First impressions

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Give Tim Pernetti one thing: he’s telegenic and well spoken. There’s probably no better choice to speak on behalf of Rutgers athletics.

And Aditi reports that Hill and CVS are on board, so that’s that apparently. As an alum, I liked what he had to say about emphasizing academics.

Tim was an executive vice president at CSTV. It’s just a little hard to wrap my head around the fact that he was also a radio color commentator, that he was mocking the Ledger two months ago, that he was a reader and poster on several popular Rutgers internet forums. For better or worse, he does have his finger on the pulse of the fanbase.

Everything else

The Newport Daily News has more on Rizzi leaving for the Dolphins. Apparently he turned the position down a year ago, but changed his mind after a year at the helm.

Courtney Greene reportedly ran a 4.54 in the 40 yard dash at the NFL Combine. That’s a good time, but more important might be his performance in something like the 3 cone drill, which tries to measure a player’s ability to maintain speed while changing direction. Since NFL.com only releases the times from selected top performers, I haven’t been able to locate that result; nor have I found the official result of Britt’s time in the 40 yard dash, although the Targum quotes Rivals as giving it at 4.47. Mike Garafolo sees Plaxico Burress returning to the Giants, and doesn’t think that they’ll take Kenny Britt with their first round pick.

Was Rutgers going after a JUCO receiver who signed with Purdue?

It’d be nice to win one of the close games, but it wasn’t happening. Mike Tranghese thinks Fred Hill should worry about his job security.

The women’s basketball team beat Cincy. For those worried about the W/L record, their RPI is good enough that they should be in good shape. The Ledger ran another piece on CVS this week.

Wrestling fell to Bloomsburg in their final dual meet of the season.

Wally Burnham’s biggest regret on leaving USF?

“Probably this year against Rutgers, the 93-yard pass play to Kenny Britt. We didn’t do a good job getting the kids prepared for that formation. I may have called the wrong defense. I was thinking pass and didn’t put them in a good coverage for that down and distance. I did a poor job for the kids on that play. I helped Rutgers on that one. I think that was the backbreaker on that game.”

Marc Ecko explains how he developed the entrepreneurial spirit at Rutgers.

Rutgers has announced its newest capital construction campaign. The deferred maintenance and classroom improvements are badly needed, and the Livingston Dining Hall project has been in the works for a while.

Pernetti’s in

Tim Pernetti was the frontrunner to be the next athletic director, with reported support from Greg Schiano, most of the administration, and influential politicians and boosters. All indications are that he will be named to the position today. Not that Rhoades or Mertens was necessarily anti-football, but naming Pernetti is a signal that Rutgers remains committed football and Schiano, and should ease any remaining fears in that department. In any case, these comments about the A.D. search are troubling; they’re either accurate, and the search was a sham; or the comments indicate that Pernetti must take steps to heal any remaining divisions.

Several members confirmed to me yesterday that they met once, when folks from Parker Executive Search (hired Jan. 12 at a cost of $58,000 plus expenses) polled them on what traits and experiences they felt the new athletic director should have.

At least one source (likely a Pernetti supporter) claims that there was a fair competition between the three finalists; making the case that Richard Costello can short up Pernetti’s weaknesses. That seems to be following the Bob Mulcahy model. Even granting that Pernetti has a bright future (apparently outlining “an impressive position paper“), I remain troubled by his lack of administrative experience. He is stepping into a difficult situation, exacerbated by the violent trauma and upheaval of the past year. For everyone’s sake, he had better succeed. Calm and stability would be a welcome change.

On last question: besides Bob Mulcahy, Kevin MacConnell was arguably the biggest loser in all of this, as he was the obvious successor-in-waiting. He was originally supposed to interview, but apparently did not (Pernetti assumed his role as the establishment candidate). If Pernetti is the choice, and Costello assumes many administrative duties, where exactly does that leave K-Mac?

Joe Flacco’s Shotgun Blues

Greg Schiano told the Star Ledger yesterday that he doesn’t expect major changes on offense with the promotion of new co-offensive coordinator Kirk Ciarrocca. Between Ray Rice being on the Ravens, and the looming recruiting debate between two prominent South Jersey quarterbacks, every Rutgers fan was probably going to read the name “Joe Flacco” ten thousand times over the next year anyway. Now the topic of Flacco, and Ciarrocca’s track record running the Delaware offense is an even bigger focus of interest.

Two things jump out from watching the highlights: Joe Flacco’s impressive physical stature (that height! that arm!), and the fact that most of these highlights are coming out of the Shotgun formation. According to Pat Kirwan, the Blue Hens used the Shotgun exclusively in 2006, and 50% of the time in 2007.

