robert-barchi-rutgers.JPG

Rutgers president Robert Barchi said it was a "revelation" to him that a sports scandal could consume the university.

(Adya Beasley/The Star-Ledger)

He spits out the word "sports" with mild exasperation, sounding less like a distinguished university president and more like a kindergartner who just saw the lima beans piled on his dinner plate.

Rutgers University President Robert Barchi is clear on this: He’d rather be doing something else. He probably should be doing something else, too, given the serious deadlines looming on his most important task.

Barchi is leading the massive merger between Rutgers and UMDNJ, a process that he said will require more than 4,600 decisions. Each one of them must have seemed more appealing than rehashing the scandal that rocked his basketball program last month.

Still, he took the job leading a university with big-time athletics and, right or wrong, nothing brings more attention and scrutiny to a school than sports. That he needed the Mike Rice fiasco to figure that out is remarkable, given his job title and experience.

"It was a revelation," Barchi said, "that the intensity of the response, both within the community, within the state and nationally on this very important and very serious issue could totally swamp out all of the other issues we’re trying to deal with and color everything else we’re doing."

So he must have missed what happened last fall at Penn State, or North Carolina, or Miami, or Southern Cal, or the countless other colleges digging out from athletic scandals.

Now Rutgers is on the list, and Barchi is the man holding the shovel. Can a neuroscientist brought to New Jersey with one clear purpose — completing that important merger — repair the fractured athletic department and position Rutgers to be competitive in the Big Ten?



The short answer: He better hire a really good athletic director.

Barchi spent 20 minutes at the end of a Star-Ledger editorial board meeting Thursday addressing athletics. He made it clear that integrity will matter more than winning while he is in charge, that Rutgers would not try to keep up with the big boys in spending, and that the future will not include key leaders from the past.

That means Tim Pernetti. Barchi was dismissive of the movement to reinstate the former athletic director, who was forced to resign in the wake of the basketball scandal. The efforts to save his job — including a rally at the spring game last weekend — will not sway him.

"First, let’s put this in perspective. By our count, there were 100, maybe 150 people with (Pernetti) shirts on," he said when asked about the rally. "There were 83,000 people at Rutgers for Rutgers Day. The point is, if you went around to the 83,000 people, you would not have seen many shirts like that.

"So let’s keep in perspective the size of the group we’re talking about. The more important question is where the university is. Tim resigned. We accepted that resignation. And the university is moving on."

And, if that costs the athletic department much needed capital from private donors, he said, "I don’t make my decisions based on philanthropy, and the university doesn’t either."

But the bottom line matters. Barchi said the athletic department would be revenue neutral in six years — which, given the $18 million annual subsidy, is essentially a $110 million promise. That factors in a budget that is certain to increase when Rutgers joins the Big Ten next year.

It does not, however, mean Rutgers has plans to join the arms race with its Big Ten foes. Michigan spends $129 million annually on athletics. Ohio State has guaranteed $4 million a year to football coach Urban Meyer. Rutgers will not try to keep up with its new neighbors.

"We’re not going to be spending what Ohio State spends. We’re not going to be spending what Michigan spends," he said. "But I think we can be competitive in the Big Ten with the business plan we’ve put together."

Listening to Barchi, it is hard not to envision him as a young man, toiling in a lab and wondering why a university would spend so much money on athletics. Asked directly if he believed in the benefit of big-time athletics, he made it clear that Rutgers went down that path long before he became president.

"I came to an institution that already had made a decision about D-1 athletics," he said. "My commitment to the institution is to take that and make sure we have a high-integrity program that focuses as much on academics as it does athletics."

Now, Rutgers has an athletic department lacking leadership and direction as it faces a huge transition. And you get the impression that the man in charge would rather be dealing with anything else.