May 16, 2013, 4:57 am
By Brad Wolverton
Shortly after Rutgers University named Julie Hermann as its next athletics director on Wednesday, I got a note from my colleague Libby Sander. She reminded me of a candid conversation she had with Ms. Hermann two years ago for her analysis of the scarcity of female athletic directors in the NCAA’s Football Bowl Subdivision.
Ms. Hermann, a longtime No. 2 at the University of Louisville who has helped drive that athletic department’s fast growth, will become one of only five female ADs among the 125 FBS programs. For those of you keeping score, that’s 4 percent of positions at the NCAA’s elite level—the same meager number we reported two years ago.
There are plenty of reasons so few women have cracked the glass ceiling in college sports, including a stubborn old-boys’ network that dictates many hiring decisions. Here’s more from our 2011 report:
Some critics say women are often by…
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April 8, 2013, 1:51 pm
By Brad Wolverton
The firing of Mike Rice as head men’s basketball coach at Rutgers University last week, and the leadership fallout that ensued, illustrates a challenge that many athletic departments seem hard-pressed to solve: Who’s in charge of sports?
In the case of Rutgers, the university appeared to have too many cooks in the kitchen, which partly explains its failure to fire Mr. Rice for repeatedly physically and verbally abusing players. The broader failure here is that few programs foster an environment in which athletic directors have the authority to act.
Tim Pernetti, who resigned as the university’s athletic director on Friday, said he wanted to fire the coach last year after viewing a video of him kicking, shoving, and screaming at players. Instead, he said, a bunch of lawyers and human-resources people got involved, the university commissioned an independent report, and Mr. Rice was a…
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November 18, 2012, 8:09 pm
By Brad Wolverton
The proposed addition of Maryland and Rutgers to the Big Ten Conference, which remained up in the air late Sunday, would have implications well beyond the league. The move could prompt the Big 12 and other elite conferences to reopen expansion talks. And it increases the likelihood that the most powerful leagues will eventually have 16 institutions, several top athletics officials told The Chronicle.
Late Sunday, Wallace D. Loh, president of the University of Maryland at College Park, was expected to brief the system’s regents on a plan to join the Big Ten. The regents will meet on Monday morning to vote on the matter, ESPN reported. The move—which some say boils down to tradition versus money—would help the Terrapins’ athletic department shore up its shaky finances. But many Maryland supporters oppose leaving the Atlantic Coast Conference, a top-tier league of which they are a…
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May 7, 2012, 5:18 pm
By Brad Wolverton
Lot of good coverage today about the departure of Big East commissioner John Marinatto, which the league announced Monday.
The conference’s crucial mistake with Marinatto came in looking to the past for a vision of the future, writes ESPN.com’s Dana O’Neil. “What exactly is this league? And more, what does it want to be?” she asks. “Right now it is nothing but an amoebic blob. Big? Yes. East? No. Relevant? Not really.”
Marinatto was pushed out because he was powerless to stop the growing gap between the league’s basketball and football members, says ESPN.com’s Andrea Adelson. And good luck to his successor, whose job is the toughest in college football.
Marinatto’s ouster was “long overdue,” one source told USA Today Sports. But former Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese came to his defense, telling the New York Times that Marinatto helped resurrect the league in 2005, when…
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May 4, 2012, 1:07 pm
By Brad Wolverton
Take your pick on which is the most damning statement about the Rutgers athletic department, based on a report by Bloomberg News this week examining spending in big-time sports:
a) Rutgers gave $28.5-million from the university budget and student fees, or almost $1,000 per student, to finance sports during the fiscal year ended June 30, 2011.
b) The $19.4-million that Rutgers allocated to athletics from its general budget would have been enough to hire about 256 assistant professors or 132 full professors, based on salary figures provided by the university.
c) Fiscal 2011 included the first losing football season in six years. Ticket sales for all sports, led by football, plunged by $3.1-million; donations fell $1.5-million; and income from royalties and licensing declined $477,558.
It was the second-consecutive year that Rutgers topped Bloomberg’s list of universities that…
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