Throwing the Book

For Plasket, an extremely telling moment came in November 2004, after the Rocky reported that a company working for state prosecutors had discovered possible improprieties involving coach Barnett's football camp, including ten $500 checks written to "various females." The expenditures turned out to be gifts for the wives of CU assistant coaches, but Plasket says the titillating possibilities drew a large media crowd to the practice field that night. "Barnett was surrounded by TV klieg lights, and all the players were filing off the field with one notable exception: [quarterback] Joel Klatt, who's one of the quietest, most polite kids you'll ever meet -- really religious. He was sitting on his helmet, a scowl on his face, and as he's watching this go on, he says to himself, ŒI've got a sound bite for you.'"

Buffaloed contains many anecdotes like this one, but Plasket has no idea when the public at large will be able to read them. Pearson shows no signs of reconsidering its decision to drop the book, and has even asked him to return his advance. He'd rather not talk about this demand, though. "I don't want to say something to you that they're going to read and think, ŒThat son of a bitch. Fuck him,'" he admits. Likewise, he's reticent to discuss feelers he's received from different publishing houses, other than to say he's confident that some company out there won't be frightened off by Kerr's looming presence. In the meantime, he's working on a sitcom pilot, and while his cast of characters includes "a reporter and a lawyer," he says, "they have nothing to do with CU stuff. They're just stereotypes of the kind of people I had to deal with every day for my 25 years of reporting."

Still, writing jokes has been tough of late. "I've been trying to compartmentalize and keep my nose to the grindstone and keep working on what I need to work on," he concedes. "But it basically comes down to, this shit ain't funny."