UPDATE: Senior Associate Athletic Director Jason Baum has reported that Mike Rice has been fired.
Videos of Rutgers basketball coach Mike Rice throwing balls at players, cursing at them, shoving them and calling them homophobic slurs has been obtained by ESPN. ESPN did some great reporting on Tuesday during Outside the Lines when they interviewed the Rutgers Athletic Director Tim Pernetti about these videos. Pernetti did a lot of back-peddling and tried to justify their response to the incident, but there is no way to defend something ridiculous like this.
It’s one thing to yell at players and try to fire them up, but once you start getting physical with players and yelling homophobic slurs at them that is completely unacceptable. Apparently Rutgers knew about this and that is why he received a three-game suspension in the fall.
ESPN reporter Don Van Natta Jr said on Outside the Lines that this behavior was seen in the first practice Mike Rice ran 2.5 years ago, so it isn’t a new thing. How this has been allowed to go on for over two years is completely beyond me, Rice should be fired immediately.
Van Natta also reported that:
About 30 minutes of the video was viewed in December by athletic director Tim Pernetti, who suspended Rice for three games that month and fined him $50,000. But the incidents in the videos obtained by “Outside the Lines” appear to go beyond Pernetti’s description at the time of “inappropriate behavior and language” between Rice and his players. When he announced the suspension on Dec. 13, Pernetti offered few specifics after conducting a week-long investigation.
In addition to Rice’s physical actions seen in the practices, Rice calls Rutgers players “fa–ots,” “mother—-ers,” “pu–ies,” “sissy b-tches,” and “c—-,” among other epithets.
Eric Murdock, an ex-NBA player and a former director of player development for the Scarlet Knights, told “Outside the Lines” that Rice’s “outrageous” behavior had caused at least three players to transfer from the team, including forward Gilvydas Biruta, who transferred to Rhode Island prior to last season.
You can read the whole article over at ESPN.com, it is an absolutely must-read story.