Dueling videos: Rutgers AD Julie Hermann, then and now
A lawsuit in 1997 alleged that Julie Hermann, who was a head volleyball coach at Tennessee at that time, discouraged an assistant coach from getting pregnant. The coach, Ginger Hineline, won $150,000 in the suit against the school. Hermann, during her introductory press conference as new Rutgers athletic director, was asked about the lawsuit, specifically the comments that she had made that was caught on camera during Hineline’s wedding.
By Steve Politi/Star-Ledger Columnist
So the woman hired to clean up the mess after an abusive coach was, herself, an abusive coach.
Congratulations, Rutgers. You really have outdone yourself this time.
Julie Hermann should never have been hired as athletic director. If the allegations from her former Tennessee volleyball players are true – and there are too many of those players for them to be dismissed – then, in the mid-1990s, Hermann was not much different than the man who made Rutgers the worst kind of punch line.
She was not much different than Mike Rice, terrorizing her players with “mental cruelty” and labeling them “whores, alcoholics and learning disabled,” according to a letter from members of the 1996 team.
The charges are chilling, and all these years later, the women on those teams have nothing to gain from lying. They said Hermann ridiculed them over their weight, pulled them from games and made them do 100 pushups on the sideline and denied them showers or meals after losses.
“We have been lied to, publicly humiliated, and ripped apart as both players and people,” the two-page letter obtained by The Star-Ledger reads.
And now, Rutgers figures to be publicly humiliated again, and its community ripped further apart.
How did Rutgers let this happen? Who, exactly, does the vetting for this university? This was not some month-long investigation that found these players. They were contacted during the basic reporting that goes into any profile of a public figure in an important job.
“I will recruit an AD that shares my vision or I won’t hire him,” Rutgers president Robert Barchi promised two weeks before he hired Hermann, but once again, his school failed to do the thorough background check that could have prevented another PR nightmare.
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