The University of Washington fired its head football coach, Rick Neuheisel, on Thursday after he admitted betting more than $6,000 in a pool on the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s men’s basketball tournament over the past two years. Mr. Neuheisel has been a controversial figure at Washington, having led the Huskies to the 2001 Rose Bowl but having been punished by the NCAA for violating its recruiting rules.
“The basis for my initial determination is that he has admitted participation in high-stakes betting pools and that he initially denied such participation except as an observer,” Barbara Hedges, Washington’s athletics director, said Thursday at a news conference. The coach is on paid suspension but can appeal to Ms. Hedges before June 26.
Mr. Neuheisel admitted to reporters that he had placed the bets with a group of neighbors, winning more than $12,000 in the two-year period and donating most of the proceeds to charity. Such gambling is not illegal in Washington, but the NCAA forbids athletes, coaches, and athletics-department personnel to bet on sports. NCAA investigators met last week with Mr. Neuheisel to discuss the situation.
It was not their first trip to Seattle. After an investigation last year, the NCAA penalized the University of Colorado at Boulder for recruiting violations that occurred during Mr. Neuheisel’s time coaching the Buffaloes, and he was banned from off-campus recruiting at Washington for the 2002-3 academic year.
“Whether or not participation in the pools is ultimately determined by the NCAA to be a violation of the letter of its rules, Rick’s admitted gambling on college athletics shows poor judgment, particularly in the context of his violation of NCAA rules both here and at the University of Colorado,” Ms. Hedges said.
NCAA officials had accused Mr. Neuheisel, who has a law degree, of trying to “outsmart” the association’s rules, a charge he did not dispute in a hearing on the violations at Colorado.
Mr. Neuheisel denied earlier this year that he had spoken to the San Francisco 49ers about their then-vacant head-coaching position, but he subsequently admitted that he, in fact, had. Washington’s interim president, Lee Huntsman, told Mr. Neuheisel that further untruths would not be tolerated.
“Was I trying to be creative? Yes,” he said at the time. “Was I trying to be aggressive as a young, 33-year-old head coach trying to make it in a world that is extremely competitive? Was I out there trying to win favor, and so forth? There is no question.”
The NCAA and the Pacific-10 Conference will now conduct their own investigations of the matter, and may impose further punishments on the university and Mr. Neuheisel.
Background articles from The Chronicle: