Honestly, I miss Gary Barnett. I know I'm in the minority here, but I think he is a good football coach. He can develop players, and could recruit. You get what you get with him. You are going to contend for conference championships, win them occasionally, and have some seasons that are just completely lost.
At this point, his coaching capital looks to be in the negative, doesn't look like he will be back on the BCS level. But man, would I have enjoyed watching MJD and Jeremy Maclin rather than Hawk's steaming pile of garbage. And I always wonder about the Northwestern J-School grad sportswriters playing a role in his demise... Rick Morrissey of the Chicago Tribune never lets down, he tries to associate every bad thing in college football with Gary Barnett, bitter much?
Gary Barnett > Dan Hawkins
To a point I agree with you. Remember that CU imposed serious restrictions on when and how by what he means he did his recruiting his last year at CU. Additionally, since the Ochs and Marquesha debacle he stopped going after highly rated (prima donna) recruits because of their parents and their egos. That left us with a lot of well developed blue collar guys that enabled us to hang with mid level teams. But when we played a Miami or FSU or Texas we got throttled. That was not smart on his part.
And another thing; Booger was still and probably would still be the OC. Nebraska fans on my Facebook page are nearly begging us to hire him for our HC just get booger off of their hands. He only still has a job because he protected NUs class between the Caliban and Bo era.