The Slime Rises to the Top

There’s been nothing more heartwarming to me over the past five years than the ill-fated marriage between Rick Neuheisal and the University of Washington Athletic Department. Neuheisal, as you may know, is one of the slimiest creatures on the planet. Some years ago he crept from the ooze, became head coach of the Colorado Buffaloes, and did foul things to my beloved Oregon Ducks (including, most notably, attempting a fake punt in the fourth quarter of a bowl game which the Buffs led by about thirty points). For a Duck, of course, the only entity more evil that Rick Neuheisal is the University of Washington, so I viewed the hiring of the former by the latter with great relish.

Things could not have worked out better. Neuheisal turned in four mediocre seasons as Husky coach and left the team a pathetic shell. During his tenure, it was hard to walk across campus without running into half a dozen NCAA investigators sniffing for wrongdoing. Not that cheating helped Neuheisal recruit; as in Colorado, he turned a fine team into a mediocre one, then took the extra step of making it downright terrible. Even better, the UW fired his increasingly unpopular ass, then was forced to cobble together a set of ridiculous justifications for not paying his salary or his severance. That Coach Rick was a slimy, pathological liar who couldn’t recruit his way out of a paper bag was well known when he was hired, making it difficult to fire him for those reasons. Neuheisal sued, and today won a $4.5 million settlement from the UW.

The worst football season in a century followed by the grim humiliation of paying your asshole ex-coach $4.5 million because you fired him too fast? Priceless.