BOULDER, COLO. Colorado's recruiting takes hit with scandal

The Buffaloes won just five games last year and have struggled this season.
BOULDER, Colo. (AP) -- Highly touted high school running back Maurice Greer started with a long list of colleges, and recently narrowed it to Arizona State, Kansas State, Michigan State and Colorado.
Colorado? Yep, it's on there.
Some of the top recruits in the country are avoiding Colorado after a tumultuous offseason marred by boozed-filled parties and allegations of rape. But Greer, one of the state's top high school players, still thinks the university could be a good fit.
"They have a good football program and I have a good relationship with the coaching staff," said Greer, of Denver's Mullen High School. "I think basically what went on at Colorado goes on at other colleges. What happened at CU was bad, but I think it's something they can get through."
Selling the University of Colorado to football recruits once was easy. With a picturesque campus at the edge of the Rockies, a strong academic reputation and a consistent top-25 football program, Colorado could get just about any player it wanted.
But after Boulder became the dateline for so many negative stories this offseason -- assault accusations, questionable recruiting practices, the coach suspended for insensitive remarks -- there has been a whole lot more persuading going on.
"There's always going to be some people who judge us through the media and don't give us a fair shot, and that's OK," said assistant coach John Wristen, Colorado's recruiting coordinator. "Our challenge is to find the people that want to get to know us and find out what we're all about."
Tough road
It's not going to be easy.
Colorado's troubles started late last year when a former student sued the university, claiming she was raped by players or recruits at an off-campus party in 2001. Eight more women came forward alleging they had been raped since 1997, including two who also sued the school.
Coach Gary Barnett was suspended for three months for calling former CU kicker Katie Hnida a "terrible player" shortly after she said she was raped by a teammate in 2000.
An investigation concluded sex and alcohol were used as recruiting tools, though it said the coaches had no knowledge of the practices and prosecutors have declined to file assault charges in any of the cases.
The report also said not enough was being done to make black students feel comfortable on campus. Forty percent of the football team is black, but the university has only 85 black freshmen and 448 black undergraduates out of about 24,000 students.
When it comes to recruiting, it hasn't been much better on the field.
The Buffaloes won just five games last season and have struggled again this year, leading some boosters to grumble about Barnett's job.
Top recruits aren't as likely to sign up for a program that's middle of the pack in the Big 12 instead of competing for national championships -- especially one that's had as many problems as Colorado.
"What you try to do is be aggressive with it and attack it right away, see if there's any questions they have and try to address it," Wristen said. "If they did, we addressed it and moved on from there. Some kids said they weren't interested and we moved forward."
Tighter recruiting rules aren't making things any easier. The university revamped its recruiting policies in the wake of the scandal, setting a tougher standard than other schools. Official visits were cut from 48 hours to 36 hours, and recruits will not be allowed to go anywhere without a chaperone -- or be out later than 11 p.m.
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