OT: Rutgers AD Strike 14?
So apparently days after apologizing to Penn State for all the banners, signs, etc at the game last weekend, this comes out from NJ.com:
Multiple people interviewed by NJ Advance Media -- who would speak only on the condition of anonymity because they feared retribution -- said Hermann was talking about "reaching out and touching the donors" of the program and her punchline was to not do it "in a Sandusky way."
So this is after all this, which SB Nation has put into a timeline.
-Bullying? Yup, a few times at Rutgers most notably basketball and football.
-Bullying as a coach? Yup, at Tennessee coaching volleyball. Called her players "whores, alcoholics and disabled"
-Bullying while at Louisville? Yup, apparently created a "Culture of Fear" per a former employee.
-Fired someone due to a pregnancy? Yup, former employee was awarded $150,000.
-She's also tied to a sexual discrimination lawsuit from her time at Louisville.
-She really hates the Star-Ledger and hopes they go out of business.
Rutgers is such a disaster.
September 19th, 2014 at 1:24 PM ^
BIG TEN!
September 19th, 2014 at 1:26 PM ^
Maybe she could do a comedy tour with Gordon Gee, just so long as there weren't any of "those damn Catholics" in the audience?
She seems like somebody I would not like if I met her face-to-face.
September 19th, 2014 at 1:27 PM ^
I've decided I'm just going to go on as if the Big 10 was 12 teams. Because I just really hate these people. Also see: Maryland.
September 19th, 2014 at 1:38 PM ^
I still like to think it's only ten.
September 19th, 2014 at 1:51 PM ^
I banged that drum for a few years. Going back to the old 10 teams, having a round robin conference schedule so you didn't need a conference championship game... But where's the money, er, TV footprint in that, right?
I was willing to accept Nebraska because, well, it's Nebraska. At least it makes sense. This? Not so much.
September 19th, 2014 at 5:11 PM ^
IIRC, Brian has offered a brillant solution - we need six more teams to get to a 20 team mega conference with a huge footprint.
Our division would be Michigan, State, OSU, Illinois, Indiana, Purdue, Wisconsin, Minnesota, NW, and Iowa. We would play nine divisional games a year, ignore the other division and pretend that none of this ever happened. There would probably have be a title game against someone from the other division before the Rose Bowl, but whatever.
September 19th, 2014 at 3:49 PM ^
To quote Robert E. Lee, "Those people." Not "these people."
September 19th, 2014 at 1:28 PM ^
She made the joke in September 2013 --- so it's not like her joke (which whatever, I don't think the joke was that bad) immediately after she chastised RU fans for their behavior.
But that this story leaks now? Someone who is VERY inside obviously wants her out.
September 19th, 2014 at 1:30 PM ^
Whoever it was waited for the perfect time to drop this.
September 19th, 2014 at 1:48 PM ^
When I read that this comment was made last fall, but yet the story comes out in the aftermath of the PSU-Rutgers game, that was my immediate thought too - someone has had enough of the fact that Rutgers basically hired a flaming wreck to guide a flaming wreck out of its financial / philsophical quandaries and the groan-a-minute PR shitshow that has been the result for Rutgers.
September 19th, 2014 at 1:28 PM ^
Not only is she a terrible AD, she doesn't have a good sense of humor either.
September 19th, 2014 at 1:33 PM ^
Anyone still rather have Rutgers and Maryland over UConn and Cincinnati?
September 19th, 2014 at 1:34 PM ^
C: None of the above
September 19th, 2014 at 1:36 PM ^
I'm still of the opinion that I hate Ohio State less than I hate the fact that Rutgers and Maryland are here.
September 19th, 2014 at 1:49 PM ^
I'm pretty much in that camp. I just don't get this shit anymore.
September 19th, 2014 at 2:01 PM ^
September 19th, 2014 at 2:27 PM ^
I don't hate Rutgers per se. (Although, they probably have the clowniest AD in the conference and I do have a certain amount of distaste based on stories I heard from fellow naval officers about how midshipmen in uniform were treated at Rutgers.) That said, I hate the fact that we'll be playing a game against them every year for the foreseeable and even unforeseeable future, which takes the place of games I actually want to see like Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, etc.
