The quick series of moves that saw Julie Hermann fired as head of athletics at Rutgers University, together with head football coach Kyle Flood, and the hiring that same evening of Pat Hobbs to the high-profile role, came without a search committee, with apparently limited internal discussion, and seemingly without much warning. Watch video
NEW BRUNSWICK-- Nine days before Patrick Hobbs was hired to become the new Rutgers University athletic director, he was out on a golf course in South Carolina when a text message popped up on his phone.
Got a few minutes to talk?
The former dean of Seton Hall School of Law, Hobbs--an avid golfer who scores regularly in the low 90s--was on paid sabbatical, recently divorced and thinking about what to do next in his life besides work on his golf game. He had plenty of time to talk to John Farmer Jr., who had sent the text.
"I was pretty vague," laughed Farmer, the former state attorney general now serving as special counsel to Rutgers University President Robert Barchi.
It was Friday, Nov. 20, and Hobbs soon called back. He was told Barchi was looking to make major changes in the university's troubled athletics department. They wanted someone to step in right away.
Was he interested?
The quick series of moves that saw Julie Hermann fired last Sunday as head of athletics at Rutgers University, together with head football coach Kyle Flood, and the hiring that same evening of Hobbs to the high-profile role, came without a search committee, with apparently limited internal discussion, and seemingly without much warning.
According to key officials, Barchi only met Hobbs for the first time that Monday, Nov. 23, three days after Farmer tracked him down in South Carolina.
"They hit it off really well," said Farmer, a former counterpart of Hobbs as dean of Rutgers-Newark law school.
Indeed, by Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, an offer was on the table--even before the football season ended with a collapse in the final game against Maryland.
Barchi has not said what led him to decide to terminate the contracts of Hermann and Flood, other than to say he had decided the previous week that a change in leadership was needed.
"The board and I decided that it was an appropriate time for us to take a new direction, and we asked Kyle Flood and Julie Hermann to step down from their positions," Barchi said at a meeting of the university's board of trustees on Thursday in New Brunswick. "We also recognized that we would need to recruit a new football coach very quickly, that's the way it is done in D1 football, and that we would do that best with a permanent AD, and we had numerous discussions over a period of days."
Rutgers' President Robert Barchi: "It was an appropriate time for us to take a new direction...." (Patti Sapone | Star-Ledger file photo)It had been a disaster of a season for the Scarlet Knights. Rutgers had been on a bad streak in the weeks leading up to the shakeup at the top. It lost badly to its major Big Ten rivals -- losing four straight games by a combined score of 177-47. In fact, Rutgers had not fared well since moving into the Big Ten conference before the 2014 season, going 12-13 overall, and 4-12 against conference opponents.
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But even before the team's death spiral, scandal had rocked the locker room this fall with the arrests of several key players charged in a series of assaults and home invasions, as well as reports of failed drug tests. One of those arrested, Lloyd Terry, a backup fullback dismissed from the team after he was charged with armed robbery, told police he became addicted to marijuana at school and that he failed multiple drug tests while on the team, prosecutors revealed during a bail hearing.
In addition, Flood was suspended for three games and fined $50,000 for improperly contacting a faculty member in an effort to boost the grade of a key cornerback deemed academically ineligible to play.
And if empty seats at Rutgers' High Point Stadium were any indication, it had become clear that there was dwindling enthusiasm for the program, as the season turned into a disaster.
The tenure of Hermann had been rocky as well. Hired in 2013 after her popular predecessor, Tim Pernetti, was ousted in the fallout over the abusive courtside behavior of former basketball coach Mike Rice toward his players, some university insiders said Hermann never clicked with fans or connected with the alumni base.
Before she first moved into her office at the Rutgers Athletic Center, allegations from the past surfaced, charging that she had bullied players while coaching volleyball at Tennessee in the mid-'90s. Perceived as aloof, she was also accused of not being truthful about speaking to the parents of a Rutgers football player who quit the team after claims of being bullied by a coach.
