The Tim Pernetti era has begun.
At least someone sees Rutgers as a meal ticket: any interested Rutgers fans that want to buy tickets at Army this fall will have to pay $49 per ticket, which includes a complementary Duke ticket/bookmark. It could be worse, they might be forcing purchase of season tickets.
Tara Sullivan revisits the "cruel joke" of Bob Mulcahy's courtship of Jay Wright a few years ago. There's just something about alumni that gives them the candor to really twist the knife in without seeming mean-spirited. I remember a few years ago, reading a Len Robbins column in the NY Post, where he attributed sarcastic remarks to an anonymous colleague in the press box, who was almost certainly Tom Luicci.
Case in point; Rick Malwitz at the Tribune is another alumnus who's seen as favorably inclined towards Rutgers, so it's telling when he questions C. Vivian Stringer for her comments in Steve Politi's article last week.
It's interesting that he cited financial figures; the publicly available data is next to useless because it doesn't break down the all-important "Direct Institutional Support" subsidy. I actually looked for this stuff a month ago when the Ledger reported that Rutgers lost money on its bowl trip. My understanding is that the information has to be reported to the NCAA, but it's not typically released. A couple athletic departments do post it on their websites, but most do not. As far as I could find, the best public resource on the topic is from four years ago, when the Indianapolis Star sent FOIA requests to every public DI university, and compiled the results in a database. Subsequently, no one has gone to that much trouble, although occasionally you'll see figures in the press around the country.
There's no reason to doubt Malwitz's figures. However, no public corroboration, and the inconsistency between various accounting methods make it very difficult for reasonable critics of his article to respond on an equal playing field. Anyway, that's the extent to which I'm interested in this matter, beyond the whole resources conflict becoming a major distraction as Pernetti hits the ground running.
That's certainly more than I expected to talk about today. Few more links after the jump.
D.C. Jefferson can't be much of a stiff if he was mimicking Matt Grothe on the scout team last year.
Congrats to Epiph Prince for being named third team All-America.
KB is visiting the Titans. Tiquan Underwood is still looking to set up visits.
Jason Zaretzky says that Chenry Lewis performed well at RU's Pro Day.
Quincy Douby's status is in limbo, as his 10-day contract is set to expire.
The Grease Trucks: behind the scenes (video)
Baseball beat Wagner.
Bruce Beck has ascended to the top sports anchor's chair at WNBC. Too bad it had to come with the departure of Len Berman.
Maybe the athletics arms race is out of control: Oregon's athletic department gets a fortune from Nike every year, but its frantic expansion is wearing their budget a little thin.