This Gary Barnett, he should be viewed initially in some snapshots from his personal album. Not his public one, which is so familiar now. There he is declaring that Northwestern football can flourish, that he, as coach, will lead that program to respect and reknown. Yet this reveals little. Every savior who preceded him-and failed-did the same.
But his personal album is where you find him standing on the practice field with a face full of cake. Turns out that each of Barnett’s players, on his birthday, receives a cake at practice’s end, and then has the right to smack it in the face of any teammate or staff member. Last Saturday, freshman receiver Brian Musso chose the face of his head coach for that honor, which prompted Barnett to say, “When you have a freshman with guts like like, you know you have a player.”
Now that tells you something about Gary Barnett, as does that photo of him standing next to his longtime friend Steve Musseau. Musseau is 72 years old and has suffered seven heart attacks (“Looks like Gandhi,” says Barnett), but he spent three weeks earlier this season educating the current Wildcats on the benefits of positive visualization.
Then there’s the picture of Barnett visiting the Rockford home of freshman Ray Robey, who was still a recruit. He notices that Robey’s dad has an injured foot and that, “He seemed a little bit awkward being there like that. I wanted to remove that awkwardness, so I just took my shoes off and sat down. Hey. Anything it takes, right?”
Finally, there is Barnett seated in his office, considering a quote from one of his players. “He’s possessed,” is the quote.
“I’ve always been,” Barnett finally says, “very, very, very competitive. So when I see this job, I see it in a competitive vein. Whenever I take something on, it’s like a mission.”
Barnett was hired in December 1991, and from that moment has been infusing Northwestern’s football program with his singular mentality. It is fired by a mania, open to any angle, tempered by a personal touch, and after only a dozen games it has produced both unexpected victories and unexpected performances.
One of the latter came two Saturdays ago when his Wildcats scared Notre Dame before losing by 15, which in seasons recently past would have been cause enough for celebration. But as they approach this Saturday’s home opener with Boston College, neither he nor his players is comforted by that.
They remember giving Notre Dame a tough half a fall ago, remember receiving plaudits for that effort, remember then going out to BC and getting waxed 49-0.
“We were really embarrassed at Boston College,” remembers quarterback Len Williams, “and we’re not going to have that this year.”
“But what happens at programs with a history like this one,” says Barnett, “is you have a big game and then fall back. That’s all that’s expected. So when you don’t win but play well, there’re a lot of congratulatory messages and the kids go: `That’s all I have to do to get a pat on the back. I don’t have to win. I just have to play well and it feels good.’
“It’s difficult. But one thing you can’t do is accept those pats on the back. You can’t take them. If you do, you’re rewarding a loss. So (in the practices leading up to this Saturday’s game) I’ve had to be tough. I have to make sure no one accepts that game with Notre Dame as a pat on the back.
“You have to fight that. You have to teach them what it takes to win. That wins don’t happen to you. You go take them.”
That, in fact, has been his message since he landed in Evanston after eight years on Bill McCartney’s staff at Colorado. While there, Barnett had watched that program ascend from the gutter to a national championship, and now he would apply the recipe used there to a program desperately needing similar refurbishment.
It called for many ingredients, that recipe did, and cut from the practical (quickly installing an offensive and defensive system) to the cosmetic (new uniforms). There would be a summer camp at Wisconsin-Parkside to promote team unity, and open practices to promote community involvement. There would be a spring game with alumni to stir their passions, and an outstretched hand to local high school coaches who long had been ignored.
He would talk to about 1,500 of them at three different clinics in just his first month here, and at each stop Gary Barnett asked, “How many of you have been to our campus?”
“Out of 1,500 people, this is the truth, I saw 11 hands,” he said.
They are all made welcome now, all encouraged to visit, as are local youngsters as young as 8. There are passing jamborees for them, summer camps, all kinds of enticements for them to take an interest in Northwestern football.
But his players’ minds, those are what Barnett had to work on most ardently, and here is where he faced his most daunting challenge. They were comfortable with moral victories and pats on the back after losses. But he would have none of that, and instead would confront them and even engage in a bit of staredown with a fifth-year senior such as Williams.
“He’s wonderful now,” remembers Barnett, “but Lenny was a problem. It was the same thing. Three years of being pampered, being the best player on the team in a system where he didn’t have to learn much, he could just go out and do his stuff. We came in with a different approach. I put pressure on him. I demanded more of him.”
“I thought I knew it all,” concurs Williams. “I didn’t think I had more to learn. I was leaving. I lost a couple close buddies who didn’t buy into the program and I was right behind them. But I didn’t. He opened my eyes to a lot of things, and I’m enjoying it now.”
The enjoyment peaked last year for Barnett’s Wildcats with their upsets of Purdue and Illinois and Wisconsin, and their aspirations were heightened further when he corralled a group of promising freshmen.
“I can’t wait until we beat Notre Dame,” they were saying to each other before that game, and later-after they had lost and heard from their coach-Williams gathered his teammates together and told them close was no longer good enough.
Those last two snapshots, they say much about Gary Barnett and his still-young term in Evanston. Then there is this final one, which finds him seated in his office and considering an outside observation. This one was trotted out by a Daily Northwestern headline writer, who blithely declared: “Bowl Berth A Possibility For Barnett’s Second Edition.”
Barnett is asked how he feels about that.
“I say,” he says now, ” `Boy, they don’t know what they don’t know.’ But at the same time, I like that kind of expectation. I like that kind of pressure. I’ve asked everyone to expect more from our players and program, so when that happens, it’s OK.
“They don’t understand how hard it’ll be. But it’s OK.”
