Worker at CU paid for escort

The Denver Post ^ | 02/14/2004 | David Migoya and Alicia Caldwell

[Therapist]

A former University of Colorado football recruiting employee admits he hired a prostitute and called adult chat lines but says he did it only for himself, not for CU athletes or high school recruits.

Former administrative assistant Nathan Maxcey, 28, made the admission Friday after CU announced it had uncovered proof that Maxcey used a cellphone assigned to him to make an undisclosed number of the calls between June 2002 and July 2003.

One of the calls occurred just days before a handful of recruits was to arrive for a campus visit, according to head football coach Gary Barnett.

The records were turned over to Broomfield police investigating claims that an escort service in Superior may have ties to the CU athletic department.

Maxcey said he made just two calls to the escort service - both for personal visits to his apartment - and reimbursed the school for the calls to the chat lines.

"At no time were CU funds used. At no time were football players or recruits involved," Maxcey said Friday in a telephone interview. "It's my personal life, and to be honest, it's nobody's business but my own."

Barnett described Maxcey as a "by-the-book" guy who was quite good at his job.

"I mean, if you put 15 people in a room and you said which one of these would use an escort service, you wouldn't have picked out Nathan Maxcey," said Barnett, who also worked with Maxcey at Northwestern University in 1997.

CU said it uncovered the telephone records during the first stages of an internal audit, part of it to determine whether its football program used sex and alcohol to entice recruits. School officials also said the records tie only Maxcey to the escort service.

Maxcey said he spoke with investigators earlier last week. Police would not confirm the conversation.

The former owner of the escort service, Pasha Cowan, 34, told police that she provided prostitutes for Maxcey and sometimes he paid for the women to have sex with other men, some of them "awfully young," according to people familiar with the conversations.

It is unclear whether the other men Cowan referred to may have been CU football players or recruits.

Maxcey said any assertion that players or recruits were involved "is a blatant lie."

"On one occasion I paid for her time and another occasion she came to visit me," Maxcey said.

Cowan called Maxcey's former boss, director of football operations David Hansburg, this month and asked for a job, while also relating her allegations. Hansburg said Cowan told him the call was "not blackmail."

Friday's revelation was the first documented link that a CU employee had any contact with an escort service and came just days after Broomfield police announced an investigation into whether the CU athletic department was hiring prostitutes.

Maxcey left his job as director of football operations and recruiting at the University of Utah last week for unrelated reasons.

Maxcey said he did not violate any NCAA rules while at CU, a job he quit in July 2003 to accept a higher position at the University of Utah.

"We did everything by the book, and honestly," he said of his recruiting work at CU.

The firestorm of controversy surrounding the CU program erupted two weeks ago when records from a federal lawsuit revealed that Boulder County District Attorney Mary Keenan accused CU of using alcohol-fueled sex parties to land top football recruits. The allegation came in one of three lawsuits filed by women who say they were raped by athletes and the recruits they supervised at or after an off- campus party in December 2001.

The university has denied the claim, and players have said the sex was consensual. Keenan never charged anyone in relation to the alleged assault, but four players at the party were convicted of misdemeanor alcohol charges.

University officials said their resolve to investigate Keenan's claims is bolstered by the discovery of Maxcey's calls.

"As we have stated repeatedly, we remain steadfast in our commitment to investigate these allegations," CU president Betsy Hoffman and chancellor Richard Byyny said in a statement. "We will take swift, decisive and appropriate action upon the receipt of credible information."

One member of the CU Board of Regents, the governing arm of the school, said he was "embarrassed" by the revelations.

"It shocks the bounds of human consciousness that something like this could be going on," regent Jim Martin said. "The regents need to get to the bottom of this quickly."

The Board of Regents will meet Monday to choose the rest of a commission that will investigate the scandal. The board has appointed a pair of co-chairwomen to the commission, which is expected to take until late April to conclude its work.

Barnett said Maxcey's use of prostitutes was likely part of the recruiting assistant's "social life."

"He's just embarrassed about the whole thing," Barnett said. "All he said to me was that it was all his own personal business, and it was at his house."

Maxcey worked as an assistant recruiting coordinator for Hansburg. His job consisted mostly of scheduling recruitment visits to the campus, flight itineraries and hotel arrangements, Hansburg said.

He also was partly responsible for ensuring recruits made their 1 a.m. curfew during their campus visit.

Maxcey said he sat in the lobby of the Omni Interlocken Resort hotel in Broomfield and checked in the football recruits.

"Then I'd go to my room, they'd go to theirs and I'd see them again at breakfast. That's it," he said. "There was no one waiting for them or visiting them in their rooms, ever."

Until Friday, Maxcey had denied any involvement with prostitutes to his former employers.

Hansburg said he spoke with Maxcey shortly after the allegations were made public that he hired the escorts. Maxcey, he said, denied knowing Cowan or contacting the service.

Hansburg said he worked with Maxcey at Northwestern University's football program in 1997 while Barnett was head coach there.

Maxcey grew up outside of Houston and played football at Middlebury College in Vermont, a Division III school, and graduated in 1998. He has held a variety of positions at athletic departments since graduating, including at CU, Utah, Northwestern, Texas A&M and Boston College.

[Therapist]

Perhaps they should just change the team name from the Buffs to the Hookers. Bye, bye Barnett