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The price of glory for Rutgers
Sunday, November 5, 2006
By JEAN RIMBACH and PATRICIA ALEX
STAFF WRITERS
Rutgers football is riding high, enjoying a national ranking for the first time in more than a generation. But success hasn't come cheap.
There's $2,900 for an Atlantic-City-to- Manhattan helicopter ride for the million-dollar head coach.
It cost $10,000 to hobnob with the elite of college football at a black-tie dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria.
Rings, pendants and other mementos honoring the team's runner-up appearance in last year's Insight Bowl ran nearly $90,000.
A review of university financial records by The Record shows that, in its drive to become a football powerhouse, Rutgers has spent millions more on the team than it's taken in. Even the trappings are costly.
Leaders at the state's flagship public university say that's the price of competing -- a price they are willing to pay.
"We're doing it because of the extreme visibility of the football program and its importance to the image and reputation of the university," said President Richard McCormick.
While football spending has been climbing, and hit a new high of more than $13 million last season, Rutgers is coping with an $80 million shortfall in state aid. More than 600 jobs and 800 course sections have been lost. Six high-performing Olympic sports are being axed.
From bus schedules to library hours, students are feeling the pinch. Tuition is up 8 percent this year. At just under $20,000 for a full-time student who lives on campus, Rutgers is among the most expensive state universities in the nation.
"It's a straight upward line for the football team and a straight downward line for the academic and physical conditions here," said Richard Gundy, a statistics professor. "This is a political issue, not only within the university, but it should be a political issue in the state."
For some it's already decided.
"It's great for the university," said state Senate President Richard Codey, who proudly wears one of the Insight Bowl rings. "On New Year's Day, if there is a choice between watching the Gator Bowl or the academic bowl, I'd want to watch the Gator Bowl."
With fans in high places, Rutgers officials have embarked on a publicly funded quest to rise to the elite of Division I-A. It's a world where the key people are media and marketing executives, corporate sponsors, bowl officials and recruits -- and lavish spending is the norm.
Coach Greg Schiano, who's led the Scarlet Knights to an 8-0 start, is the highest paid state employee and will make more than $1 million this year. The university also pays $998 a month for his Cadillac Escalade and has spent at least $158,000 preparing a piece of its ecological preserve that Schiano bought to build a new home. <li type="square"> Despite a payout of $1.25 million, Rutgers lost money on the Insight Bowl appearance in Arizona last year. The university paid the way for an entourage of nearly 300, including school officials and family members. Bonuses totaling more than $200,000 were handed out to coaches and other staffers. It cost nearly $175,000 to put the team up at a local hotel for six home games; that item alone exceeds the entire budget for the tennis team, one of the six eliminated sports. The university has plowed millions into new facilities for football -- from $12.5 million for a state-of-the-art training center to $750,000 for synthetic grass. A flashy lobby display honoring the team ran $450,000. Subsidies needed
Rutgers officials see the football spending as part of an investment that's starting to pay off. The team is undefeated, home games are selling out and the future looks hopeful with a Heisman Trophy contender and commitments from star recruits. The athletic director thinks ticket sales will hit a high of $2.6 million by the end of the season.
Rutgers, says Athletic Director Robert E. Mulcahy III, has been trying to "catch up" to other schools in Division I-A, the most competitive tier in collegiate football. He bristles at being "nickled and dimed."
"People can make arguments about whether this expenditure should happen and that expenditure should happen -- I understand that," he said. "If you're not going to do things in a first-class fashion ... then you're not going to attract the kinds of recruiting classes that we've been able to attract in the last few years."
He also envisions the football program making money within five years.
A poll by The Record shows nearly two out of three New Jerseyans are aware of the team's growing prominence; of those expressing an opinion, a slight majority said it's worth the investment by Rutgers.
The team reached its perch -- last week it was ranked 15th by the Associated Press -- aided by a soft early schedule against teams not in its Big East Conference. Nonetheless, its midseason 20-10 victory over formidable Pittsburgh convinced even longtime skeptics that Rutgers, at last, might have what it takes.
Much is riding on Thursday night's game with Louisville. A victory would propel Rutgers to the top tier of the national rankings.
"These are heady times," said alumnus Joe Nackson, a Hackensack attorney who's a longtime season-ticket holder and a member of the Class of 1969. "We've been waiting 30 years in the wilderness and now we can see the Promised Land."
Football revenue is up -- most recently due to increased ticket sales and more television exposure. But so is spending.
Although Rutgers officials balked at releasing budget figures, it is clear that each year the university subsidizes football. Last year, the figure was $2.65 million in direct support and student fees, according to an unaudited statement. Each undergraduate in New Brunswick pays $270 a season in intercollegiate athletic fees. In return, students get free seats at all Rutgers sporting events.
Since Mulcahy took the reins in 1998, athletic spending has nearly doubled, hitting a high of more than $41 million last year -- about a third going for football.
