called for football coach Gary Barnett's firing at a campus rally in February, many colleagues approached her to offer support.
But none stepped forward publicly. "It's hard to be the one person at the university identified with this," she said.
Belknap said Monday she believes that Barnett, athletic director Richard Tharp and Chancellor Richard Byyny should be dismissed for their grudging response to allegations of sexual assaults involving Colorado football players and recruits.
But not even Belknap believes that Barnett will lose his job. She has joined the prevailing sentiment in predicting that school President Betsy Hoffman will not pull the trigger on the former Northwestern coach.
"She's probably going to keep him and monitor him more," Belknap said. "She's trying to please everybody, and I think it's extremely disappointing."
Decision is coming
Hoffman has said she will determine Barnett's fate by May 31, after she reviews the findings of an internal committee, which completed its report Friday.
The 40-page report was delivered to CU's Board of Regents on Monday, and it will be made public Wednesday.
But some suspect Hoffman already has made up her mind.
She was quoted May 11 in the Colorado Daily, a campus newspaper, as saying: "There are people who want me to fire Gary Barnett, and there are people who want me to reinstate him as though nothing had happened. Obviously, neither of the extremes is going to happen. It's going to be somewhere in the middle."
The next day school spokeswoman Michele Ames issued a clarification, saying Hoffman "has made no decisions regarding any personnel matters. ... Her comments were intended to reflect the broad conclusions she expects will be contained in the report from the Independent Investigative Commission."
The Colorado district attorney has declined to press charges in any of the nine sexual assault allegations since 1997.
Three women have filed Title IX lawsuits, alleging that the university failed to protect them from sexual harassment and thus robbed them of their right to pursue an education at the school.
"Coach Barnett says he can't know what his players are doing at every moment," Belknap said. "But CU didn't do anything when these [incidents] were reported."