Conveniently enough, the Washington Post ran another anti-spread article yesterday designed to crush Graham Harrell’s dreams. Doug Farrar of the Post and Football Outsiders sat down with Greg Cosell from NFL Films, who noted that Flacco was one of the few recent spread success stories.

“What Flacco showed at Delaware, and I know this because I saw it on film, was the ability to throw with timing and anticipation. What that means in simple terms is the ability to throw the ball before receivers come out of breaks. If you can’t do that, you can’t play quarterback in the NFL. If I don’t see that on film (from Harrell), it becomes a significant projection. And I’m not sure you can teach that — I think it’s an instinct. After watching game tape for 20 years, I think that if you don’t have the instinct to throw with timing and anticipation, you can’t learn it at the NFL level.”

One argument is that Flacco was was bound to succeed in a good situation; he benefitted from the system, but wasn’t solely a product of it. Some of RU’s freshmen this year may have the requisite physical tools, but that only counts for so much. Flacco started off at Pittsburgh (after originally spurning Rutgers, among other schools), where he had the opportunity to learn under Walt Harris. Harris is one of the more-gifted offensive gurus out there, and Flacco was making reads under center for the most part.

There’s nothing inherently wrong about the Shotgun, no-huddle, and multiple-WR sets; any problems in transitioning to the pros come from not having a sufficient grounding in pro-style offenses as a base foundation. In terms of the NFL, the spread is a luxury, or an end game. I confess, I’m looking at everything from this angle mainly because of my own areas of interest; it doesn’t have a ton of bearing on the scheme Rutgers uses in the near future beyond a few recruiting pitches.

Delaware’s offense fell into a rut last year, with the question being whether the departure of Ciarrocca or Flacco played a larger role. Their new offensive coordinator only lasted a year; now coach K.C. Keeler is bringing in a veteran coach from the FBS level, and a highly-touted transfer in Pat Devlin (formerly of PSU). There was a bit in there about Keeler wanting to maintain scheme continuity with his latest hire. With Schiano’s comments yesterday about taking more oversight of the offense, it’s possible that we still don’t know exactly what Ciarrocca has in store this season.

For one thing, any coach is going to fit his scheme to available personnel, so Rutgers will probably utilize the run game and short passes more in 2009. The whole complicated scheme of new titles probably has more to do with promotions and pay raises than anything else. However, Kyle Flood is established enough at this point that, if he has any to say about it, Rutgers is going to be more of a smashmouth, running team in 2009; hardly the 2007 Blue Hens.

V.P. of East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming

Ok,  you might have been expecting Kirk Ciarrocca and Kyle Flood to jointly assume the vacant offensive coordinator position. And that’s exactly what happened today, with the open question remaining of who exactly has ultimate control over playcalling.

Greg Schiano stepping down as defensive coordinator would be another surprise in what has been a surprisingly busy week for the offseason. Before the unfortunate demise of Coach Demo, there had been speculation among the fanbase that he was being groomed as the D.C. of the future. Schiano has performed ably in the role, but it was a lot of responsibility for a tireless workaholic who has spent many a night in his office. It’s titles abound apparently; splitting the role between linebackers coach Bob Fraser and secondary coach Ed Pinkham comes entirely out of left field.

There’s still two open positions on staff, one for a graduate assistant. The QB and RB coach slots are vacant, although it’s entirely possible that Ciarrocca could assume QB duties and/or vacate the WR role. I’ve been reading up on his tenure at Delaware recently. It remains to be seen whether he would incorporate a few of the spread elements that he used in Newark.

2/24 Recruiting Update

Introducing T.J. Cummings:

Maryland, Rutgers and Duke told Clemmings he could play football in their respective programs, and on Wednesday, Notre Dame joined the mix.

Corey Brown now has an Alabama offer in hand.

Khairi Fortt seems like the other big name in the Northeast right now.

Fortt has visited Connecticut, Rutgers, Maryland, Virginia and Boston College.  Next weekend Fortt plans to visit Cal.

“We haven’t narrowed things down yet,” Fortt said.  “Right now we are just going out and seeing colleges and evaluating them.  We’re gathering information.  We’ll narrow it down some later in the spring.”

Savon Huggins is already getting hype for 2011.

In case Oklahoma fans missed it in my recruiting notebook from the Five Star Academy held in New Jersey this past Sunday, St. Peter’s Prep (Jersey City, N.J.) 2011 stud running back Savon Huggins idolizes former Sooners running back Adrian Peterson. That could give OU a great shot when the recruiting heats up on Huggins, who wears No. 28 in high school because of Peterson, has an upright running style like Peterson and has a similar build to Peterson at the same stage.

Connecticut back Silas Redd finally picked up an offer from Rutgers. However, any article with a headline like “Redd: ‘Penn State is my dream school’” tells you all you need to know here.

