SCREAM TEAM:Fired Rutgers coach Mike Rice’s demeanor on the sidelines didn’t change much since his days coaching Robert Morris (that’s earlier this season on the , 2009 with RMU on the above).
SCREAM TEAM: Fired Rutgers coach Mike Rice’s demeanor on the sidelines didn’t change much since his days coaching Robert Morris (that’s earlier this season on the left, 2009 with RMU on the right). (AP (left); Jeff Zelevansky (right))
The only upside to this entire Rutgers thing is that we can all be grateful the university isn’t a thermonuclear plant.
During Rutgers’ news media session Friday, a room stuffed with eager examiners became so stuck on what the Rutgers administration and legal team knew and didn’t know — and when — they suffered, as one, from issue-constipation.
Everyone was so caught up in bellyache that they ignored the cause. No one asked: How the hell could RU have hired Mike Rice in the first place?!
Forget due diligence, was there no minimal diligence done beyond the fact that Rice’s Robert Morris teams won 73 games in three years?
And forgive this self indulgence, but if it was obvious to me — so painfully obvious from watching Rice and Robert Morris on TV that I wrote it on March 22, 2010 — that this guy becomes unhinged, a raving public lunatic starting from the tipoff, how did it escape Rutgers, which hired him a few weeks later?
If Rutgers hired chemistry lab assistants or lunch ladies in such a blind, fingers-crossed manner — and at a tiny fraction of Rice’s salary and perks — students would be distinguishable for their festering and glowing green skin.
No one asked how Rice wound up at Rutgers, only how he was allowed to become unwound there. He arrived unwound!
That now-out athletic director Tim Pernetti, months before president Robert Barchi (such a busy man) finally got a chance to view Rice’s practice-session videos, dismissed concern about Rice’s excessive sideline misconduct lends more evidence to why the term, “state institution,” is open to interpretation.
For crying out loud, in 2011, a lawyer/fan who wrote with a warning about Rice’s appalling behavior, was, in exchange emailed by Pernetti that Rice’s “enthusiasm and temperament is exactly what I was looking to hire, and I won’t ask him to change.”
But Pernetti had some public comportment issues of his own.
At a rally before a football game, Pernetti, a former Rutgers tight end and the Scarlet Knights’ radio analyst at the time, took the stage and blew his nose into a newspaper that had published an investigation detailing Rutgers’ excessive spending — and increasing debt — on behalf of big-time football and basketball.
As he theatrically threw the paper to the ground, the yahoos cheered, loved him for it. He soon-after was named the AD. His first big call was to hire Mike Rice.
Still cashing in on people’s worst impulses
Alec Baldwin is tossed from a commercial flight for failure to comply with simple FAA restrictions — in the post-9/11 era, no less — and he cashes in doing hah-hah, wise-guy commercials about it.
ESPN’s Bobby Knight won’t discuss the Mike Rice scandal (Cuts too close?), but he’s happy to cash in on his raving lunatic behavior in a wise-guy restaurant commercial.
And every kid, er, student-athlete, who pounded his chest or otherwise excessively demonstrated his self-regard during this NCAA Tournament was rewarded by CBS with a replay — and in slow motion.
How does that serve us? Who cares?
* When did TV people begin to consider us as too stupid to miss the obvious?
In other words, now that CBS has successfully encouraged Clark Kellogg to hoot and holler about something — anything — as it cuts to commercials, perhaps it could successfully encourage him to stop.
This bit is so transparently forced. With Wichita State up seven over Louisville in the second half Saturday, there was a pretty good chance viewers would stick — even if Kellogg, rather than hollering at us, said nothing.
And geez, what Jim Nantz on Saturday called “the under 12 [minutes left] break” is also known as “a TV timeout.”
CBS, between games, brought in ex-con, woman-beater and braggart Floyd Mayweather to sell us his Showtime/CBS pay-per-view, because we’re all supposed to serve as marks and suckers.
* So how is it Mike Francesa, the world’s greatest sports (just for starters) expert, all week spoke as if he knew from the start that Louisville is unbeatable, but didn’t select the Cardinals to make the Final Four? In fact, Francesa went 0-for-the-Final Four — again.
Nevertheless, on Friday, when he had CBS Sports Network’s college hoops guy, Jon Rothstein, on the air, his “guest” may as well have been an inflatable car companion. Naturally. On previous occasions — when Francesa has allowed Rothstein to speak — he has spoken as if he knows what he’s talking about, which likely aggravates Francesa.
Start to end, Francesa didn’t allow Rothstein a word, rudely stepping all over him. If WFAN left that interview on its website, it makes for perverse Francesa-typical comedy. (Warning: Keep hot liquids out of reach.)
Yet, we recognize Francesa’s gift for being immediately and colossally wrong. Friday, he spoke of how the Marlins couldn’t score against the Nationals, getting one run in three games, and adding Washington shut teams completely down. That night, wham, Nats lose, 15-0!
Age-old question ignored
The bio of Jose Fernandez, the 6-foot-4 and apparently fully grown Cuban defector who started and pitched impressively for the Marlins against the Mets yesterday, is already filled with great personal intrigue. But how in the name of Danny Almonte does everyone, from SNY’s Gary Cohen to Gary Apple, know he’s only 20?
* As a sports station, WFAN’s morning-after updates continue to omit details sports fans appreciate. At 8 a.m. Saturday, Peter Schwartz reported, “The Rays blanked the Indians, 4-0.” Nothing more. It’s not worth telling us that it was a two-hitter thrown by Matt Moore and three relievers? Guess not.
* The NCAA’s latest academic reforms were demonstrated by a basketball all-star game, played yesterday in Atlanta, on and for CBS. They hadn’t missed enough school?
* Again, SNY seems too eager to use roving Mets game reporter Kevin Burkhardt to the detriment of all. Burkhardt is too good to be allowed to be known as an intruder, especially during telecasts of close games that need no enhancements or audience-holders.
* C.J. Tompkins of Denver has a good question: How could the media have reported, all week, that “this is Michigan’s first Final Four appearance in 20 years” without adding the Wolverines’ 1993 accomplishments were voided — the appearance “vacated ”— for cheating?
* Friday’s Rutgers news conference was shown live and in full on SNY, the university’s contracted local. No ducking, no spinning. Good day, for all the wrong reasons — those that count most — for SNY.