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The president of Rutgers University said on Sunday that he had fired the university's athletics director and head football coach, the latest turmoil for a beleaguered sports program. In a letter to the campus, President Robert L. Barchi said he was terminating the contracts of Julie Hermann and Coach Kyle Flood without cause, saying the athletics program needed new leadership. Barchi said he had hired Patrick Hobbs, dean emeritus of the Seton Hall University School of Law and an ethics ombudsman for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, to replace Hermann.
Flood has been under intense pressure not only because Rutgers continues to struggle on the field (4-8 this season), but because a university investigation found that he had improperly contacted a professor about a player's academic situation. Hermann was hired as athletics director in 2013 in the wake of a former basketball coach's abuse of his players, but Rutgers has continued to struggle in multiple ways in athletics, including having among the heaviest financial subsidies of sports by students and the university.
