The the National Collegiate Athletic Association last week set up a task force to investigate recruiting practices for college football and basketball programmes. “This is a nationwide problem,” Elizabeth Hoffman, the CU president, maintains.And as long as giant television contracts continue to pour vast sums into college sports, and performers are not allowed to be paid a going rate, the problem will not go away.. Back then, he was known as le petit pr?e, the little priest, a man whose modest stature belied a lion-hearted courage in denouncing social and political injustices. Carl Wieman, physics professor at Colorado and a 2001 Nobel prize winner, described the university as “an academic appendage to a football programme”.The Buffaloes and other top college teams play in Wembley-sized stadiums before 70,000-plus crowds. The only difference from the professional major leagues, to which the best players graduate, is that college athletes are supposedly amateur. Legally, they are entitled to no more than a scholarship covering their academic tuition; but, as events in Colorado prove, other perks are on offer. They range from free limos to sex and, allegedly, under-the-counter payments.Mr Barnett appears to have been an extreme case, and the University of Colorado has long been known as a “party campus”, where drugs, booze and sex are consumed in especially generous quantities.

Until he was suspended, Mr Barnett made $1.6m a year, making him the highest-paid public employee in Colorado. This scandal is rooted in the colossal sums the television networks pay to show college sports. Last year, CBS paid a minimum of $6bn (£3.2bn) for the 10-year rights to show the college basketball championships. Top-flight college football commands similar sums.In the case of football, the revenue mostly goes straight to the college teams. A successful football team can be a university’s biggest single money-spinner For those involved, the financial rewards are to match.

But his departure fuelled revelations about strippers, escort services, sex parties and all-but-tolerated rape – all part of the package laid on to recruit promising high-school players to enrol at CU.But the underlying problem is not the oversized libido of undergraduate athletes. Katie was not only a girl, she was terrible.” Outrage was instant, and Mr Barnett was promptly placed on “administrative leave”. More broadly, the scandal is being held up as a case study in all that is wrong in the rotten world of college sports.The affair, which had been simmering in Boulder for months, hit the national headlines this week when Katie Hnida, a former female place-kicker on the Buffaloes, claimed she had been sexually harassed and raped by her team mates.Mr Barnett dismissed the accusation, saying, “Katie was awful You know what guys do, they respect your ability … A mushrooming sex-and-football scandal at the University of Colorado (CU) widened further yesterday, exposing yet more of the tawdry underside of the huge financial machine that is US college sports.
Police in Boulder, the site of the main CU campus, are investigating a sixth allegation of rape involving a player with the Buffaloes, the CU American football team.

The affair has already led to the suspension of Gary Barnett, the team’s coach. The bulk of that budget is being spent purchasing hi-tech tracking and surveillance equipment from the US-led security consortium SAIC.. “If there is a specific offer on the table then we will consider it as long as it will reinforce our operational readiness and lead to a safe Olympiad,” he said.Under the terms of the Greek constitution, the government would have to seek the approval of parliament before allowing foreign troops to bear arms on Greek soil.Dora Bakoyanni, the mayor of Athens, said: “What is extremely important is that we don’t feel alone, this is no longer a Greek security operation but an international one.” Ms Bakoyanni, whose husband, Pavlos, was murdered in 1989 by the domestic guerrilla group November 17, said that the main threat to the Olympics was international terrorists.Athens is spending £500m on security, more than three times the amount the Australians budgeted for the 2000 Games in Sydney. Nato has already offered the use of its small fleet of Awacs at other international events, including summits.