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Not that they are alone in the impossible, take-our-word-for-it underworld of student-athletics, but Rutgers and its athletic director Tim Pernetti both seem to be, well, how do you nicely put it, oh yeah: Full of it.
This season’s three-game suspension of just-fired basketball coach Mike Rice, for what Pernetti described as a “first-time offense,” is dubious, given that it seemed to be his latest and worst offense — the kind Rutgers was disinclined to fix, and Pernetti eager to defend.
In a March, 2011 email to Pernetti, a fan provided details on the disturbing sideline behavior he witnessed from Rice all season.
“He needs to get his temper in order for the Scarlet Knights to succeed,” he wrote.
Good enough to reply, Pernetti nonetheless was defiant: “Mike’s enthusiasm and temperament is exactly what I was looking to hire, and I won’t ask him to change.”
And if Pernetti didn’t believe the emailer, he didn’t believe his eyes, either. Before Pernetti brought Rice to N.J.’s preeminent state university for a base of $600,000, plus big perks, Rice was known throughout Western Pennsylvania and the Northeast Conference for behaving like a raving lunatic.
But his Robert Morris of Pittsburgh teams won 73 games in three years, and lost by just three to Villanova in the 2010 NCAAs. That made him one of those ready-fire-aim hot commodities — even if he acted like a steer-clear nut loaf.
But now that the preposterous has supplanted the sensible, Rice’s career course as an ex-coach is set: He will be Bobby Knighted — hired by ESPN at the same moment ESPN loses the tapes of Rice’s twisted behavior, those ESPN previously had shown over and over.
That’s the problem with ESPN’s “Outside the Lines”: Every time it does a good job revealing something nasty — as it did Wednesday — ESPN’s eager to do something at least as nasty.
Don’t forget why Jim Valvano, now an ESPN deity, in 1990 was available to ESPN: He was head scoundrel in a malodorous program — until N.C. State no longer could suffer the stench. ESPN has hired such coaches and players since.
Wednesday’s OTL was seasoned with collisions of circumstance and tangled webs.
Jeremy Schaap anchored. He had gotten into it pretty hot with Knight in 2000, when Indiana could no longer indulge Knight’s “hands-on” approach.
The only one to mention Knight was ESPN analyst Seth Greenberg, who classified him an “aggressive coach.” While coaching Virginia Tech, Greenberg twice was hired as an NCAA Tournament analyst — by Pernetti — when Pernetti was with CBS’s College Sports Network.
Small, gone-nuts world, ain’t it?
And to think that Rutgers dumped a bunch of sports — producers of All-Americans and scholar-athletes — to throw more money at football and basketball. They still call it “student-athletics” anyway.
Opening Day had its hiccups
OPENING Day: Q: How did the Mets have the gall to declare a sellout? A: The Bernie Madoff code still applies: You’re not allowed to ask any questions.
On SNY, Kevin Burkhardt interviewed Emmy Rossum, who sang the national anthem. After telling him, “You want to do your country proud,” the co-star of Showtime’s “Shameless,” went low with, “I’ve got a good view of the players’ butts from here.”
John Sterling, listing Boston’s lineup, said ninth-batter Jose Iglesias “Can’t hit at all.” Iglesias didn’t smash it, but went 3-for-5. Sterling’s postgame “Power Report” ID’d Francisco Cervelli’s two-run single as, well, “it.”
Joe Girardi, on YES’ postgame, said the late innings evacuation of Yankee Stadium might have had something to do with Monday afternoon being “a school night.” Kids enrolled in night school?
On YES, Michael Kay made another nonsensical, “factual” statement when he said that Robinson Cano’s WBC-champion Dominican team — which showboated at every opportunity — “played the game the right way!” So Kay, who performs 180s, now considers posing, preening and chest-pounding “the right way” to play baseball.
Mike Kiely of Throgs Neck, dared me to write this: Beer will not be served at Yankee Stadium the rest of the season because the Yanks lost the opener.
* Many women’s college hoops fans were not upset that defending champ Baylor was colossally upset by sixth-seeded Louisville. Baylor’s behavior had become “SportsCenter”-ugly, especially when 6-foot-8 Brittney Griner would scowl and strut after blocking shots taken by 5-foot-11 opponents.
* Wednesday, between bashing Rutgers’ Mike Rice for his uncivil conduct, Craig Carton and “Weekday” Boomer Esiason told their audience to stay tuned for “a hot broad” and trashed men as “girls.”
* The Yankees will reschedule Old-Timers’ Day as a regular season game. … Mets lose, 2-1, yesterday, a cold one, in 3:17! Slow it down, boys!
* With Howie Rose often shifting to the Mets, Jiggs McDonald, 74 and still steady and sturdy, is back calling Islanders’ telecasts.
* Jimmy Dolan, fortunate son to a fortune, fired a Garden security guard (later reinstated) because she didn’t recognize him. Big shot. To think when three-star Gen. Omar Bradley was asked by an MP to show ID near the Battle of the Bulge, Bradley quietly complied.
Benigno crack costs him 11 MSG viewers
Seems Joe “The Bro” Benigno last week was too slick for his and Evan Roberts’ good. His and Roberts’ WFAN show apparently was to be simulcasted on MSG Thursday and Friday, subbing for Craig Carton and Boomer Esiason.
But during Thursday’s show, Benigno complained about having to wear make-up for “the 11 people watching MSG right now.”
According to BobsBlitz.com — later seconded by my source — MSG was displeased to have been the target of such a swipe from a small-potatoes guy to whom it was cutting a break. So Benigno and Roberts on Friday, with or without make-up, did not appear before those 11 viewers. MSG told them to take a hike.
* The Emperor’s New Contract: A man we know in the radio-know thinks Mike Francesa’s new deal was enriched with extra dough as a means of softening his position against moving to WFAN-FM, should CBS place its national sports network, here, on huge-reach 660-AM.
It is known Francesa, with more clout than credibility, is resistant to moving to FM.
Regardless, Francesa this week selflessly allowed us to share his fortune by proving that his most endearing and enduring side will be sustained! Two samplings:
* He all-knowingly dismissed ESPN’s show with the Mike Rice video as no big deal — before the explosive show aired!
* The most relentlessly, transparently inaccurate person I’ve known in 31 years covering TV and radio, Francesa screamed for the Mets to “Stop lying!” in calling Monday’s opener a sellout.