Jim Delany, commissioner of the most powerful conference in college sports — the Big Ten — doesn’t suffer fools. He never has, not when he was a tenacious point guard at Saint Benedict’s in Newark, not when he was a dogged point guard at North Carolina.
The same can be said of the Big Ten. It has usually handled its business privately. The Big Ten is genteel to the point of being arrogant, say some critics.
So to watch Rutgers, the flagship university in the state in which he was raised, flounder in ineptitude and controversy over the hiring of a new athletic director and the flawed process that led to that hiring, can’t be easy on Delany’s eyes, or his stomach.
Make no mistake, the public embarrassment in which Rutgers is mired is not what the Big Ten had in mind last November when it invited the university to become a member.
“You would wish that the coverage would be about integration, about the successful integration. Not about personnel matters,’’ Delany said yesterday at Yankee Stadium. “I think that’s an obvious situation. But there are personnel issues of high interest.
“Who’s heading the chemistry department from a public perspective is not as important as who coaches the basketball team. That just is what it is. So I understand the public interest. I understand the media’s interest. But I understand the difficulty in managing some of that.
“But I’ve seen Hall of Fame coaches move on and I’ve seen that that has created unrest from time to time. I’ve worked with 47 university presidents and chancellors. I’ve seen a lot in my 25 years. So while this is an important issue, I’m convinced that in time it will settle down. How it settles down? That’s not my call. I think that’s a local call.’’
Rutgers has seemingly made the wrong call, at least from a public image standpoint, since May 15, the day it introduced Julie Hermann, a former executive senior associate athletic director at Louisville, as its next AD.
It was a critical hiring at a pivotal time. Membership in the Big Ten provides Rutgers athletics with financial security. It offers unparalleled exposure through the Big Ten Network and the league’s national network and cable television deals.
Whoever was going to replace Tim Pernetti, the highly successful AD who deftly navigated Rutgers into the Big Ten harbor before being forced to resign in the wake of the scandal surrounding former men’s basketball coach Mike Rice, was going to be charged with grabbing the Scarlet Knights by the back of the jersey and lifting it to Big Ten standards.
Yet, starting with Hermann’s introductory news conference, when she uttered the words, “Trust me, there is no video,’’ in response to a question about a wedding video shot of one of her former assistant coaches on the Tennessee women’s volleyball team who sued Hermann and Tennessee to the tune of $150,000 for pregnancy discrimination, Rutgers has been unable to lift itself up.
On a day when Delany came to Yankee Stadium to announce an eight-year agreement beginning in 2014 that will send a Big Ten team to play in the Pinstripe Bowl, he spent more time than he would have liked weighing in on one of his two newest members. Rutgers and Maryland will join the Big Ten in 2015.
Delany must be looking forward to his trip to College Park next week more than he’s looking forward to his Rutgers visit Thursday and Friday. Hermann was expected to play golf in a foursome with Delany on Friday, but it’s uncertain if she’ll tee off on the university golf course, where many faculty and alumni remain teed off at Hermann’s selection and the process by which she was chosen.
“It eventually will calm down,’’ Delany said. “It’s not calmed down.
“I don’t have the magic wand to make it calm, and to be honest with you, issues of personnel decisions made by selection committees in the context of executive committees — those are not conference matters.
Delany is correct. Even if he had the authority to block Hermann’s appointment which begins June 17, he would never do so. His job is to make TV and endorsement deals and be the point man on conference expansion.
Rutgers must figure this out on its own, must decide how to rehabilitate the image of Hermann, who reportedly called the former volleyball players she coached at Tennessee, ‘‘whores, alcoholics and learning disabled.’’
At least the university can breathe a sigh of relief.
There were concerns among fans, and a few coaches, that the Big Ten, uneasy if not embarrassed by reports the Rutgers search committee was not thorough and might not have been impartial, would rescind its invitation.
“Rutgers is coming in,’’ Delany said. “You should rest assured that Rutgers will be a member of the Big Ten, on time, in place and will make fabulous contributions, not withstanding any personnel issues last month, this month or next month.’’
If Rutgers still has personnel issues next month, there will be no doubt about who are the fools.