Sports

New Jersey Governor Christie: Rutgers’ Rice an ‘animal’

Rutgers made further attempts to move on from the Mike Rice fiasco yesterday by hiring an interim athletic director and appointing co-chairs of a search committee to find a replacement for former athletic director Tim Pernetti. The school announced it will be watching practice videos of all of its other teams to make sure Rice’s behavior hasn’t spread, and launched an independent investigation of Rice and how the school handled the situation.

But the visions of the video, in which Rice, the former men’s basketball coach, was physically and verbally abusing players, are still fresh on everyone’s minds.

“You’re talking about kids being miserably treated by the guy who determined whether they keep their scholarship or not,” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said in his first press conference since the video was shown on ESPN. Christie said he would have strongly suggested firing Rice on the spot had he seen the footage.

“What parent would let this animal back into their living room to try to recruit their son after this video?” Christie said.

Christie applauded former athletic director Tim Pernetti’s decision to step down and backed Rutgers President Robert Barchi remaining in his post, despite his failure to act quicker and watch the video prior to last Tuesday.

Pernetti isn’t going away without any parting gifts, but the man responsible for the school’s lucrative forthcoming move into the Big 10 reportedly is receiving $1.25 million as he departs, along with perks such as health insurance for more than two years, a $12,000 annual car allowance until next year and his school-issued iPad.

Barchi held a town hall meeting at the school’s Newark campus to assure faculty and students such behavior will no longer be tolerated, and reiterated his mistake in not viewing the video sooner. He also announced in a press release that Carl Kirschner was becoming interim athletic director for the second time in four years and appointed Kate Sweeney and Richard Edwards co-chairs of the search committee to find a replacement for Pernetti.

The former Dean of Rutgers College, Kirschner has served time as the chair of the Academic Oversight Committee for Intercollegiate Athletics, which reviews the applications of prospective athletes and also monitors their academic progress. Kirschner previously served as an interim athletic director for three months in 2009 after Bob Mulcahy was fired, prior to Pernetti taking over April 1 of that year.

The Star-Ledger reported Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany is expected to aid in the school’s search for a new AD.

Mark Hershhorn, who heads the Rutgers Board of Governors Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics, has come under fire after Board chairman Ralph Izzo revealed Hershhorn saw the video in December.

In a statement released through his attorney, Hershhorn said he suggested Pernetti fire Rice. Instead, he said, the statement led to a formal investigation.

State Senate president Stephen Sweeney called on Hershhorn to resign, though Christie feels enough heads have rolled already. Counting Rice, Pernetti, assistant coach Jim Martelli and John B. Wolf, Rutgers’ interim senior vice president and general counsel, the number of jobs lost in connection to the scandal is at four.

“The people who are responsible for this conduct have been dealt with,” Christie said. “I think we need to move on. … There tends to be a feeding frenzy with this kind of stuff. Get everybody’s head who you can possible get. I am not going to participate in that.”

— With AP

zbraziller@nypost.com