Rutgers Replaces UNC as #1 …..

Rutgers#1
BobLee
September18/ 2015

Uncle Eddie…. IT’s OFFICIAL!: 

…. Rutgers replaces UNCCH as NCAA’s “Crazy Uncle Eddie”.  

… It has been a long reign (over five years depending upon when one actually starts counting) but the vaunted Flagship On Franklin Street must, alas, step aside.   Like that old New Years cartoon of the “Old Year” and “Baby New Year”…. it is transition time at the top of the NCAA Hall of Shame –  UNCCH is out and Piscataway’s Pride & Joy (?) …..

Rutgers#1Rutgers now atop the pile of burning tires in the Landfill of Collegiate Athletic Stumblebummery.

Yahoo’s Pat Forde chronicles Rutgers’ rise to the bottom as The Premier Institutional Trainwreck in NCAA’s Pantheon of Raging Hypocrisy.

Sports historians may compare UNC’s 5+ year reign atop the burning tires to UCLA Basketball of the late 60s-early 70s.   Or maybe UNC’s own Anson Dorrance and his “flying ponytails” who dominated Coed Soccer thru the 20th century.

Using UNC well-publicized travails as it’s model…. The Pride of New Jersey combined (1) a growing litany of excessive Thug-aletery with (2) complete administrative incompetence…. topped off OF COURSE by (3) a quite indignant  Fat Cat fan base harrumphing that….  “Our emperor is too wearing clothes you are just too blindly jealous to see them…. Go Scarlet Knights!

Rutgers’ version of The Butcher is a pathetic klutz named Kyle Flood.

Rutgers’ version of “Clueless Dickie” is their lying lesbian AD named Julie Hermann.   A REAL “nasty piece o’ work”.

ACC Commiss John Swofford noted this transition with longtime buddy (and fellow UNC alum) Big Ten Commiss Jim Delany by sending Jim a Groupon from Ken Wainstein’s law firm and this advice.

“Jimmy, just tell your Rutgers’ folks to curl up in a fetal position, deny everything…. and claim FRIPPA, PIPPA and all that other gobbleygook crap….”  Your Pal, The Swoff.

We often note that insulting jokes about collegiate sports rivals are all modifications of five basic themes created in 1896 by some demented schlub at Slippery Rock aimed at his hated rival at Carnegie-Mellon.  So, it appears, is now the case when:Call me Dickie

A once proud academic institution finds itself buck nekkid “above the fold” holding its teeny-weeny talleywacker and, like George Constanza, screaming “SHRINKAGE”  …..

UNC loyalists fear not.  Rutgers reign as #1 is tenuous.  You can regain your accustomed position.  Just get “creative”.  Chancellor Chihuahua is already choosing an appropriate lapel ribbon to inspire her staff to new levels of institutional incompetence.

Oh…. in case anyone forgot.   Rutgers whupped UNC last December in the woeful “We’reNotShreveport Bowl” in beautiful downtown Beirut / Detroit.

###

 

Rutgers’ dumpster fire continues to drag down Big Ten

Pat Forde

Yahoo Sports

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/224239893″]

On Nov. 19, 2012, Rutgers and Maryland formally accepted somewhat surprising invitations to join the Big Ten conference.

On that day, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany looked like Julia Roberts marrying Lyle Lovett. Nobody could quite see the attraction.

Not yet three years after a day that will live in Big Ten infamy, the Rutgers part of the expansion equation looks even worse than it did then. Far worse. Of all the realignment maneuvers of the past five years, adding the Scarlet Knights is liking signing up for a lifetime case of poison ivy rash.

.

Rutgers has suspended Kyle Flood three games after he contacted a faculty member over a player's grade. (AP)

Rutgers has suspended Kyle Flood three games after he contacted a faculty member over a player’s grade. (AP)

This has been an absolute debacle.

Delany has done a lot of smart things in his long tenure as Big Ten commish. He added Penn State, which was a boon until the Sandusky scandal brought down Joe Paterno and sent the school through a painful period of crisis. He added Nebraska, and that has gone well. He helped create the Big Ten Network, which has been a revenue geyser. He has served the conference well.

But the Rutgers decision goes alongside decades of resistance to a football playoff as the two major splotches on Delany’s resume. He eventually bowed to public pressure and came around to the playoff concept. He might be well-served to evict the stumblebums from New Jersey next, before they can do further damage to the conference’s prestige and reputation.