The number of games that Michigan will play every year** against long-time traditional Big Ten opponents is three. Maybe three and a half, we'll give Penn State half the benefit of the doubt. Three or four games out of 12. Rutgers every year, longtime Big Ten teams occasionally. To me, that sucks.
Therefore, one of the few shits and giggles I can get out of this arrangement is to root for it to blow up in the faces of the perpetrators, which an 0-8 season every year for both interlopers would help with. (Well, 1-7 for one of them.)
**Or even a majority of years; at least in the 11-team B1G, you basically played everyone every year and the two-year break for a couple teams at a time was barely noticeable.
September 19th, 2014 at 1:44 PM ^
AAU (American Association of Universities) and it's extremely unlikely that expansion will ever include any non-members of that org. Every member of the conference has been a member of the AAU when it joined the conference, and the only reason Nebraska left the org was over a dispute over how the AAU regarded Nebraska's medical campus in Omaha, a dispute that was largely instigated by Texas in retaliation for Nebraska leaving the Big 12.
I was always in favor of Missouri and Pitt, expanding the footprint be damned.
September 19th, 2014 at 2:17 PM ^
I'm still in favor of getting rid of Rutgers and Maryland and calling it good
Nebraska: brilliant
Everyone else: no thanks. We've got a good thing going with the 12 of us
September 19th, 2014 at 2:28 PM ^
Nebraska didn't leave the Association of American Universities over said dispute, they tried to stay but they were voted out by more than a two-thirds majority of member institutions. I don't think Texas alone throws that much weight around. And while the medical campus' separation from Lincoln does hurt its ability to meet the formal criteria, Brandeis manages to retain membership without a medical school, as do CalTech and MIT of course.
As for AAU membership being a criterion for membership in the B1G, we'll see. It's been a convenient way to convince the university presidents to date, but the TV dollar will win out in the end.
September 19th, 2014 at 2:37 PM ^
(duplicate post)
Edit: and Michigan voted to kick them out, too. Along with Wisconsin.
September 19th, 2014 at 1:33 PM ^
September 19th, 2014 at 2:13 PM ^
the Rutgers bashing here. Brian would have to change the name of this blog to MgohateRutgers.
September 19th, 2014 at 1:38 PM ^
Next up for Hermann? Meeting with Jewish donors and stating that if they don't pony up "it will be a Holocaust" for Rutgers. And after that, making repeated jokes about "lynching" her budget goals at a meeting with the NJ chapter of the NAACP.
September 19th, 2014 at 1:54 PM ^
The face of a woman who really needs to poop.
September 19th, 2014 at 1:59 PM ^
Which is pretty amazing, considering that she's continually shit all over Rutgers since her hiring
September 19th, 2014 at 2:00 PM ^
Rutgers is used to being shit all over. Its nbd.
September 19th, 2014 at 3:56 PM ^
Looks more like the face of someone who just pooped (all over Rutgers, the BIG TEN!, etc.).
September 19th, 2014 at 1:59 PM ^
See... you're joking about this now of course, but who's going to be anything more than 0% surprised when she actually does this in five months?
September 19th, 2014 at 8:55 PM ^
Two, actually.
September 19th, 2014 at 3:17 PM ^
Let's not forget her first press conference as RU's athletic director, A reporter asked if she ever warned an employee to not get pregnant. She said, "NO". The next day the video appeared showing her saying it into the official camera at the employee's wedding.
Class act.
September 19th, 2014 at 4:32 PM ^
September 19th, 2014 at 6:27 PM ^
So proud I got my bachelors from RU. 12 wins football wins in 5 years of pharmacy school.
At least Auburn and Michigan were better for my grad degrees.
September 19th, 2014 at 7:37 PM ^
The idiots in the Rutgers administration can't fire her for being an idiot, because they brought her in to replace the AD they fired for being an idiot. And he was fired because he didn't fire a coach who was an idiot.
If you're Rutgers, it's all about the idiots.
September 19th, 2014 at 9:00 PM ^
I'm okay with the piling on Penn State.
September 20th, 2014 at 1:56 AM ^
Coasties out.