Colorado football coach Gary Barnett discussed the need to introduce recruits to young women in order to maintain a competitive advantage, according to a sworn statement by a former university athletic department official.
As Colorado released hundreds of pages of statements Thursday related to a December 2001 party with football players and recruits, Boulder District Attorney Mary Keenan reopened her investigation into whether women were raped at the gathering.
All the statements were made in sworn depositions in a federal lawsuit filed by former student Lisa Simpson and joined by two other women who say they were raped during or after the party.
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Keenan created an uproar last week by accusing the university of using alcohol and sex to lure football team recruits.
She offered few details regarding the new inquiry, but a criminal investigation that concluded in 2002 resulted in no formal rape charges.
More than a dozen depositions were released Thursday. In one of them, Robert Chichester, a former associate athletic director and attorney for Colorado, said he and Barnett discussed before the 2001 party “that recruits are taken to parties … and that there are women who will come to those parties and offer themselves to recruits.”
Chichester said he and Barnett agreed that “showing student recruits a good time, have them go out to a party, meet some of the young women, was something that happens all over the country,” he said in the deposition.
“If recruits aren’t being shown those type of activities in Boulder, that it would be a recruiting disadvantage,” Chichester continued.
Barnett has flatly denied that sex or alcohol ever were used to entice recruits.
Athletic department officials said Barnett was unavailable for comment Thursday night.
In sworn statements, players and coaches defend Barnett’s integrity and say the coach was hard on players who broke team rules.
In his deposition, Chichester also said Barnett knew his recruiting program was in trouble and that his bosses expected changes, a contradiction of the coach’s earlier testimony that he wasn’t aware anything was wrong.