"When I was brought in, the mandate I was given was to restructure the department, make it competitive and fix football," Mulcahy said. "I have the backing of the board of governors and I have the backing of the president."
But at Rutgers some are asking "what price glory?"
"Real students are being marginalized and cheated in 100 different ways," said William Dowling, an English professor and longtime critic of Rutgers' Division I-A buildup. "Now the financial situation makes more dramatic what big-time athletics does to an institution."
Unequal treatment
Mulcahy has invested his hopes -- and no small amount of public money -- in Schiano. A 40-year-old native of Wyckoff, he returned to New Jersey in 2000 after assistant coaching stints at Penn State, Miami and in the National Football League.
"Greg has justified all my confidence in what he's been able to accomplish," Mulcahy said
Under Schiano, Rutgers reversed its losing streak and headed to its first bowl since 1978 -- the December 2005 Insight Bowl matchup with Arizona State. The Scarlet Knights lost 45-40, and Rutgers overspent its payout, running up bills on travel, parties and the rings and other mementos given to state officials, Rutgers staff and relatives, in addition to players and coaches.
Governor Corzine took office in January, not long after the bowl game, and began to tackle a state budget gap of more than $4 billion, declaring "the games are over. New Jersey must put its fiscal house in order."
In February, Mulcahy rewarded Schiano with a new contract that pumped his pay by 75 percent. The new package put him more in line with other top coaches in the nation.
The next month, Corzine detailed a spending plan that cut support to higher education by $169 million. President McCormick pledged there would be no sacred cows at Rutgers.
Football spending was not cut, but in May, Mulcahy sent a plan to McCormick calling for the elimination of as many as eight other sports.
His original proposal included wrestling and gymnastics, but they were spared. However, six sports, with combined budgets estimated by Mulcahy at $800,000, were not. Men's swimming and diving, heavyweight and lightweight crew, tennis, and men's and women's fencing will be dropped.
"I don't want to bad-mouth football. I'm a fan, I watch the games," said Matthew Gitterman, a graduate and former member of the tennis team. "But as a taxpayer of New Jersey, you start to scratch your head."
Mulcahy said it's about priorities. Rutgers is one of only three schools in the six major conferences that have 30 or more sports and the others -- Ohio State and Stanford -- have much larger athletic budgets.
"It was a shock to us," said Steve Wagner, coach of the crew team, Rutgers' oldest sport. The axed sports have strong athletic and academic records, with student grade-point averages ranging from 2.9 to 3.1 and graduation rates of nearly 100 percent.
Rutgers administration has lauded Schiano for improving the academics of the football team, which has a GPA of 2.58. McCormick notes that no player has left the team for academic reasons under his watch. Records show Schiano got a $25,000 bonus because of his players' academic progress. The team has a six-year graduation rate of 58 percent, according to the NCAA.
Supporters of the eliminated sports have appealed to the Legislature for reinstatement.
"The decision to cut these teams says to me that I should follow the crowd, money is the measure of success -- forget my passion," said Alexis Jemal, a former member of the fencing team. "It's better to be a bench warmer as part of a money-making sport than to be the NCAA champion in the sport I cherish."
The profit motive
Mulcahy makes no apologies for his focus on the marquee sports. He believes that men's basketball will one day be able to cover the cost of the women's team. He also sees football becoming self-sustaining, even profitable, within five years, and donations to athletics nearly doubling, to $10 million.
But experts note it takes more than one or two winning seasons to create a dominant college football program -- particularly in a state such as New Jersey, where there are three pro teams close by.
"If they have a $3 million deficit in football it's a chase for the Holy Grail," said Andrew Zimbalist, an economist at Smith College who has studied college sports. "It's not absolutely inconceivable that they'd ever become a surplus department, but it's quite unlikely, and a hundred other schools are out there trying to do the same thing."
Of the 1,000 schools in the NCAA, Zimbalist said, there are "a half-dozen to a dozen in any particular year that have a true surplus in their athletic programs. If you want to be an athletic department that has a surplus, you'd better be one of the top 10 football programs and do it consistently."
A 2005 NCAA study showed that, for most football and men's basketball programs in Division I, spending more money doesn't necessarily improve the bottom line.
To be sure, there are money-making football programs, and the payoff can be big: Michigan and Texas each reported surpluses of more than $35 million in 2004-05, according to reports filed with the federal government. A trip to a top bowl can yield a payout of $14 million to $17 million.
Indeed, nearly all the current Top 25 schools reported a surplus in football during 2004-05.
But the reports don't always tell the whole story. In that year, Rutgers reported that its football program broke even with $10.7 million in revenue. But that total counted as revenue nearly $3 million in university support and student fees.
Big football costs, such as stadium construction and debt service, very often are not included in athletic budgets.
The reports show that Rutgers spends as much as Michigan on football.
