Struggling to emerge from the shadow of the Mike Rice — the men’s basketball coach fired after video showed him assaulting his players — Rutgers hired Julie Hermann, a new athletic director they hope would make things better.
Well, last night, a little less than a month before Hermann is set to assume her new post, The (Newark) Star-Ledger dropped a bombshell of a report. If you read a piece of journalism today, it should be that.
Sixteen years ago, when Hermann was a volleyball coach for the University of Tennessee her entire team wrote a scathing letter with allegations of the same kind of abuse that got Rice fired.
“We have been publically (sic) humiliated, and ripped apart as both players and people. The Lady Vol image is one of respect, pride and hard work. It is very difficult to respect someone who refers to her players as whores, alcoholics and learning disabled,” the players wrote. “We have tried to suppress these feelings and just play the game. However, the mental aspect of a sport is often the most important and in Julie Hermann’s gym the only emotion is fear.”
Hermann told the paper she did not remember the letter. Her reaction when the reporter read it to her: “Wow.”
Hermann was fired from her job as the volley coach and when the paper reached out to Joan Cronin, the former athletic director at Tennessee, she too said, “I don’t remember the that letter.”
“I knew we had disgruntled players, knew they were unhappy with where they were going,” Cronin told the paper. But “I don’t remember intense disgruntlement.”
However, the paper reached out to all 15 players who were on the team at the time. Eleven of them went on the record saying they remember signing the letter. Some of them added details of the abuse they say they endured under Hermann.
It’s worth reading the entire Star-Ledger report, so please click over.
We’ve reached out to Rutgers for comment, but they did not immediately respond. We’ll update this post once they do.
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