Inductees

The plan after four years of playing football at the University of Missouri seemed straightforward enough: Go to law school and then into the real world.

However, Gary Barnett stopped himself. After earning a letter on the 1968 team and graduating, he still felt the pull of the sport: The times growing up in the northern Missouri town of Mexico and Saturdays ushering with the Boy Scouts for Mizzou football games. The days daydreaming of becoming the next Hank Kuhlman, a Mizzou standout. And the high school years quarterbacking Chesterfield’s Parkway Central Colts.

“I found myself absolutely lost without football,” Barnett said. “The happiest guy I knew was my high school football coach, Jack Wells, and that’s when I said, ‘I can’t live without this game.’”

Barnett eventually carved out quite a career as a college football head coach, first at Northwestern University and then at the University of Colorado, and it’s why the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame proudly inducted Barnett with the Class of 2018.

A 1964 graduate of Parkway Central and former Mizzou receiver, Barnett’s 1995 Northwestern team won the Big Ten Conference outright and earned the program’s first bowl game berth (Rose Bowl) in 47 years and followed that season with a co-Big Ten Conference championship and Citrus Bowl invite.

Previously, Barnett was a Colorado assistant from 1984 to 1991, including time as the offensive coordinator for the national championship team that beat Notre Dame on New Year’s Day 1991.

Barnett later returned to lead the Buffaloes to a 42-33 record from 1999 to 2005. His teams won the Big 12 Conference title outright (2001) and captured four Big 12 North Division crowns (2001-2005), with four teams playing in bowl games. The 2001 team narrowly missed playing for the national title, finishing 0.05 percentage points in the computer rankings from advancing.

Barnett also was National Coach of the Year in 1995 on 17 lists, and a four-time Coach of the Year by the Associated Press (1995, 1996, 2001, 2004). He also is one of only three college coaches in history – Bear Bryant, John McKay and Johnny Majors – who have twice coached the NCAA’s Most Improved team.

This from a coach who could thank his wife of 50 years, Mary, for his career. Because she had a year left to finish at Mizzou, Barnett stayed, too. That allowed him time to re-think his law career.

Then, at age 24, he was hired at Air Academy High School in Colorado Springs, Colorado, spending 11 seasons there, nine as head coach.

“I loved the game, and I had gone against (NFL & College Football Hall of Famer) Roger Wehrli every day in practice at Mizzou,” Barnett said. “And I kept notes of what the coaches said, so I had a file cabinet of all the plays we ever ran.”

After Barnett assisted Fort Lewis College for two years, Colorado coach Bill McCartney hired him.

“He asked me, ‘All right, how much are you making?’” Barnett recalled. “I was making $25,000, but I said $27,000. So he said, ‘I’ll give you $28,000 to coach.”

Money didn’t matter to Barnett, who was learning how to run a program. Eventually, he landed his first college head coaching job at Northwestern, an academic school in the rigorous Big Ten.

“We took 100 transcripts to the registrar that first year, but they allowed us only 10,” Barnett said. “We knew right away that we needed to really look at this (how to and who to recruit).”

Thanks to nine ambitious young assistants, Barnett led Northwestern’s revival with players such as linebacker Pat Fitzgerald, Darnell Autry and quarterback Steve Schnur, a St. Louis native.

He returned to Colorado in 1999 and emphasized smash-mouth football.

“That was going back to the way McCartney built the built the program. We beat you up,” said Barnett, whose teams were 29-19 in conference games, including 14-2 over the 2001 and 2002 seasons, the fourth-best two-year record in conference history.

These days, he is an analyst on Colorado football radio broadcasts and on Fox Sports TV. So, what was secret to his success?

“What I learned was, 1, you have to have good people under you. You can’t do it by yourself. And, 2, you’ve got to love kids,” said Barnett, dad to Clayton and Courtney and a father figure to many. “I used to know college coaches who had never taught in high school who never had an appreciation for what they went through. I just really loved teaching kids.”