How is there still enough material for these?

At least one Akron Beacon columnist is high on Mack Rhoades, and fearful of losing him. Scarlet Scuttlebutt had more on all three candidates yesterday. They’ll all be on campus today, and a decision could be days away.

Coach Demo is interviewing for the DB coach vacancy at USF.

The Scarlet-White game is scheduled for April 18th.

There’s a lot of smoke from the Cincinnati side that the Bearcats will open at Rutgers on Friday, September 4th.

Paul Franklin and M.A. Mehta agree: the women’s basketball team needs more of a contribution from the freshmen.

To follow up on Vinny DiTrani’s column yesterday, one PFW blogger was down on Kenny Britt’s performance in receiving drills. If that’s accurate, Britt still had a good weekend with a relatively strong time in the forty yard dash. Combined with his tremendous production, that’s a solid all-around package for any NFL team to consider. I think NFL teams know that Britt can play and is a tremendous athlete. They’ve done their film evaluations; the Combine is for filling in the gaps. More important for him was assuaging any concerns in his interviews (hence, why I tried to show a bit of what goes into that yesterday). Courtney Greene runs today.

Gary Brackett recently gave a talk about hardship and overcoming adversity to a student audience at Ball State. Hey, isn’t that Randall Pinkett’s turf?

Entering his ninth season, Greg Schiano is actually one of the longest-tenured current FCS coaches. Dave Curtis wants him to tackle the environment next.

Buried in today’s Trentonian:

Hvy: Rutgers football fans are going to love Abington’s undefeated David Osei.

Speaking of wrestling, their final dual meet of the season is on Friday at Bloomsburg, and then they’ll prepare for the EIWA Championships in Philadelphia.

Governor Corzine has nominated PSE&G chairman Ralph Izzo to the Rutgers University Board of Governors.

Rutgers news: new director of Zimmerli talks to the Targum, and psychology researchers claim that infants have more capacity to learn than previously believed.

No time to point fingers

Reading the anonymous criticism of a potential Tim Pernetti hire, that somewhat echoes the sentiment from two other pieces from over the weekend. Paul Franklin said that the RAC needs repairs, and LFBall wonders about Rutgers following the “Penn State model” of becoming strictly a football school (their athletic department is run by a former assistant coach). I’m unclear as to how deep and prevalent this sentiment is, but it’s out there to some extent.

Hopefully, the meaningful parties involved will be able to compromise when it comes to the hard choices of resource allocation. Rutgers has clearly at this point cast its lot as a football school, and that’s not going to change. Poor facilities don’t do Fred Hill any favors. There’s plenty of blame to go around, but the the onus for this season rests mostly on his shoulders. He’s only really brought in two full classes to this point, but didn’t bring in a Big East-caliber point guard among them. Inman and Chandler have regressed on his watch.

There doesn’t seem to be  a Dick Hale-type figure for basketball who can give them the helping hand that they need right now. I also have the suspicion that no one would be complaining about what a dump the RAC is if the team played well enough to garner even Waters-era crowds. DEVCO has been looking into a NB arena for some time. It’s not going to happen though until the team starts winning games on the court.

I’m not really comfortable making any further assessments of each candidate’s qualifications. It’s easy to make the obvious assumptions about Pernetti, but as Luicci points out, that doesn’t necessarily mean that he’ll neglect everything else. Mehrtens comes from a school with no football team, but she’s also an Alabama alumnus. There’s just so much uncertainity – with each candidate, and trying to piece together how they’ll fit in here. If anti-Pernetti partisans from the athletic department search committee are already leaking to the press, then at least Rutgers athletics will be in for more of the same in that respect.

Speaking of leaks, when looking at the committee, you’d have to assume that the leaker is someone who already has a relationship with the press. Looking at that list, and checking back on a few old columns for any direct quotes or hints narrows down the field a fair bit.

Regardless of candidate or agenda, assignment number one in a long series ought to be mending any infighting and lingering resentment, and getting every notable faction on the same page. If not ceased (it is Rutgers, after all), then any remaining squabbles must be dealt with in a professional and appropriate manner. Want to shake things up? That university-wide culture is one place to start.

Other news

After only a year at Rhode Island, Darren Rizzi is stepping down to take a job with the Miami Dolphins. That is quite the rough break for their players that transferred in from Rutgers. Rizzi formerly worked under Miami HC Tony Sparano a few years back.

Same old story yesterday: clawing out of an early hole before running out of gas. It’s been a trying year for Hamady N’Diaye.

The women’s basketball team beat Providence.

KB did make the top of the Times’s sports section today. Their requisite combine story notes that

Scott McKillop, a linebacker from Pittsburgh, said he was discussing his mother when a scout suddenly blurted, “Have you ever smoked marijuana?”

which is probably par for the course. Peter King has a similar account today, detailing the “speed dating” process, with an anecdote notable only for its pure audacity.

