By Mark Alesia
SportsLine Senior Writer

EVANSTON, Ill. -- Eight victories and 16 losses ago, the restaurant took Gary Barnett's name. People drank and watched sports in the bar. Diners ate pork chops and bow tie pasta.

Grilled chameleon, for some reason, wasn't on the menu.

Now the sign outside doesn't even carry a name. It's solid purple. Stickers on two of the windows merely say the word "Bar." If you look closely, you can see the rest of the name -- "nett's" -- has been cut and peeled off.

Once in culinary company with Chicago icons Michael Jordan and Harry Caray, who have thriving restaurants downtown, Gary Barnett's name isn't worth a thing here since he bolted to Colorado. The restaurant, inside a hotel, had to adjust. So did Northwestern's football program.

The restaurant will manage. Northwestern's football fairy tale is over.

If two losing seasons, a gambling scandal and Barnett's duplicity about his future didn't already seal that fate, Wednesday's national letter of intent signing day did the job.

For the Wildcats, it's back to oblivion.

A few miles away from the restaurant earlier in the evening, new coach Randy Walker, hired from Miami of Ohio, stood before the media and a booster group known as the "Northwestern Gridiron Network." Talking about his recruiting class, Walker was relentlessly upbeat.

It didn't seem to faze him that the best thing analyst Tom Lemming could say about the new group was, "It won't be a disaster."

Four players who had given Northwestern oral commitments ended up elsewhere, including the two best in the class -- quarterback John Navarre, who went to Michigan, and defensive lineman Darrell Campbell, who went to Notre Dame. Two other players followed Barnett to Colorado.

"I want to thank those 19 kids who stayed committed and bought into Northwestern and what it stands for," said Walker, who had little time to sell himself to recruits. "It was a leap of faith on their part. Let's be honest."

Athletic director Rick Taylor, who had to put up with his former coach's annual job flirtations, wouldn't discuss the ethical implications of Barnett taking players who had committed to his old school.

"They're at Colorado," Taylor snapped. "They're not here. I have nothing to say about them. You're trying to make something out of something that isn't there. It doesn't bother me in the least. We got the 19 we love."

By now, Barnett's hypocrisy is as well known as his magical Rose Bowl season. In Dec. 1997, after a flirtation with Texas, he said, "I'm here, and I will be here for the next 10 years of my contract, and if Northwestern extends that contract, I will accept it."

A FEW DAYS before taking the Colorado job, he sent his Northwestern players an e-mail saying he was going to take them back to Pasadena.

Barnett's Clinton-like defense: He believed it when he said it.

"Gary Barnett's interesting because of the high degree of self-deception," said Indiana University professor Murray Sperber, author of three books about college sports and a blunt critic of the system. "He was a kind of fantasist and megalomaniac. He really thought he was going to keep winning there. But it didn't take a genius to see there weren't going to be any more Rose Bowls for Gary Barnett.

"They lost before, and I assume they're going back to that. It's back to contentment with being at the bottom. Barnett did what every coach has done. He got out one step ahead of the sheriff."

It was great while it lasted, the best college sports story in Chicago in at least 30 years. The win at Notre Dame in the opener of the Rose Bowl season ranked 13th in the Chicago Tribune's 150 most memorable moments in the history of Chicago sports.

A Citrus Bowl berth followed a year later, and then the restaurant. But wouldn't you know it? Those New Year's Day bowls don't come as easily with Ohio State on the schedule. The Wildcats were 0-8 in the Big Ten last season.

Gary Barnett won't be scheduling Chicago for a vacation anytime soon. (Allsport)

Now here comes Walker, seemingly good-humored and likeable. He was apparently ready to jump as soon as Northwestern said to jump. News of Barnett leaving broke late one night. Walker's news conference in Evanston was the next afternoon. He described himself as "not a 1-800 guy" always on the phone scouting for a new job. To whom might that remark have been referring?

Walker was asked if he expected his new recruits to ever play Pasadena.

"I don't get really carried away," Walker said. "I'm not going to make any of those statements like, 'We're taking the purple to Pasadena.' I want guys who are going to be the best football team they can be. And play hard. Give us 60 minutes of honest effort every game. And I'll take my chances with that."

Don't expect to see Walker's Restaurant anytime soon.