In her place comes Hobbs, who has had experience weathering controversy as interim athletic director at Seton Hall, has been successful at raising money and perhaps most importantly, knows how to navigate New Jersey politics.
Putting Seton Hall on the map
Hobbs, who grew up in Maplewood, attended nearby Seton Hall University, where he earned an accounting degree and graduated with magna cum laude honors in 1982. He earned his law degree from the University of North Carolina three years later, and then a master of laws degree in taxation from New York University law school in 1988.
After spending a few years practicing corporate and tax law, first at the Hannoch Weisman law firm in Roseland and later at Shanley & Fisher in Morristown, Hobbs was hired as a faculty member at Seton Hall University's law school in Newark in 1990. He rose quickly, becoming associate dean for finance five years after his arrival and dean of the law school within a decade. Under his leadership, Seton Hall's law school rose in the U.S. News and World Report rankings from a third-tier law school to No. 63 in the nation.
The young dean also became a star fundraiser, trying to draw donations to a law school with a relatively meager endowment. He launched "Seton Hall Law Rising," the school's most ambitious fundraising campaign in its history, in 2007. Within five years, Hobbs helped raise more than $25 million and landed donations from 70 percent of the law school's alumni.
Hobbs had experience with high level sports as well, serving as Seton Hall's temporary athletic director during a tumultuous time for the university. At the request of Monsignor Robert Sheeran, Seton Hall's then-president, Hobbs took over temporary management of the school's Division 1 sports program from 2009 to 2011. At the time, abrasive basketball coach Bobby Gonzalez was making headlines for clashing with then-athletic director Joe Quinlan.
But overhauling Seton Hall's sports programs was not easy. Some of the behind-the-scenes drama was chronicled in court papers filed after Gonzalez sued Seton Hall over his dismissal. In one profanity-filled phone call, the basketball coach exploded.
"Nobody's gonna tell me how to run my [expletive] program. Not you, not Monsignor, not Joe Quinlan. This is my [expletive] program. My [expletive] program," Gonzalez raged, according to court papers filed by Seton Hall.
Hobbs was credited with firing Gonzalez, easing out longtime Seton Hall women's basketball coach Phyllis Mangina and leading the search for their replacements. He also helped push out Quinlan as athletic director and bring in new management. Along the way, Hobbs also cut four Seton Hall sports and balanced the athletic department's budget.
"The success of the sports programs brings a lot of light to the good things we do at the university. It matters," Hobbs said at the time.
Building the Rock
Hobbs made a name for himself outside of the law school as well. He received high marks for leading a high-profile commission in Newark that reviewed and approved a plan to invest $210 million in city money in building what eventually became the Prudential Center. The law school dean also helped personally mediate a $50 million funding dispute between the city and the owners of the Devils that helped keep the arena project on track.
"He was a tremendous help in getting it done," said Jeff Vanderbeek, the former majority owner of the New Jersey Devils who was instrumental in getting the Prudential Center built. "These deals are tough and both sides in any tough negotiation always wonder if the person charged with helping is favoring one side. But Pat was beyond reproach. He literally rolled up his sleeves. He wasn't at 30,000 feet. One day we spent 10 hours at his office and followed it up at his house."
Later, Seton Hall would play its home basketball games at the Rock.
Patrick Hobbs, outside the completed Prudential Center in Newark. (Matt Futterman | Star-Ledger file photo)Outside of Seton Hall, Hobbs played a role in politics and state government. He was appointed in 2004 to the State Commission of Investigation, the state agency that investigates corruption and waste, by Gov. James E. McGreevey. Though a registered Democrat, Hobbs became a confidante of Gov. Chris Christie. The Republican governor tapped Hobbs to serve on his transition team and named him SCI chairman in 2010.
When Christie's administration became bogged down in the Bridgegate scandal, Hobbs took on the $75,000-a-year job of Christie's ombudsman. The position recommended in a report by the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher which was hired by the state Attorney General's office to conduct an internal review of the governor's office in response to the September 2013 lane shutdowns at the George Washington Bridge. Hobbs used the newly-created post to oversee ethics and whistleblower initiatives in Christie's administration, including new ethics training for 140 employees.