No, that’s not really going to happen. At least now. Maybe after the next six fiascos in Piscataway.

The latest development was the university’s announcement Wednesday that it is suspending football coach Kyle Flood for the next three games. That’s after a university investigation showed he violated school policies and procedures by contacting and meeting with a professor in attempt to get a player’s grade changed – and get his eligiblity restored.

The president of Rutgers’ faculty union told NJ.com on Wednesday that the three-game suspension is “a slap on the wrist.” It’s hard to disagree with that assessment.

The Rutgers report shows the extent to which Flood went to avoid detection in his dealings with the professor: meeting off-campus; communicating only through private emails; and trying to swear others in the know about the grade-change scheme to secrecy. Not the actions of a man who says he simply didn’t know the rule about contacting a professor, and thus made an honest mistake. Nobody goes to those cloak-and-dagger lengths to keep something out of public view if they think they’re not doing something wrong.

The great cosmic joke of the whole situation is the fact that Flood stuck his neck out for a player who is no longer on the team – and not for academic reasons. Junior cornerback Nadir Barnwell was one of six players kicked off the team earlier this month after being charged with various crimes. Barnwell and three others are charged with assault, and two Scarlet Knights are charged with home invasions.

Five other players were suspended for the first half of the season opener for curfew violations. Among them was Rutgers’ best player, receiver Leonte Carroo, who this week was indefinitely suspended from the team following an arrest for an altercation outside the stadium after the Knights’ loss to Washington State on Saturday. Carroo was charged with simple assault in a domestic violence situation and has entered a plea of not guilty. According to a complaint filed in the case, Carroo allegedly slammed a woman into the concrete outside the football facility.

But, hey, these are merely the most recent reasons why Rutgers has become the laughingstock of college athletics. The school has basically been on a negative roll ever since the Big Ten made its terrible error of inviting in the Knights.

View gallery

.

Kyle Flood stands with Rutgers players before a college football game. (AP)

Kyle Flood stands with Rutgers players before a college football game. (AP)

Five days after accepting the Big Ten offer in 2012, the Rutgers football team lost by three touchdowns to Pittsburgh. That was followed by an upset loss to Louisville. A team that was 9-1 finished 9-3 and blew its chance at a BCS bowl bid. Shuffled off to the Russell Athletic Bowl, Rutgers lost to Virginia Tech to end the season on a three-game losing streak.

Since then Rutgers has gone 15-13 in football. But that was simply fabulous compared to the mushroom cloud that appeared over the basketball program four months after accepting the Big Ten invitation.

That was the Mike Rice scandal, in which videotape emerged in 2013 of the basketball coach throwing basketballs at his players, shoving and kicking them and verbally abusing them. The story was salacious enough that it overshadowed the latter stages of the ’13 NCAA tournament. Rice was fired and eventually replaced by Eddie Jordan, a former Rutgers great who – oops! – didn’t actually have a Rutgers degree because he never finished his coursework. Jordan had to go back to school while on the job, adding another layer of punch lines to the program.

Athletic director Tim Pernetti also lost his job as collateral damage in the Rice scandal. But the school might not have fired Pernetti if it knew what it was getting in his successor, Julie Hermann.

By late May 2013, the freshly hired Hermann was trying to fight off accusations that she had been an abusive coach herself, when she led the Tennessee volleyball program in the 1990s. It was also revealed that Hermann was involved in a discrimination lawsuit against Tennessee, in which her former assistant coach, Ginger Hineline, claimed Hermann fired her for becoming pregnant. Hineline was awarded $150,000.

But that was just the past. Hermann’s work at Rutgers has earned her far fewer allies than it has created negative headlines.

So this is the festering sore of an athletic department Jim Delany welcomed with open arms. He’s a Jersey guy, grew up in South Orange, and he’s been obsessed with gaining a Big Ten toehold in the New York market.

Only problem is, the only time the Big Ten’s New York-area school makes news is when it is embarrassing itself. Which, from nearly the day it accepted the infamous invitation, has been all the time.

Julia Roberts at least could divorce Lyle Lovett.   The Big Ten appears to be stuck with the dumpster fire that is Rutgers for a long time to come.

###

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Tags: ,
BobLee
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
50 Comments
Newest
Oldest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
50
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x