POINTING OUT: Incoming Rutgers athletic director Julie Hermann, who takes over on June 17, visits the campus on Wednesday. (
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Until Julie Hermann was introduced as Rutgers’ new athletic director on May 15, I couldn’t have picked her out of a lineup, even if she were the only woman.
In the weeks following her appointment, so many skeletons started popping out of her closet you would think you were visiting a haunted house.
Truth be told, it would be hard to find an athletic administrator with a squeaky clean history. Athletic departments are petri dishes in which discrimination lawsuits thrive.
Let’s remember how Rutgers got into this mess in the first place:
Eric Murdock felt he was treated unfairly when Rutgers opted not to renew his contract as an assistant men’s basketball coach. So Murdock, knowing he had the video of former coach Mike Rice and assistant coach Jimmy Martelli treating their players like crash-test dummies, sued.
Murdock could have, heck, should have, gone right to the university athletic director, if not the cops, the second he witnessed such behavior. But Murdock didn’t want to trade in his winning ticket.
When the video went viral, Rice was fired, athletic director Tim Pernetti was forced to resign and a search committee that might not have spotted the Empire State Building from the corner of 34th Street and Fifth Avenue found Hermann.
We know Hermann wasn’t forthcoming in responding to questions about some errors in her past. And we know the search process was horrifically flawed and probably biased.
Hermann and Rutgers could have, should have, taken the situation by the lapels and come clean and acknowledge that mistakes were made, but neither chose that course.
It was bad PR, but some folks in that business will tell you even bad PR is good.
Think about it: Unless you are a former Scarlet Knights player or graduate, you had never before paid that much attention to Rutgers. It was a scarlet red train wreck and it was hard to turn away from.
Rutgers was a daily story. In New Jersey it was the story. And if the honorable Senator Frank Lautenberg hadn’t passed away on June 3, Hermann and Rutgers would have gotten even more press.
The story has cooled temporarily, but a week from today a battery of TV cameras, a firing squad of radio microphones and an infantry platoon of newspaper reporters will be on campus to chronicle Hermann’s first day on the job.
Like her or not, still bitter about the selection process or not, the Hermann and Rutgers marriage begins June 17. And maybe, just maybe, it will work.
Rutgers is moving into the big time, the Big Ten. It is a conference that prints its own money.
It snagged Nebraska, one of the Big 12 marquee programs, right out from under that conference’s noses.
It plucked Maryland, a charter member of the ACC, right out of that league.
It’s expanding in lacrosse, adding what was the best independent program in the country — Johns Hopkins — to form a Big Ten lacrosse conference.
Hermann, who comes from Louisville, one of the most well-run and revenue-producing programs in the nation, gets what the Rutgers-Big Ten union means. It means Rutgers has a chance to finally realize its potential.
“The Big Ten’s hope and intent is that we partner up with Maryland and Penn State to really bring all things Big Ten into the New Jersey/New York market,’’ she said.
“Our opportunity to move into the Big Ten really raises the stature of Rutgers University to a whole new level,’’ she added. “And we hope to become a national news story for sports and academics.’’
Rutgers? Yes, Rutgers.
The $1 billion merger between Rutgers and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey will make the State University of New Jersey one of the top academic research institutions in the land. The athletic programs will raise their bar or become a punch line.
Hermann, from what contacts at Louisville say, is an aggressive, no-nonsense administrator. She will go after the big donors and cultivate new ones because that’s what Rutgers needs to be a successful Big Ten program and that’s what she learned at Louisville and Tennessee, where she coached.
She must always be watched because she has shown herself not to be trustworthy. And Rutgers must be watched because it has proven itself not to be transparent. Sadly, that’s how a lot of big-time athletic programs do business, big business, successful business.
Maybe Julie Hermann can bring an edge to Rutgers it has lacked. Maybe she’s the right person at the right time for the wrong reasons and wrong process.
Maybe.