Are we sure he didn't look?

If the AD had to go, so must the president. I hate to go after people's gigs -- an entirely other discussion. That being said, the the president maintains a responsibility to look at the tape. To some extent, a relatively new to that kind of gig AD lacked the experience to make the best decision; the president needed to make sure and failed in that vein.

I'm with Corey and I don't believe he didn't look at the tape. I think that was just a "cop out".

whatever happened to "the Buck stops Here"? With ultimate authority comes ultimate responsibility - Riva Schwartz - why am I not logged in?

whatever happened to "the Buck stops Here"? With ultimate authority comes ultimate responsibility

Ignorance is not an excuse. By all account this coach was a "piece of work" for a very long time. Shame on everyone, including the higher ups.

This coach should have been terminated long ago since this behavior was widely known. Rutgers should have been more sensitive to this since a prior coach (Bannon) had the basketball players running naked in the gym which led to that coach being terminated. Then the sensitivity should have been even more acute given the Clemete suicide.

That said, AD Pernetti got squeezed out and should not have. It seems that he was told to take the action that he did. If you read the attorneys report they seem to suggest that the coach not be fired (The report is on the NYT website.) Its clear though that the prime reasn that Barchi will survive is that he is the Governor's hire and his exprtise is needed to complete the merger.

I make the above analysis as one who lives close to campus and is a Rutgers grad out here in the NJ hinterlands.
Marc Herman - Gotham Princeton

I wonder if the Rutgers coach had been as successful as Bobby Knight if the outrage would have been the same? For those non-sports fans, Coach Knight did and said many similar things to this Rutgers coach (including chair throwing and player choking), but unlike the Rutgers coach, won something like 900 games and 3 national championships. Or, a better question is could Coach Knight, given all of his antics, have had a chance to rack up all that success in our current hyper-sensitive time period. By the way, I don't condone either man's behavior. I wouldn't want either man working for my organization if I had been in the ad or president's position. I've been wondering this question every time someone brings this story up lately.

Coming from the corporate environment we would normally counsel the indiviual. In this case have him take anger management or therapy sessions. He would be fired if the incident happened again. It appears Rutgers did this initially. No one has indicated if the coach's actions changed. Did he learn his lesson. All I see is political pressure was applied and he lost his job.

The Rutgers coach was just a bully, plain and simple. The AD and the President wanted to turn a blind eye because of the money involved in the merger. College athletics is big business and this is a prime example of a top administrator putting money ahead of the welfare of his students.

Unfortunately, we're hearing way too many stories of college administrators ignoring blatant acts of cruelty for "the sake of the team."

I don't want to sound stuffy or uncaring, but honestly, if you ask me my opinion on this "tempest in a teapot", I'd have to say that if I tried really, really hard, I don't think that I could possibly care less.