Saw a lot of coverage of this on ESPN this evening, but haven’t seen any discussion here yet. (Note, that link has an auto-play video.)
Clearly, Rice had to go. How AD Tim Pernetti didn’t fire him in November when he first saw these videos is a mystery to me. The word tonight is that the AD is safe, but I’ll be a little surprised if he doesn’t find himself on the firing line later this week, maybe even along with the university president.
Making it even worse - Rice & Pernetti fired Eric Murdock last year when he raised concerns about the coach’s practice demeanor. Now the university could be looking at a wrongful termination lawsuit to go along with everything else.
Moral of the story - if you’re gonna act like a total douche-nozzle at practice, don’t tape it!
Good. Rice acted like a horrible bully asshole and he deserved to be fired. The school fucked up its response about as badly as it could have - Pernetti said yesterday that they knew the video was going to get out at eventually, so they didn’t fire him at the time because… uh, because they wanted to keep their finger in the wind and fire him only if it was clear the public outrage made it mandatory? That made no sense.
Rice deserved to go. Pernetti suspended Rice during the season, had him go to counseling, and docked him 50k. There’s been a (legitimate) rush to judgement w Rice, but I think that the AD deserves some benefit of doubt - what came of his own investigation? What was he told by those within the program?
All good questions, however… If what Rice did deserved to get him fired, what’s the difference between today and November/December when Pernetti originally saw the tapes? Most likely, if those videos never got out in the public (seems like that was inevitable in this day and age) Rice still has a job. Pernetti looks like a giant weasel in all of this.
Of course, if he didn’t get some improvement on the court he’d probably have been fired by the end of next season in any case. An AD at a D1 school might tolerate an awful lot, but losing is clearly a firing offense.
I would argue that the difference between today and December would be exactly what I suggest - his own investigation, what information that he received by those within the program. The public saw 45 seconds of video. Pernetti saw hours, likely, along with testimony of those directly involved; said information had to be presented to HR and the President.
I don’t know what the players and other coaches said, but he saw the same video everyone else is seeing now and he heard the same stuff from Eric Murdock that the public heard. There’s really nothing else to see or hear. Based on that he decided Rice deserved a brief suspension, a fine, and counseling (and the counseling was apparently nothing). The university is being pretty honest about the fact that they fired Rice because they can’t justify this to the public: the school’s statement reads “Based upon recently revealed information and a review of previously discovered issues, Rutgers has terminated the contract of Mike Rice.”
Here’s the thing that sticks in my mind about this, though: If Pernetti’s investigation of this last year made him think that a suspension and fine was warranted, OK. But have the fortitude to stand by that decision now, explain the thinking to the public, and keep Rice. Nothing new has come up since then. The only thing that’s changed is that the public has now seen these videos.
I’ll concede that Pernetti had a lot more info about this than any of us. What we get to see is the stuff that ESPN can use to sell advertising. If firing Rice is the appropriate response to what we saw, he should have been fired in December. If it isn’t, he should still be the coach today. Was Pernetti wrong for keeping Rice in December, or is he wrong for taking the politically safe move of firing Rice this week?
It sounds like we saw the relevant stuff, or at least the highlights- nobody thinks he was yelling and throwing things every second and nobody has claimed his behavior was taken out of context. We know some players have spoken up for Rice and I’m sure there’s plenty of footage where he wasn’t acting like a lunatic during those practices, but that doesn’t change anything about the nature of the problem. The athletic department bungled their response to the abuse and also their response to Murdock: they suspended Rice after Murdock went public with his allegations and he said he was going to release the tapes if they didn’t pay him. Maybe they’ve been negotiating since then. But they were aware of what he was doing in December and they say they knew this was going to become public eventually, so their reaction makes no sense. They either thought they’d done enough to blunt the outrage, or they thought it was all going to go away and nobody would see what Rice was doing. And you’re right that they could be looking at a lawsuit.
Sorry to get hyperbolic, but the situation warrants it.
If a man had his entire life on video and acted in an upstanding manner for all of it, except for the day he decided to slaughter his cheating wife and her lover, all the other video doesn’t matter. The murders alone are enough.
Likewise, it doesn’t really matter what ESPN didn’t show us. The bit that the public saw was enough.
Some of the pundits got it right - Pernetti knew Rutgers had a history of PR problems and he gambled he might be able to keep this one quiet. Wrong move in a lot of ways. If this had been some History Professor, do you think a similar incident would be tolerated at all? That the head of that Professor’s department or the Dean of the school could get away with trying to sweep it under the rug with a token punishment?
It’s only because Rice is a D1 basketball coach that anybody is defending Pernetti.
Pernetti’s mistake was likely that he was simply too close to the situation. I am betting that he liked Rice personally, Rice was able to convince him, as a friend, to let him go to counseling, it won;t happen again, etc. Pernetti made a decision on helping Rice instead of acting out of what was best for Rutgers and its student athletes. And in my mind, while that is the wrong decision, it is understandable, in the sense that when working with somebody can cloud your vision. What he should have done, when presented with the evidence, is taken himself out and turned the decision on what to do over to somebody else. He failed to act as an AD and should probably be let go.
It could be friendship, attachment to his big coaching hire, or just the fact that people in sports are used to less extreme versions of this kind of behavior. It may be understandable, but he really blew it.
Because Fox hearkens back to those halcyon days when people were polite, black people knew their place, coaches beat the shit out of their players and Jerry Sandusky was just misunderstood.
Not so much that I’m defending Pernetti - I have a very hard time envisioning a good reason why Rice wasn’t fired before the video stopped playing. Maybe there were some extenuation circumstances, but I’m hard pressed to imagine what they would be. But I also know that the media is really, really good at generating outrage. Sometimes it’s justified. Sometimes it’s just about selling beer and discount insurance.
Like I said, I think Rice probably should have been fired as soon as Pernetti saw those clips. Pernetti lacked the integrity to do it then, and then fired the guy as soon as it became clear that he was going to have no other recourse. And it appears that the reason Rutgers is giving Pernetti a pass is that he was instrumental in getting them into the Big 10. That’s just sad.
About damned time. It’s a shame that it requires massive public outcry and media investigation to do the right thing at a public university.
You got to wonder how much further up the tree this will go. Rutgers President Barchi is under some heat. I imagine he’ll survive, but it’s not going to be comfortable for him for a while.
And they won’t always draw the line at more extreme versions. Guys like Woody Hayes and Bob Knight did a lot to associate bullying with winning. And after all, it is one of the few areas where knuckling under makes you more of a man than standing your ground.
It’s not good for Rutgers in any way, but it also sounds to me like Murdock really blew it. He could’ve filed a lawsuit last year and looked like a heroic whistleblower. Instead it sounds like he asked for cash to make this go away and maybe he’ll be prosecuted.