May 14, 2010 – Let’s face it, the floated, then rebutted, rumor that Notre Dame, Nebraska, Missouri and Rutgers are being explored as Big Ten additions is just a tease. Everyone knows Notre Dame would be welcome. Nebraska, too. Missouri remains an active pursuant of the rumor. But what about Rutgers? What about their rep of not being able to get out of its own way when it comes to progress?

These are the same guys that asked Bob Mulcahy to take them to the Big Leagues and then fired him. The same folks who spent to improve the football stadium, then threw Mulcahy under the team bus for spending on it, as soon as the Jersey economy failed. They hired and admired head coach Greg Schiano, then bitched about his salary.

The critics are first to dismiss RU as a logical candidate. The only thing they can bring is the New York media market, a pretty big chip, but with deeper review, there are obvious flaws with this match. Rutgers doesn’t compete at a Big Ten level and even with a $545 million endowment (paltry in Big Ten terms) and an Association of American Universities research acredidation, they wonder who is going to tune in for Rutgers-Indiana along 1-95?

The first critics of this opportunity will be the group of decison makers at Rutgers. The Board of Governors. A more underqualified and lackluster group you couldn’t possibly assemble. These folks make major league umpires strike zone decisions look good. They answer to few directly, if you want to refer to the New Jersey legislature as anything close to an answer.

Ruled by a limp president in Richard McCormick and including academic versus athletic factions as well as Fred Zoffinger, a guy who never attended Rutgers, avoids paying NJ taxes by living in Pennsylvania, and remains the anti-athletic critic, having already led the brigade against uncontrolled spending on the football complex (leading to the axing of his arch-rival Bob Mulcahy) and predicted (wrongly) head football coach Greg Schiano’s replacing of Joe Paterno at Penn State.

Zoffinger, once-upon-a-time, wanted Mulcahy’s job and didn’t get it. His largest claims to fame are resigning as chairman of the New Jersey Exposition Authority (appointed by the governor) because he hired his own son’s lawfirm, his being a member of former governor Jim Florio’s cabinet (Florio was probably the largest contributor to the current NJ multi-billion dollar budget debt), a crony of John A. Lynch, former NJ political power broker, now inmate, and guiding light behind Xanadu, the ugly, incomplete and empty shopping mall, now gathering dust at the Meadowlands complex. He’s an example of the quality of New Jersey political appointments, which, as a state-funded school, is what drives Rutgers.

Then you have the academics that rail against spending dollars on sports to the detriment of learning. A noble argument, but one lost in their ignorance. It’s 2010, and these guys haven’t figured out that sports are the most prominent revenue-generating profit center that a university could possibly have.

Notre Dame always gets the play when it comes to well balanced athletics/academics. Notre Dame receives $15 million from NBC to exclusively televise their 12 football games. Approximately $3 to $5 million of that money has been earmarked yearly to Notre Dame academics, and currently totals nearly $85 million. The Big Ten TV deal pays each of the 11 schools $22 million annually. With the proposed expansion that number will grow.

And so William C. Dowling, a onetime RU English teacher and the founding father of the “Rutgers 1000,” an anti-Rutgers athletics group, wonders how many professor’s salaries, tenures, pensions for life, benefits packages for life and all the other glitter that goes with a profession largely froth with sandbaggers, that head football coach Greg Schiano’s $2.07 million salary (Notre Dame’s Brian Kelly was paid $3 million to take over that program this season) would pay, and how the $102 million expense of the Rutgers Stadium could also benefit his colleagues. Norman Glickman, a professor of planning and public policy at Rutgers, argues that a move to compete with bigger football programs would require spending even more money than the $102 million for the stadium upgrades. He argues that the Big Ten games will not be played in that stadium, but at the Meadowlands. What these guys need to do is take a remedial math class and a open a sports page.

Of course, the Michigan’s, Nebraska’s, Notre Dame’s, Penn State’s and Ohio State’s should be played in a stadium with an 82,500 capacity, parking, special suites and dozens of other profit center features. The current version of Rutgers Stadium at approximately 52,500, would be similar to Indiana (52,692) and bigger than Minnesota (50,805) and Northwestern (49,256). There would unquestionably be games both on and off campus, if someone with business sense were allowed by the dopey Board of Governors to call the shots. I’d bet a Rutgers math degree that the university grosses about $2 million per on-campus home game. At the Meadowlands, the number would be more like $6 million.

Ticket prices will certainly increase and add to revenue. Nearly 30,000 more tickets could be sold at the Meadowlands Stadium. Season tickets and club box demand would increase as New York-transplanted followers of Big Ten teams join the ticket demand. Concessions and parking revenue would also expect a bump. Rutgers’ current athletic budget is widely posted at $58.3 million and it’s profit was $159,641. What a joke the academics and Zoffinger cry.

Estimates put Big East shared revenues at $33 million with nearly $20 million coming from its 16 basketball schools. That’s a grand total of about $2 million to each school. The forecasted Super Big Ten projects the current $22 million split to grow to $30 million with the new schools and impending new contracts. That’s just from the Big Ten Network. Gate receipts are separate, froth with operating partners and percentages, but for Rutgers to host Michigan at the new Meadowlands Stadium, they’d likely double what they take in on campus.

Let’s see, Rutgers board of governors, stay where you are and bitch and find ways expand on that $159,000 a year profit? Or invest in yourself and find ways to improve Rutgers with $30 million plus a year. All without a bond issue and without tax increases at a time when Rutgers stands to lose $46.6 million this year from its state funding.

Has Governor Chris Christie done this math? Has anyone at Rutgers?