Punter accused of stabbing 'always been different'

Suzanne's son, Mitch, a backup punter at the University of Northern Colorado, is accused of stabbing his teammate, first-string punter Rafael Mendoza, in the back of the leg in what court documents call a jealous attempt to take away Mendoza's starting job.

It's an unseemly case that stirs up memories of the mauling of Nancy Kerrigan by Tonya Harding's henchmen in the run-up to the 1994 Olympics. And it exposes other distressing elements found all too frequently in sports these days -- overbearing parents, unrealistic expectations and the desperation that can set in when those expectations aren't met.

Very little of the picture painted by Cozad's former teammates, coaches, the police arrest affidavit or anything else that surrounded his punting career sounded like much fun.

Cozad, who graduated from Wheatland in 2004, was "very passionate about kicking and punting" in high school, said another of his former teammates, running back Matt Carberry.

"He's always been different," Carberry said. "Not stabbing-people different, but different."

But Cozad's father, Richard, said "what he's been accused of is absolutely not part of his personality."

"This is a good kid that has good grades and works hard," Richard Cozad told the Rocky Mountain News in an interview from New Mexico.

But the hard work, which included lots of kicking clinics in the offseason, didn't seem to translate into success on the football field for Cozad. Carberry and others say Cozad once refused to let teammates use his kicking tee after he and the coach got into an argument and the coach benched Cozad in the middle of a game.

Three years after the tee incident and the video sessions, Cozad was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of second-degree assault in the attack on Mendoza, who will miss at least two weeks.

Cozad has been suspended from the university and evicted from his dorm room. Officials in Weld County, Colo., where he was arrested, have until next Friday to formally charge Cozad.

Last offseason, Northern Colorado hired Scott Downing as its football coach. Shortly after he arrived, Downing was approached by Cozad, who was looking to leave the University Wyoming and may have thought the move to a smaller school with only one punter on the roster might be his big chance.

"We promised him a uniform, just like anybody else," Downing said. "We said 'Come down, do your stuff and see if you win the job.' Everybody on the team is under the same type of evaluation system. The best guy is going to play."

The best guy turned out to be Mendoza, and it wasn't all that close, to hear Downing tell it.

"You can't just come in and slop around and be the guy," he said. "You've got to be better than the guy in the position ahead of you. In that case, obviously, Rafael's been our punter."

Still, the coach had no inkling, when Cozad came to the team, that he would be dealing with this kind of problem.

The stabbing put Northern Colorado on the front page of both newspapers in Denver, on the national news, on ESPN's SportsCenter. On one show this week, TV host Keith Olbermann named Cozad his "Worst Person In The World."

But Cozad's arrest shocked Amy Heatherly, who went to high school with Cozad, and also lived in the same dorm with him at UNC.

"He's really relaxed and calm. He's really nice and a fun guy," Heatherly said. "He was excited about football this season."

Naturally, a fledgling Division I program craves attention -- anything to get the word out. Nobody wanted it to come this way, though.

"It really is bizarre," said Reed Doughty, a rookie safety for the Washington Redskins and one of the few UNC football players to make it to the NFL. "Coach Downing is great coach and a great character guy. It's a smaller school with a good academic reputation. It's frustrating that something like that can tarnish your name."

The 3 1/2-page arrest affidavit from police in Evans, Colo., a small town adjacent to Greeley and about 50 miles north of Denver where the attack took place, details the stabbing plot.

In the affidavit, another kicker, Michael York, told police he provided Mendoza's address to Cozad last week, thinking he was interested in a rental apartment, and Mendoza "reported observing a male matching the description of the stabbing suspect standing in his apartment parking lot watching him" on Sept. 7.

Four nights later, Mendoza was attacked. According to the affidavit, he said he was punched in the back of the head and when he tried to fight back, the assailant, dressed all in black, stabbed him in the back of his right leg, causing an inch-wide and three-to-five inch deep puncture wound that bled severely.

In the affidavit, a teammate and fellow kicker, David Dyches, told investigators "Cozad has an extreme hatred, competition and jealousy for victim Rafael Mendoza and his number one punting position on the UNC football team."

Shulman, the former punter who was drafted by the Green Bay Packers, says this case hit especially close to home for him.

"I thought it was really funny and ironic that it happened to be a punter," he said. "Here I am, a former punter. I transferred from Tennessee because I wasn't going play at UT. I guess I could've just stabbed my opponent, but I transferred."

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AP National Writer Eddie Pells reported from Wheatland, Wyo., AP Sports Writer Pat Graham reported from Greeley, Colo., and AP Sports Writer Joseph White contributed from Washington.<