Washington is accused of assaulting a former tutor over the summer. Washington is accused of entering her closed bedroom and assaulting the woman while she slept. He faces one count of deviate sexual assault.

You have to wonder if Nebraska’s Bo Pelini is catching the same kind of grief. Pelini told reporters after Saturday’s practice that he has a plan for the position, but he’s still not ready to announce who is starter will be next Saturday when the Huskers open the season against Western Kentucky.

The competition in NU’s camp has been spirited, with incumbent starter Zac Lee getting strong challenges from redshirt freshman Taylor Martinez and sophomore Cody Green.

When someone asked Pelini whether all three could play in the opener, Pelini’s response wasn’t exactly friendly: “We could play 10 guys. I don’t have a crystal ball.”

Darian Hagan, son of the former Colorado standout quarterback and current running backs coach, was listed at No. 1 on the depth chart at cornerback for Cal when the Bears released their depth chart on Thursday.

The younger Hagan is listed at 6-0, 178. He started four games last year and played in 10. It should definitely make for some interesting moments when his dad and the Buffaloes visit Cal on Sept. 11.

Hagan is coming off a difficult 2009 season, when he battled academic issues and also lost his starting job.

But he had good reason for his distractions. Hagan disclosed earlier in camp this summer that his 1-year-old daughter, Kaiyana, battled cancer all through last season. Here is the story from the Oakland Tribune.

Georgia RB Washaun Ealey, the team’s leading rusher a year ago, was arrested early Friday and charged with hit and run and driving on a suspended license. UGA police chief Jimmy Williamson said Ealey hit a parked truck in the school parking deck at 3:19 a.m., then left the scene.

The possible charges in Mizzou are much more serious.

Tigers RB Derrick Washington was accused of sexual assault by a former tutor in June, and could still face criminal charges in the case. Speculation is that the case is the the reason behind Washington’s current indefinite suspension.

Washington has been MU’s leading rusher the last two years.

MU school policy says an athlete charged with a felony cannot return to the field until the case is resolved.

This from the Associated Press:

An Oregon State University offensive lineman has been dismissed from the team after police say they found him naked and intoxicated in a stranger’s home and had to use stun guns to take him into custody.

Corvallis police say they received the call about a naked intruder early Sunday.

“Responding officers ordered 19-year-old Tyler Patrick Thomas of Kalispell, Mont., to get on the ground, Lt. Tim Brewer said.

Thomas refused and instead dropped into a three-point stance like a football player and lunged at the officers, Brewer said. At that point, he said, two officers fired their stun guns.

Brewer said Thomas “absolutely was intoxicated” at the time.

Thomas was arrested on suspicion of criminal trespass, criminal mischief and resisting arrest. He was booked into the Benton County jail and later released.

Oregon State head coach Mike Riley dismissed Thomas from the team Monday, OSU athletics spokesman Steve Fenk said.

Here is Trotter’s column.

Talked last week with consensus All-American lineman Joe Garten, who now lives in California. After spending a few years playing on Sundays, Joe retired and began what was a very successful custom cabinet company. But after the birth of his daughter, he decided to sell the business in order to spend more time with his family. Now, he’s working in sales — and he told me he’s got the bug to get back into football. After attending the high school practice of his nephew recently, he said he wants to begin coaching.

He’s currently working on a way to get into the coaching game, and said he’s willing to start just about anywhere. But, he does have a specific goal in mind: “I want to someday return to the University of Colorado and coach the offensive line.”

Anyone who saw Garten play knows this much: even if he’s getting a late start, it wouldn’t be a good idea to bet against him.

Former University of Colorado head football coach Gary Barnett, Colorado State-Pueblo coach John Wristen’s mentor in the profession, attended practice Monday and Tuesday. He addressed the team Tuesday night and his talk focused on this year’s theme of “Pump It.”

They’re not happy, and with good reason. The Buffs have been bad.

But for those of us who have been around a while — and those of us who don’t erase history as if it never existed –  it’s also a little amusing.

Everyone associated with CU football remembers the McCartney era, and with good reason. The man was simply the best football coach in CU history, taking the Buffs to national prominence and winning Colorado’s first — and to date only — national title in the sport.

But what many Buff fans don’t remember  (or choose to conveniently forget) is that McCartney was not popular for most of his first five years.

Mac had three horrible seasons to start his tenure, putting up records of 2-8-1, 4-7 and 1-10. He  finally broke through with a winning record in his fourth season (1985), when CU went 7-5, losing to Washington in the Freedom Bowl.

That year is generally considered to be Mac’s breakthrough year — but what most folks don’t remember is that he proceeded to go 0-4 to start the following season, including a season-opening loss to CSU. Leon Fuller’s Rams thumped the Buffs that day, 23-7.

Colorado then lost to Oregon, Ohio State and Arizona — all in squeakers — and the good will that Mac had built with his fourth year was quickly disappearing. The drumbeats that were resounding in 1984 were starting again.

Fact is, if you’d taken a poll of Buff fans after that fourth game, odds are the majority would have said McCartney wasn’t going to make it at CU. I remember because I was helping cover the team then. I heard the phone calls, and knew the grief that then-Buff A.D. Bill Marolt was getting.

This was the Marolt, by the way, who caught plenty of flak for giving McCartney a contract extension in the midst of the 1-10 season two years prior. Not a popular decision at the time, and two years later, after an 0-4 start, folks were questioning the choice quite vocally again.

But CU fans who choose only to remember what McCartney did after six long years of building a program won’t admit what those first years were like.

Three weeks after the Buffs’ fourth loss in 1986, Mac saved the season by beating Nebraska, ending a 19-year losing streak to the Huskers. That win produced one of my favorite moments in CU history:  Buff linebacker Barry Remington, standing on the field with a grin that wouldn’t quit and pointing to the scoreboard. Remington had turned down offers from some of the nation’s great programs to attend Colorado, and in his senior season, he had a major role in what was truly a crossroads moment for the program.

That win over Nebraska was huge because it ultimately gave the Buffs a 6-5 record — just enough to get into a bowl game (where they lost to Baylor in the Bluebonnet Bowl).

That 1986 season also proved to be a turnaround in the recruiting arena for McCartney. His 1987 recruiting class may go down as one of the best ever — anywhere.  It included Eric Bieniemy, Jon Boman, Russ Heasley, George Hemingway, Jay Leewenburg, Kanavis McGhee, Mike Pritchard, Joel Steed and Alfred Williams. Every one of those players played significant roles four seasons later in CU’s march to a national title.

Nobody is going to suggest that Hawkins is going to match what McCartney pulled off. Fact is, it would take another miracle worker to get the Buffs back to that point. The landscape of college football is simply not the same.

But fans who claim Colorado football has never been this bad?

They don’t remember the bad ol’ days.

Thursday, it was the revelation that cornerback T.J. Bryant had surgery on his left cheekbone after suffering an injury in a fight with teammate Stanley Havili.

Seems Havili, a senior, didn’t appreciate Bryant’s effort in a conditioning workout last week. Words flew, and evidently, so did fists.

USC coach Lane Kiffin said he originally didn’t think the injury was serious, but after a doctor’s exam, it was decided that Bryant needed surgery.

Already, it’s been a long season for the Trojans — and it hasn’t even started.