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Report: Rutgers AD inflicted “mental cruelty” in her own coaching days

Julie Hermann

Julie Hermann listens at Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J., Wednesday, May 15, 2013, as it is announced that she is to be its new athletic director to succeed Tim Pernetti, who resigned last month in the wake of the scandal involving men’s basketball coach Mike Rice. Hermann, the University of Louisville’s senior associate athletic director, will be the third female athletic director at a school among the 124 playing at college football’s top tier. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)

AP

A couple of words the board at Rutgers might want to re-acquaint themselves with: “due” and “diligence”.

Just weeks ago, Scarlet Knights men’s head basketball coach Mike Rice was fired for verbally and physically abusing his players during practice, in a scandal that also took down the school’s AD. Rutgers alum Eddie Jordan was hired to right the ship, only to have it come out in the press that he had never actually earned his diploma from the school.

And if that weren’t enough, recently-hired AD Julie Hermann has come under fire for insensitive statements she allegedly made when she was coaching women’s volleyball at Tennessee. Allegations that she had verbally bullied a subordinate with coercive statements about the assistant’s desire to have children surfaced, but that, as we discovered today, may only be the tip of the iceberg.

NJ.com published a story late on Saturday alleging that Hermann may have been Rice-like in her own behavior while at Tennessee.

“The mental cruelty that we as a team have suffered is unbearable.” -- letter from UT volleyball players on Hermann. nj.com/sports/index.s…

— Steve Politi (@StevePoliti) May 26, 2013


Read the full report here.

As recently as Friday night, the school maintained that it had reviewed Hermann’s record thoroughly and intended to retain her in her current capacity as Athletic Director. These new allegations may be too much for the school’s already gun-shy administration to take. The University President has narrowly survived calls for his own resignation, and yet another black eye for the school may presage more drastic responses to come.

Eric Angevine is the editor of Storming the Floor. He tweets @stfhoops.