Rutgers Suspends Head Coach Kyle Flood For 3 Games Following Investigation Into Interaction With Faculty

The details are coming now. Flood not only emailed the professor, but had an in-person meeting -- and this was after he was told not to.

— Steve Politi (@StevePoliti) September 16, 2015

Good grief. Flood even "provided grammatical and minor editorial suggestions" to a paper in hopes of getting Nadir Barnwell eligible.

— Steve Politi (@StevePoliti) September 16, 2015

Flood: "I am sending it from my personal email to your personal email to ensure there will be no public vetting of the correspondence."

— Steve Politi (@StevePoliti) September 16, 2015

“Flood told the Professor that he purposely didn’t wear any Rutgers apparel so he wouldn’t be recognized in public."

— Steve Politi (@StevePoliti) September 16, 2015

NJ.com- Dear Members of the Rutgers Community:

Since our University was established almost 250 years ago, Rutgers has grown to become the State of New Jersey’s premier public institution of higher learning. With that designation, we have an obligation to provide outstanding educational opportunities, to ensure high quality and productive research, to serve the local, national and world communities, and to do so with integrity and a steadfast commitment to the central academic mission of our university. It is in this context that I provide you with the following report.  

Below is a brief summary of some of the major findings:  

• Coach Flood knew or should have known of well-established University policies prohibiting coach-initiated contact between coaches and members of the faculty regarding a student-athlete’s academic standing. The responsibility for such contact strictly rests with our athletics academic advisors under the purview of the Office of the New Brunswick Chancellor. Coach Flood used his personal email to contact the faculty member and had an in-person meeting with the faculty member regarding the academic standing of a member of the football team. The multiple email contacts came both before and after the meeting, which occurred at an off-campus location.
• A member of the athletics academic advising staff reported that she reminded Coach Flood, after he sent the initial email but before he had the in-person meeting with the faculty member, that he is not to have contact with any faculty member regarding a student’s academic standing. Coach Flood nevertheless moved forward with the previously scheduled meeting with the faculty member. 
• After meeting with Coach Flood, the faculty member agreed to review an additional paper as partial satisfaction for the requirements of a course the student had already completed. The paper was submitted to the faculty member but ultimately was not graded and the academic status of the student and his final course grade remained unchanged. 
• Coach Flood and the student both have acknowledged that Coach Flood provided grammatical and minor editorial suggestions to the submitted paper. The Office of Enterprise Risk Management, Ethics and Compliance consulted with senior campus academic officials, including the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and the Chancellor, Rutgers-New Brunswick, who both agreed, after reviewing the paper before and after the edits, that the assistance provided by Coach Flood was in line with standard student support offered on campus by student learning centers and did not constitute academic misconduct. 

I believe that the discipline is severe and justified for his failure to follow policy. I met with Coach Flood this afternoon and informed him of the suspension and the fine and he has accepted responsibility for his actions and my discipline. As a member of the faculty and as a former Provost myself, I know that Coach Flood’s actions in communicating with the faculty member crossed a line that all faculty hold dear. Our faculty must have complete independence in executing their duties and there is a reason why we prohibit athletics coaching staff from discussing the academic standing of students with faculty. We have policies in place to protect academic integrity and to ensure that any faculty member, whether tenured or untenured, whether full-time or part-time, is free of intimidation and interference by outside parties.

As a result of today’s findings, we are working with outside counsel to determine if any National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) bylaws have been violated. During the course of the investigation, we informed the NCAA Enforcement staff and we will be working with them on next steps. We will participate in the enforcement/infractions process per our conditions and obligations of membership in the NCAA.  

I have also asked Director of Athletics Julie Hermann to ensure that our compliance training and oversight regarding the athletics staff prohibition on inappropriate contact with faculty regarding a student-athlete is among the best in the nation. 

We have high expectations of every member of our community and no one is free from responsibility. We must use this opportunity to grow, to do more and to do better. And we will.  

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Robert Barchi
President



Of course. Of course, what many thought to be, the most minor in a grocery list of transgressions turns out to be something more. Why wouldn't it? Why wouldn't it take Rutgers take three weeks to investigate the interactions that the Head Coach of the football team had with a faculty member? Why wouldn't it come out two weeks after the whole secondary got arrested for assaulting students and invading homes? Why wouldn't it get wrapped up just three days after the captain of the team, Leonte Carroo, got arrested for domestic abuse? Why wouldn't it come less than 24 hours after ESPN aired a special ripping into the integrity of the Rutgers football program? Why wouldn't it come 24 hours before I fly cross country to go watch Rutgers play Penn State? Am I in the middle of a nightmare? Will someone, ANYONE, give me a pinch so I can wake up shivering in a cold sweat? Anything is better than this.

Okay, so there you have it. I defended Kyle Flood's right to e-mail a professor in an attempt to help a student athlete earn a better grade. Turns out ::cue Maury:: that was a lie! I guess my only question now is why the fuck are we suspending him for three games? Is it so we can face more public ridicule when he comes back in three weeks? Is it to hold us over during a season that he will likely, scratch that, should likely be fired after? Just rip the fucking band-aid off. Let's bang out all this media scrutiny at once. If any Rutgers football players want to commit any crimes of any kind, please do so right now or forever clutch your Bible. Why put lip stick on a pig? The ship in sinking, suspending the coach for 3 fucking games is nothing more than trying to pour buckets of water over the side of the Titanic.
The roof is caving in, why patch it up with duct tape, when we can just burn it to the fucking ground and start over with a new (or old, Cough-Schiano-Cough) renovator? 

Kyle Flood deserves to be fired. Not because of some cultural flaw in the program. Not because his players are a bunch of buffoons and got locked up. Not due to a lack of institutional control. He deserves to be fired because he interfered in academics. In an effort to go above and beyond for his players he went wayyyyyy beyond the letter of the law. If athletics and academics are truly that seperate then there is no reason to give him a three game slap on the wrist. He intentionally circumvented the intent of higher education. He tried to help a student get a grade he didn't earn so he could play football. I was wrong. The e-mail wasn't innocent. The meeting, that I just found out about 5 minutes ago, wasn't innocent.  He needs to lose his job, and with the backdrop of six arrests and a firestorm of backlash, there is no better time than now. Yes, I hate the fact that it would come just a day after the ESPN special, but I ultimately hate the fact that I will have to hear about this ALL SEASON even more. Give these kids, the ones that haven't done a damn thing wrong (yet), a chance to succeed under someone else's tutelage. They have already been through enough. I can barely take anymore of this, I don't know how 18-22 year old players that are actually a part of the program are handling it so well.

I still don't think Kyle Flood is a bad person, but he fucked up, and more importantly he KNEW he was fucking up while he was fucking up. To whom much is given, much is expected, and he didn't meet those expectations, so now he has to suffer the consequences. In a way, it's actually a good thing. He's in way over his head, and the water is only rising. There is no way he successfully comes out on the other end of this. Just put him out of his misery. No man, short of one that covers up child molestation (yesssss, still snuck in a Penn State joke on game week), deserves the amount of ridicule that Kyle Flood is destined to get if he remains the Head Coach of this team following his suspension. Hell, at this point he probably fears falling asleep knowing that every day for the last 3 weeks he's woken up to terrible news. He's like a handful of games from PTSD or a mental institution with all the shit he has been through, and since he is blatantly responsible for some of it, let's see if we can save him of that fate. That's what a real FAMILY would do.

Oh brother, where art thou....