Power Play

Colorado lands the Pats'coach

What do you do if you hunger year after year for the championship of football's tough Big Eight conference, which includes perennial powerhouses like Oklahoma and Nebraska? For the Flatirons, the University of Colorado's well-heeled booster club, the answer was to call a power play: go after a pro football coach. And not just any coach, but Chuck Fairbanks, 45, who in three seasons had turned the New England Patriots from the bumblers of the N.F.L. into a play-off team.

One trouble about hiring Fairbanks was that he happened to have four years left on his Patriots contract. But that didn't stop the Flatirons--or him. To entice Fairbanks westward, they reportedly offered him a package considerably more attractive than his $150,000 salary with New England: $45,000 in base pay, frequent TV appearances and football clinics worth an estimated $100,000 annually, a $250,000 paid-up life-insurance policy and a chance to play golf and give "motivational talks" to businessmen at $3,000 a shot. Fairbanks said fine, but then the Patriots spoiled the going-away party by asking the courts to hold him to his contract.

The legal tug of war had been going on for four months when suddenly last week Fairbanks mysteriously showed up on campus. Eddie Crowder, the university's athletic director, refused to say what was going on. Colorado Governor Richard Lamm was furious. "The public is being treated like mushrooms--kept in the dark and spread with manure," he fumed. Two days later, the university's regents revealed that Colorado had acquired Fairbanks because of an extraordinary out-of-court settlement: the indefatigable Flatirons had agreed to pay $200,000 to the Patriots in return for dropping the suit.

A number of students and professors (average salary: $23,100) bitterly resented the bundles of money strewn in Fairbanks' path. The school is currently fighting a budget-saving move by the state legislature that would cut back enrollment, slice several millions from the university budget and lop 202 members from the faculty. Even if the plan is modified, Colorado will face some austerity measures--except in the stadium. Said Jeff Morgan, editor of the Colorado Daily, which covers student affairs: "The priorities are way off, but it shows where the interests lie in the state of Colorado."

Meanwhile, the brand-new coach was busy proclaiming a new era on the gridiron. "I don't know how long it will take us to do it, but we will win," said Chuck Fairbanks. He had better.

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