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| Rutgers Athletic Director Tim Pernetti & ex-coach Mike Rice both fired. |
Athletic Director Tim Pernetti is the latest Rutgers official to lose his job in the wake of revelations of abusive behavior by the men’s basketball coach, two sources close to Pernetti said Friday morning.
A news conference was scheduled for 1 p.m. It was unclear whether Pernetti was fired or had resigned.
When Pernetti learned of the abuse allegation four months ago, he suspended the coach, Mike Rice, but allowed him to keep his job despite video evidence that he berated players at practice, threw basketballs at them, kicked them and taunted them with vulgar language, including homophobic slurs.
Rice was fired Wednesday was from his job, which paid roughly $700,000 a year, and he received a $100,000 bonus for completing the season, as stipulated in his contract.
Jimmy Martelli, an assistant coach under Rice, resigned Thursday. John B. Wolf, the university’s general counsel, has also resigned, said a source with knowledge of the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly. University officials declined to comment.
Rutgers made an unconventional choice for an athletic director when it selected Pernetti, a television executive who had extensive experience presenting college games on national broadcasts but had never run a college program or coached a major team.
With the business of college sports becoming more crucial to a university’s prominence and its bottom line — the choice of Pernetti initially seemed to pay off. Sports at Rutgers were on the rise, and in November the university received a coveted invitation to join the Big Ten, an athletic conference that guaranteed vast exposure and huge television revenue.
But Pernetti became a lightning rod this week, with public anger intensifying over his handling of the case.
In a statement Wednesday Pernetti said that he regretted how the initial disciplining of Rice was handled.
“I thought it was in the best interest of everyone to rehabilitate, but I was wrong,” Pernetti said. “Moving forward, I will work to regain the trust of the Rutgers community.”
That was not good enough for state officials in Trenton who said they would hold hearings into how Pernetti and other Rutgers officials responded to initial reports of the abuse, after a video was provided to Pernetti by a former team assistant, Eric Murdock. Stephen M. Sweeney, a Democrat and the president of the State Senate, said officials should “strongly consider” firing Pernetti.
Sheila Y. Oliver, a Democrat and the speaker of the State Assembly, said, “I want to know what role everybody took in the whole fiasco.”
Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, said he supported Rice’s dismissal, adding, “The way these young men were treated by the head coach was completely unacceptable and violates the trust those parents put in Rutgers University.”
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