Christie, who said he was not consulted on the decision by Rutgers, voiced support for the choice.
"There's things that need to be done at Rutgers to straighten out that operation, and so I'm glad they've picked Pat," said Christie from New Hampshire, where he is campaigning for the Republican nomination for president. "I'm happy for him and happy for Rutgers."
When Hobbs announced he was stepping down as Seton Hall's law dean to take a sabbatical last year, many at the school assumed Hobbs was interviewing for college president jobs or exploring a job in politics or state government. Over the years, Hobb's name has been mentioned as a possible candidate for everything from state Attorney General to New Jersey Supreme Court justice and president of various universities, including Seton Hall.
Few expected his next job would be leading Rutgers athletics.
But fellow professor Kathleen Boozang, a friend who started at Seton Hall on the same day as Hobbs and succeeded him as head of Seton Hall School of Law, wasn't entirely surprised.
"His passion is and has always been sports," she said.
Interim turns permanent
Farmer said he first learned Barchi was considering a move on the athletic director position the day he first reached Hobbs on the golf course.
"Clearly by Friday, Dr. Barchi was thinking about it or he wouldn't have called me," he said. "He reached out and asked me if I knew anyone who could step in as AD."
Hobbs was the first name that came to mind. While the two were not close friends, they knew each other as law school deans and occasionally had lunch together. They even coached against each other in a basketball matchup of height-challenged law students in which neither opted to put in a 'ringer.'
John Farmer, the former attorney general and Rutgers-Newark law school dean who serves as special counsel to Rutgers President Robert Barchi, reached out to Hobbs. (Tony Kurdzuk | Star-Ledger file photo)"I thought he would be a good fit," said Farmer. "I knew that Pat was on sabbatical and, as a result, might be available on short notice. I also thought that, coming from a career in academia and with his background as chair of the SCI and his training as a lawyer, Pat would be able to harmonize the athletics imperatives with academic and compliance values."
Farmer added that Hobbs had received high marks from everybody.
"He had to make difficult decisions at Seton Hall and he did," he said. "And he knows New Jersey. It won't take him six months to find out where Edison is."
After introducing Hobbs to Barchi on Monday, Farmer stepped out of the picture as additional meetings that week were set up with Greg Brown, chairman of the Rutgers board of governors, and with Kenneth Schmidt, who heads the board's athletics committee.
Barchi said he had initially set out to find an interim director of athletics who could stabilize the department before launching a national search, but the play soon changed in the days leading up to Thanksgiving.
"We really were looking for someone who had impeccable credentials and the highest ethical activity, someone who was known throughout the state and the government and in the business and academic communities; someone who had experience both in academia and in athletics," he said at the trustees meeting last week.
Barchi said it was clear to everyone that Hobbs had the attributes required for the university's next director of athletics.
Hobbs, in an interview, recounted his meeting with Barchi from his own perspective.
"We started talking about it as sort of an interim possibility, and the more we kept exploring it and what I thought about the opportunity and what he thought I might be able to do, it turned," Hobbs said. "Then it was, 'Would you do this?' And I said 'Heck, yeah, I'll do this.'"
When he went on sabbatical in June, Hobbs said he knew he wanted to pursue leadership opportunities in higher education again, but had decided he was going to take a year to think about what he wanted to do.
"This opportunity came along, and it just sort of was like the perfect fit and the perfect time," he remarked. "That's why I think this happened so quickly, because Dr. Barchi could see this was something I was looking for, and this was something he was looking for, so we're going to make it work."
At a Rutgers basketball game last week where he was introduced to fans, Hobbs appeared completely at ease talking to fans and reporters. Articulate and quick-witted, he mingled with those sitting courtside before the game and appeared on the big screen less than five minutes into the game. While on camera, he clapped and pumped his fist in the air several times.
"Things have been a little crazy the last 48 hours," he said.
Staff writer Ted Sherman contributed to this report.
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