Rutgers can't allow

Rutgers can't allow AD Julie Hermann to assume post due to her dishonesty Here’s the thing: For argument’s sake, let’s assume the allegations now surrounding newly appointed Rutgers athletic director Julie Hermann are true. The letter detailing her alleged abuses of power as women’s volleyball coach at the University of Tennessee are 16 years old, and the players in question have nothing to gain by standing behind their old resentments at being called “whores” and “alcoholics” and “learning disabled.” So let’s say every word of the letter that forced her out is accurate. You can forgive that. You can. For a very long time, this was the accepted culture surrounding serious-minded coaches at every level in every sport. If you weren’t a yeller, you weren’t trying. You weren’t demeaning your players by screaming at them, defaming them, even cursing them; you were motivating them. SHE’S GOTTA GO! Post columnist Mike Vaccaro writes that newly appointed Rutgers athletic director Julie Hermann should not be allowed to take the post because of dishonesty, not because of a letter detailing her alleged abuses of power 16 years ago as the University of Tennessee’s women’s volleyball coach. Getty Images SHE’S GOTTA GO! Post columnist Mike Vaccaro writes that newly appointed Rutgers athletic director Julie Hermann should not be allowed to take the post because of dishonesty, not because of a letter detailing her alleged abuses of power 16 years ago as the University of Tennessee’s women’s volleyball coach. As long as you weren’t physically abusive, you could get away with anything. Bobby Knight did. Billy Martin did. Woody Hayes did. Sit behind Mike Krzyzewski’s bench sometime. Some of the stuff his staff has called Duke basketball players through the years makes Mike Rice’s observations sound like sonnets. That’s the atmosphere in which coaches of Hermann’s generation were raised, mostly because that’s how they were coached. So, no, you don’t have to admire what Julie Hermann called her players in 1996 or 1997, but if she has seen the errors of her ways, she can be forgiven. And the fact she drifted away from coaching and opted instead for athletic administration — an area in which, by all accounts, she has a sterling reputation — tells you she probably wasn’t entirely comfortable coaching the way she was coaching, either, in which she was essentially impeached by her own players. So, yes, it is possible to forgive an abusive coach for past transgressions. It is possible to learn from the error of your ways, and to realize, however you feel about this, coaches are expected to respect their athletes, and their dignity, in 2013. Though the empty suits who run Rutgers failed to uncover this, or the $150,000 lawsuit won by a former assistant who claimed Hermann fired her getting pregnant — you wouldn’t want these bumbling fools running a video store, let alone a major research university — even that isn’t what’s most troubling here. This is: “Wow.” That was Hermann’s first reaction when a reporter read the accusatory letter written by her players all those years ago. And: “None of this is familiar to me.” This is where it is impossible to believe Rutgers can allow Hermann to assume this job, as she’s supposed to in a few weeks. Rutgers, where the university president twiddled his thumbs rather than investigate charges his basketball coach was physically and verbally abusing players. Rutgers, where nobody bothered to see whether the new coach, Eddie Jordan, actually had earned his degree while being referred to, in every school-sanctioned bio, as a graduate. Rutgers, where a few weeks ago Julie Hermann had the audacity, the shameless gall, to state the following: “It is a new day. It is already fixed.” Fixed? The AD doesn’t have the courage to own up to old mistakes, to admit she, as much as anyone, might be the perfect person to detect red flags among the pool of future coaches with anger issues to be considered at Rutgers. No. She doesn’t even bother to deny the charges. Because she says she can’t remember them. Honestly, you couldn’t make this stuff up if you locked the 10 most creative screenwriters in the world in a room overlooking the Raritan River. Except at Rutgers, currently led by a president, Robert Barchi, who is either the dumbest smart guy or the smartest dumb guy you’ll ever see, this is what it’s called: business as usual. “Three strikes and you’re out,” former Gov. Richard Codey, a longtime supporter of athletics at Rutgers, told the the Star-Ledger yesterday. “A great university with great students and alumni deserve better. From the mishandling of the Rice situation to the Eddie Jordan thing ... to a woman who can’t remember that every member of her volleyball team called her to leave. You remember that on your death bed. She should go, too. You can’t make this stuff up.” At Robert Barchi’s Rutgers, you don’t have to. Somehow, he kept his job after the Rice fiasco. Somehow, he was kept out of the fire when the Jordan issue flared. If he skates now, along with his AD? You wonder if they’re even trying anymore more @ http://www.nypost.com/p/sports/college/basketball/raise_the_state_ax_ODfMGJYD9G3uwTCu3AWH4H