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Rutgers University stands before the college sports world today naked and humiliated, its head basketball coach fired after a stunningly brutal video was aired showing Mike Rice physically and verbally abusing players.
How bad was Rice’s behavior — and the behavior of AD Tim Pernetti, who let it slide by fining his first big hire $50,000 and suspending him three games, instead of firing him outright?
The outcry has become the only time Rutgers basketball was stealing headlines since 1976, when it went to the Final Four.
For more than 35 years, Rutgers has been the wasteland of college basketball. The university hired one nondescript or ill-fitting coach after another.
The only hire never made was the only one that made sense — a New Jersey native with college head coaching experience, a coach whose name was universally known and respected throughout the state.
It’s shocking it never happened because the best thing Rutgers has going for it is this: It is the State University of New Jersey.
New Jersey, at its core, is a state populated by loyal, passionate, proud people, people who trust their own, people who know a Jersey guy speaks their language, people who know there are values dating back to the state’s roots in farming and factories.
When Rutgers hired Greg Schiano, they got a guy who didn’t just believe in the Garden State, he was the Garden State. Schiano transformed Rutgers from the answer to a trivia question — “What school won the first college football game played?” — to a respectable program.
Pernetti may be the next Rutgers employee fired, but whomever sits in the AD chair can begin restoring the school’s image with one hire and only one hire — Danny Hurley.
Uttering the name Hurley in New Jersey is like uttering the name Hershey in Pennsylvania.
Bob Hurley Sr., the legendary coach at St. Anthony in Jersey City, was the third high school coach ever inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame. His son Bobby starred at Duke and just began his college head coaching career at the University of Buffalo after serving as Danny’s assistant at Wagner and Rhode Island.
Danny played at Seton Hall before going into coaching and he clearly was paying attention when his father spoke. He turned St. Benedict’s into a prep power, turned around Wagner in one season and he just finished laying the foundation at Rhode Island.
But wins and losses — important for certain in the million-dollar world of college basketball — shouldn’t be the primary focus of this hire. Character should be. Commitment should be. Community should be.
Bob Hurley Sr. was a probation officer in addition to being a basketball coach. His greatest gift to Jersey City and New Jersey wasn’t the 26 state titles and the more than 1,000 wins.
It was taking in inner-city kids and turning out young men New Jersey could be proud of. Danny Hurley was one of those kids. He’s exactly what Rutgers needs.
Now more than ever, with the nation sure the inmates are running the asylum at Rutgers, Danny Hurley is exactly what the State University of New Jersey needs.
lenn.robbins@nypost.com