Gary Barnett has been gearing up for this game for quite some time — Colorado at Northwestern on Saturday, Sept. 19.
Now retired from coaching at age 80, Barnett served as head football coach at Northwestern
for seven seasons from 1992 to 1998, then seven seasons at Colorado from 1999 to 2005. He brought Northwestern to the Rose Bowl after 23 straight losing seasons in 1995. He also led Colorado to the brink of the national championship game in 2001.So what happens when the Buffaloes face the Wildcats on Saturday for the first time since 1978?
“I’m going out a day early,” Barnett told USA TODAY Sports on Wednesday.
That means he was scheduled to travel from Colorado to Chicago
on Thursday instead of Friday as color analyst for Colorado’s radio broadcast team — a job he’s had for 10 seasons. He needed the extra day to make room for all of this, weather permitting:
▶ He planned to meet up with his daughter, a Northwestern alum who lives in Evanston, Ill.
▶ On Friday, he’s scheduled to speak to a group at Northwestern that night, when he’ll likely reminisce about winning the Big Ten championship in 1995.
▶ On Saturday morning, he planned to attend the youth football game of his 14-year-old grandson. After that, he’ll call the game from the radio booth at Northwestern for radio listeners in Colorado.
It’s the “Gary Barnett Bowl” for those who know the history. But who does he want to win? Who does he think will win? And how close did he almost come to coaching somewhere else, especially after taking the Wildcats to the Rose Bowl?
USA TODAY Sports caught up with Barnett to ask him about that and more before the Buffaloes and coach Deion Sanders try to improve to 3-0 in a game televised on Fox.
Who does Gary Barnett want to win when Colorado plays at Northwestern?
Barnett has been inducted into the athletics Hall of Fame at Northwestern (2015) and Colorado (2019). But his blood runs thicker in Boulder.
“I’m ingrained in the University of Colorado,” Barnett said.
Barnett lives in Boulder part of the year, attends team practices and calls the games for Colorado’s radio broadcast team. In addition to his head coaching tenure at Colorado, he served as an assistant coach at Colorado under then-head coach Bill McCartneyfrom 1984 to 1991. He won a national championship at Colorado after the 1990 season.
“We always want CU to win,” he said. “And when I’m not playing Northwestern, I always want Northwestern to win. In some ways, I’m proud of both organizations and both teams. I want to see them play really good football.”
Who does Gary Barnett think will win this game?
The schools put this game on the 2026 schedule in 2017.
“When I heard Northwestern was on the schedule, I’ve sort of been really eager to make sure I could hang around long enough to do it,” Barnett said. “But as it gets here, it’s maybe a little harder than I thought it was going to be.”
Rain is forecast for Saturday. The Wildcats are 1-0 and haven’t played since Sept. 5. They are a 3.5-point favorite against the Buffs.
“As an announcer, you always want a good game,” he said. “You want a game that goes down to the wire and a game that’s played well.”
He stopped short of making a prediction.
Was it a hard decision for him to leave Colorado for Northwestern in 1992?
As offensive coordinator at Colorado in 1991, Barnett was in line to replace McCartney as head coach back then, but McCartney had just signed a 15-year contract at Colorado in 1990. Northwestern had won just nine games combined in the previous five seasons from 1987-91.
In 1999, when he returned to Colorado as head coach, Barnett was quoted in the Denver Post saying, “Why would I have gone to Northwestern if Mac hadn't signed a contract for 15 years?”
McCartney surprisingly retired after the 1994 season, which could have opened the door to Barnett there if he had stayed.
Barnett told USA TODAY Sports that McCartney wanted him to leave the nest.
“Bill was pretty adamant about wanting me to take the Northwestern job,” Barnett said. “He just felt like these jobs don’t come around, and it’s a Big Ten job.”
McCartney also knew Northwestern’s president, Arnold Weber, who had hired McCartney at Colorado in 1982.
“He was kicking me out of the nest is what he was doing and knew I needed to fly on my own,” Barnett said.
After winning the Big Ten in 1995, Barnett could have gone to other schools
Reviving a longtime doormat program to win the Big Ten in 1995 qualifies as miracle work. This frequently put Barnett in demand for other head coaching jobs. He flirted with UCLA, Notre Dame, Georgia and Texas.
“Those were all out there that became possibilities,” Barnett said. “But we worked through all of those, and none of them were right for them or for me. It was a combination. None of them worked for either one of us.”
Except for one, in 1999, after Colorado head coach Rick Neuheisel left to take the same job at Washington.
“Colorado, we wanted to make that work,” Barnett said.
He and his wife Mary have been married 58 years. They have two children, born in Colorado, and six grandchildren. Taking the Colorado job in 1999 was “coming home,” he said.
What is his favorite memory at Northwestern and Colorado?
Barnett said it’s the two trophy moments — winning the Big Ten in 1995 and winning the Big 12 in 2001. But there are plenty of big memories from each school.
At Northwestern, Barnett and the Wildcats opened the 1995 season with a stunning 17-15 win at Notre Dame and clinched the Big Ten title with a 23-8 win at Purdue in the final game of the regular season. Then they lost to Southern California in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1, 1996, 41-32.
Last year, he went back to Northwestern to celebrate the 30th anniversary reunion of that season — an honor he was able to enjoy because it came during an off week in Colorado’s football schedule.
At Colorado, Barnett and the Buffs nearly made it to the Bowl Championship Series national championship game after the 2001 season. They beat Nebraska at home, 62-36, and then beat Texas for the Big 12 title, 39-37. But BCS computer rankings still put Nebraska in the title game against Miami instead of Colorado. The Buffs missed out by a fraction of a point. They instead went to the Fiesta Bowl against Oregon and lost.
What does he think about modern-day college football?
Barnett hasn’t been a college coach since his last season at Colorado in 2005. The game has drastically changed since then, with players getting paid now and increased consolidation of the wealthiest and most powerful programs in the sport.
But he goes to all Colorado games as a radio analyst and regularly attends Colorado practices.
“What I like the most is the game I don’t think has ever been any better than what it is right now,” he said. “I mean between the lines (on the field). The game’s never been any better.”
On the other hand, Barnett doesn’t want to see all the upheaval happening at the highest level of the sport hurt all the others playing the game at lower levels. There are 778 college football teams in 2026, according to the National Football Foundation.
“I just wish we would recognize the other 740 that play and understand and appreciate what they do and what those kids do,” Barnett said. “I really wish they’d just go ahead make the top 40 teams unionize, get a collective bargaining agreement and make them the professionals they are and then let everybody else go ahead and play what we’ve been doing for 100 years.”
In the meantime, the work doesn’t stop for Barnett. It’s back to the regular schedule after Saturday.
Then Northwestern comes to Colorado next season on Sept. 11.
Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why Colorado-Northwestern means more to Gary Barnett than anyone else
