The president of Rutgers University has asked Robert E. Mulcahy to step down as the university’s athletics director at the end of this month, The Star-Ledger reported.

Mr. Mulcahy’s departure will be the latest wave in a stormy year for the university. In recent months Rutgers has faced intense scrutiny for deals the athletics department struck with a sports-marketing firm and with its head football coach, Greg Schiano, in a quest for elite status in college sports, particularly football.

Just three weeks ago, a committee of business leaders and members of Rutgers’s governing board issued a report faulting the university’s president, Richard L. McCormick, and its Board of Governors for inadequate supervision of the athletics department. And over the summer, The Star-Ledger published a series of articles exposing deals, contracts, and other spending practices the department carried out with limited input from top university officials.

On Wednesday, Mr. McCormick at first declined to say whether Mr. Mulcahy, who has been Rutgers’s athletics director since 1998, had resigned or had been forced out. He later told the school’s board of governors and trustees in an e-mail message that he had asked Mr. Mulcahy to step down, The Star-Ledger reported.

Mr. Mulcahy confirmed that the decision to leave was not his own. “I was asked to resign,” he said in a brief written statement. “I have not offered my resignation.”

Mr. Mulcahy will leave Rutgers after the university’s football team plays North Carolina State University in the Papajohns.com Bowl, on December 29 in Birmingham, Ala. —Libby Sander