My favorite story involved a defensive coach for one team asking Ohio State linebacker James Laurinaitis why they should pick him. “Tell me something,” the coach said. “When is the last time a linebacker from Ohio State came to the NFL and was worth a s—?” That shook the Buckeye out of whatever confident zone he might have entered the room in.

Of course, the Giants are notorious for taking their Combine psychological tests to another level entirely, so you can imagine that they’re doing their homework on Britt. Their team psychologist, Joel Goldberg, notoriously stopped Bob Tisch from rehiring Bill Parcells in 1997, and red-flagged Jeremy Shockey several years later, but was fine with signing Christian Peter. Andy Levitre recounted his take on the NYG test yesterday:

The one test that got on my nerves a little was the test given by the New York Giants which consisted of 260, yes that is TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY questions plus another packet of 70 short answer questions after you finished that.

Britt and Underwood largely lived up to expectations in the forty yard dash. Britt put up impressive numbers on the bench press, and Underwood struggled there but excelled in other areas. Now it’s Courtney Greene’s turn today tomorrow. Local facilities TEST and Parisi’s both had several players at the Combine.

Screw the haters, Bill Belichick is awesome (too bad Lax isn’t winning much these days).

Wearing a red and black Rutgers lacrosse zip pullover rather than his usual loose-fitting Patriots gear, Belichick touched on a lot of topics

I had never heard of Scarlet and White Cardboard, but apparently that blog is shutting down. It has several good scans of RU alumni NFL cards. Really good stuff, and now I’m remorseful over losing something I never knew existed.

Baseball won one game in the Miami series, which is about what could have been expected. Watch out for Todd Frazier in Cincinnati’s spring training.

The poor economy and increased tuition costs are hurting Rutgers admissions. Dorms are still overcrowded though.

The big exception to this trend is the state’s flagship university, Rutgers, where applications are running 2 percent below this time last year. “I wish I could explain it,” said Courtney McAnuff, vice president of enrollment.

Rutgers physicists may be able to increase the efficiency of semiconductors.

AD search news

Per Luicci: it’s down to Tim Pernetti, Kelly Mehrtens, and Mack Rhoades. That list looks uninspiring on the surface, but Rutgers is a difficult situation at the moment, and that could be a stumbling block to potential candidates. This is a job where the previous AD unceremoniously fired by the school’s president after being given a vote of confidence (and doing exactly what the president had asked of him). Mulcahy was canned because an influential legislator threatened the entire school’s purse strings. It’s potentially a rewarding opportunity, but also brimming with difficulty and risk.

It’s best to withhold final judgment until all the details come out over the next several days. You have to assume Chris Hill wasn’t interested, and K-Mac was seen as too close to Mulcahy. Keith Sargeant’s report implies that Pernetti is the favorite by quoting an anonymous source opposed to his candidacy.

“”My whole goal since this process started was to see that all Rutgers sports are represented, not just football,” the person said. “”By hiring Pernetti, you might as well hire Greg Schiano. That’s why we’re in this mess in the first place. I liked Bob (Mulcahy), but he could never say no to Greg.”

Football does and should come first, but that’s a legitimate concern. Pernetti does come off as on the ball, but his lack of experience sticks out like a sore thumb. Would he have any interest in a role as director of football operations while being groomed for the head chair? Rick Greenspan is the most interesting name on Sargeant’s list of phase one candidates, but I’d imagine that the Kelvin Sampson debacle was a red flag.

It looks like a green group, but you do have to start somewhere As a basis for comparison, I looked at several peer schools to see what credentials their athletic directors had before taking their current positions.

• Debbie Yow at Maryland worked at Florida and UNC Greensboro before getting her first AD gig at Saint Louis.
• Pitt’s Steve Pederson paid his dues at Nebraska and Ohio State.
• Pederson originally came up through the football ranks, as did Tim Curley at PSU – the key differences with Pernetti being that they both had a lot more experience in administration.
• Jeff Hathaway at UConn was the K-Mac to Lew Perkins’s Mulcahy, before briefly leaving for the top job at Colorado State and returning when Perkins left for Kansas.
• Craig Littlepage at UVA was a basketball coach (who did a poor job at Rutgers), before getting into administration for a decade on his way to the AD chair.

Any ideal candidate for the opening would have administrative experience at a large state school, fundraising skills, and be familiar with with the Northeast. Solely on the basis of their resumes, Mehrtens looks like an attractive candidate due to the magic words ”Kansas”, “Illinois”, and “Miami”.

Any candidates that have progressed this far presumably do want the job. The Akron Beacon says that Rhoades does.