but was not charged until the season was over. Jerramy Stevens, the Huskies star tight end, was under investigation of raping a UW freshman on sorority row. When Stevens later crashed his truck into a retirement home, Neuheisel suspended him for half a game. In February 2003, Neuheisel had secretly interviewed for the San Francisco 49ers coaching job without telling anyone at UW about it. The 49ers' general manager at the time, Terry Donahue, had been Neuheisel's head coach as a player and assistant coach at UCLA. A day after his interview, he issued a statement through UW's athletic department saying he wasn't interested in the job. However, a few days later, a Seattle newspaper reporter wrote that he'd eavesdropped on a private conversation of Neuheisel discussing the 49ers job on his cell phone while the two were waiting for a flight at San Francisco International Airport. When Hedges found out about it, she and school president Lee Huntsman warned him that further lies would not be tolerated. NCAA infractions at Washington Before Neuheisel coached his first game for the Huskies, he had already violated NCAA recruiting rules by visiting high school players before the NCAA approved date to do so. In the summer of 2003, Neuheisel came under fire for taking part in a neighborhood pool for the 2003 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament and lies he told about his actions. He first denied the accusation to investigators before admitting to it after consultation with school officials. The gambling case became a local sensation when it was revealed that he had received an internal UW memo which authorized gambling in off-campus tournament basketball pools. UW athletic director Barbara Hedges learned that the NCAA was considering giving Neuheisel a two-year show-cause order, which would have effectively blacklisted him from the coaching ranks for two years. She then gave Neuheisel an ultimatum—resign or be fired for cause. He refused, and was fired on June 11. That fall, the NCAA infractions committee found Neuheisel violated NCAA rules against gambling but didn't sanction him, citing the memo by Washington's then compliance officer, Dana Richardson, that mistakenly identified this type of action as a permissible exception to NCAA gambling sanctions. It also became apparent that the NCAA violated its own rules when questioning Neuheisel about the gambling. UW had its probation extended for failing to monitor its football program. Neuheisel sued both the