Gary Barnett, Sooper Genious, could still shock us by keeping his job after dragging his team through ethics and recruiting scandals, an embarrassing public use of the word “girl” in a press conference, seven years of occasionally “good” football, and three games to end the 2005 season where the Wile E. Coyote of college football’s team lost by a combined score of 130-22, including this weekend’s 70-3 Waterlooveration to Texas.

But after his team returned 5000 of their 8500 tickets to the Big 12 Championship, it seems only the most deluded devoted Buffs fans think Barnett deserves as much as a dinner mint on the way out the door. (At Florida, we called them the “keep Zook” crowd.) That wahhfer thin dinner mint, the circa 2 million dollar one it would take to buy out the coach’s contract, is what’s been keeping the patient alive in Boulder, and would place an unbearable strain on the already groaning athletic department budget. Oh, and there’s no money to go out and grab a hot young coach, which wouldn’t be easy anyway since most of the hot young things grabbed their contracts last year. (Did we just we imply that Charlie Weis was a hot young thing at one point? Um, yeah…he does have those nice fat guy calves, though.)

Consolations? At least Barnett’s not a girl. Perhaps ACME consultants could help.

Gary Barnett, who is not a girl, prepares for his grand finale at Colorado.