More problems with the NCAA

Joe Nocera

Tuesday, April 9, 2013 | 2 a.m.

On Friday afternoon, around 1:15, the president of Rutgers University, Robert Barchi, held a news conference to announce that his athletic director, Tim Pernetti, had resigned. This, of course, came two days after Pernetti fired the basketball coach, Mike Rice, when a deeply offensive video was leaked to ESPN. It showed the coach physically and verbally abusing his players during practice, sprinkling his harangues with a homosexual slur.

I was in Atlanta during the Rutgers news conference, attending the NCAA men’s basketball championships, aka the Final Four. Waiting for the news conference to begin, I watched Rick Pitino, the coach of the Louisville Cardinals, respond to questions about whether he would be better remembered for his early use of the 3-point shot or his pressing defenses.

Later, as reporters banged out their stories, I watched Barchi on the television screens in the press room, as he tried to explain why he hadn’t bothered to watch the video when he first became aware of it last November and why he had agreed to Pernetti’s recommendation that Rice be fined and suspended instead of fired. The cognitive dissonance was dizzying.

You don’t have to be at the Final Four to realize that the NCAA has big problems. But in Atlanta, the sense of crisis is palpable. The chatter you hear is that morale among NCAA employees is awful. The NCAA is facing more — and more serious — legal threats than ever before. Its missteps in the University of Miami investigation — in which it engaged a bankruptcy lawyer to depose witnesses its investigators couldn’t reach — stunned many people.

The once heretical thought that college athletes ought to be paid for their labors — and that the NCAA’s amateurism rules are meant to ensure a free labor force — has gained real currency. Last week, USA Today published an unflattering article about the checkered academic career of Mark Emmert, the NCAA’s current president. A tough article like that would have once been unimaginable.

At his news conference Thursday, Emmert was petty and defensive. He called himself an “agent of change” who suffers the slings and arrows of the small-minded. When Dennis Dodd, an online reporter for CBS Sports who has been critical of Emmert, asked him whether the NCAA was still relevant, Emmert bristled. Later, as he walked off the stage, he snarled to Dodd: “I’m still here. I know you’re disappointed, but here I am.” What kind of leader says something like that?

The Rutgers incident isn’t really within the purview of the NCAA. (Then again, neither was Penn State, although that didn’t stop the NCAA from ignoring its procedures to penalize the university.) Instead, it stands as a telling symbol of what is wrong generally with big-time college sports. Last November, when Pernetti became aware of Rice’s heinous behavior, he was negotiating a deal to have Rutgers join the wealthiest conference in the country, the Big Ten.

With its own television network, and various marketing and rights deals, the Big Ten doles out tens of millions of dollars each year to member universities. Rutgers’ athletic department, meanwhile, struggles financially despite being subsidized by student fees. The sensible move would be for Rutgers to de-emphasize athletics: It really can’t afford the cost of big-time college sports.

Yet, with Pernetti leading the charge, the university has upped the ante and will compete against such Big Ten powerhouses as Ohio State and Michigan. It will reap millions — but it also will have to spend millions to keep pace.

Did it cross Pernetti’s mind last November that if he fired Rice and the video leaked out, it might jeopardize Rutgers’ chances of joining the Big Ten? It is hard to believe that didn’t play a role.

There are no good guys in this story. The “whistle-blower,” Eric Murdock, a former Providence College star, was motivated — let’s be honest here — by revenge. Pernetti had fired him, and he was seeking a termination payment of $950,000. The video was his cudgel to get that money. I am told that the FBI has been on the Rutgers campuses in recent days, investigating the circumstances.

Pernetti is said to be one of the bright lights of college sports. Around the same time he was dealing with both the Big Ten and the Rice video, he was on a panel at New York University School of Law at which he spoke about the importance of putting the needs of the “student-athlete” first and hiring “the right people.” Yet, faced with a moment of truth, he blinked.

Just like Joe Paterno, another supposed good guy, blinked. Just like they all blink when their professed ideals bump up against the ever-increasing pressure to generate cold, hard cash.

The NCAA, it turns out, isn’t the only hypocrite in college sports.

Joe Nocera is a columnist for The New York Times.