Robert H. Frank, an economics professor at Cornell, studied the revenue potential of Division I-A programs for the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics.
"If you're a school that has a history -- a University of Michigan, a University of Texas -- there are some built-in advantages," said Frank. "For somebody coming in from the outside hoping to crack that circle, it's almost certainly a losing proposition."
McCormick, the Rutgers president, also is wary of Mulcahy's prediction of a football team that could be a cash cow.
"Bob says five years? Good luck," said McCormick. "We're not doing this to make money."
Attracting donors
Boosters say a high-profile football program brings a host of benefits to the university. Some are intangible: good feelings, free publicity, happy alumni.
The televised Insight Bowl was a "three-hour infomercial" for Rutgers, said Mulcahy. "Those three hours were worth how many millions of dollars? But more importantly it's the sense of community that the university feels."
Winning teams also can reap a surge, albeit temporary, in applications although most research shows it doesn't improve the caliber of prospective students.
More immediately, donors are drawn by success on the field.
Fund raising for the athletic department last year hit a high of $5.9 million -- $2.1 million was given for football.
Richard H. Shindell approached his alma mater about making a football donation, which Rutgers directed toward the team display in the lobby of the training center.
But he also wound up endowing a $3 million chair in neurosciences.
"It all started with the fact that Richard came to a football game," said Jason Kroll, executive director of the Scarlet R Club, the athletic fund-raising arm of the Rutgers Foundation. "Why did he come? Because they were doing better than in the past."
More money may be coming in, but plenty is spent on frills in the name of competing in the Division I-A arms race.
Last year, $239,000 in recruiting costs included $31,640 spent at ESPN Zone, a dining and entertainment center.
For home games, rooms for players and coaches, food and rental of audiovisual equipment at the East Brunswick Hilton cost Rutgers more than $165,000. An additional $8,000 was spent busing the team between the training center and hotel.
Mulcahy says that's typical for Division I-A football; it's all about helping the players stay focused.
"There's an incredible amount of human intensity required in preparing and playing a football game," said McCormick.
The hotel is less than 10 minutes from the Hale Center, the headquarters for football and the showpiece for Rutgers athletics. A recent upgrade and expansion -- guided by Mulcahy and Schiano -- cost $12.5 million.
"The initial plans, when I got here, for it were significantly smaller," Mulcahy said, "but once we sat down and realized what we wanted to do, it got bigger."
It has a 60-yard artificial-turf track for sprinting practice and a weight room covering more than 14,000 square feet with over 100 machines and a high-tech stereo system. Flat screens at lifting stations provide digital imaging of proper technique. The training room has an underwater treadmill and hot and cold tubs. The football players' lounge has a plasma television and pool table.
The center's granite-columned lobby was designed to impress. Mulcahy says the showy entrance is "absolutely critical" to recruiting. Photographs of the team adorn the area. Displays celebrate the team's history and its appearance at last year's bowl: the runner-up trophy is the centerpiece.
Mulcahy and his top coaches travel in a style befitting corporate executives.
When Schiano accepted two speaking engagements two hours apart, he helicoptered between them. He spoke to New Jersey coaches in Atlantic City at 5 p.m., then hopped a $2,900 flight into Manhattan to speak to New York coaches.
"It would have been a slight not to show up," said Mulcahy, who approved the expenses.
Coaches and other staff have used drivers for meetings and recruiting trips. And when four staffers went to the National Football Foundation's annual awards dinner at the Waldorf, the bill for 10 hours of driver time, tolls and tip was $864.
The athletic division had two tables at the event that Mulcahy said "is the single biggest dinner in college football." He said half the $10,000 bill -- 20 people at $500 a head -- came from his discretionary fund and the other half from the Scarlet R Club.
Mulcahy's base salary as athletic director is $286,250 plus a $12,000 car stipend. The university also covers his membership dues at Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, which run about $8,000 a year.
"It brings a little bit of class to the program that definitely needed it, and because I was there it became a simple thing to do," he said of his membership at the exclusive club.
Already boosters are talking about enlarging and adding luxury boxes at Rutgers' 41,500-seat stadium, which is sold out for Louisville on Thursday.
On game night, Schiano and his Knights will do the Scarlet walk -- the ceremonial procession past the statue depicting the first intercollegiate football game in the United States. Rutgers won the 1869 matchup with Princeton.
The statue is "heroic sized," that is, slightly larger than life, and was donated by the Class of 1949. With its sinewy receiver in knit cap and lace-up leather boots, it's an homage to a simpler time, long before college ball became a multimillion-dollar enterprise.
The price of glory for Rutgers
Sunday, November 5, 2006
By JEAN RIMBACH and PATRICIA ALEX
STAFF WRITERS
Rutgers football is riding high, enjoying a national ranking for the first time in more than a generation. But success hasn't come cheap.
There's $2,900 for an Atlantic-City-to- Manhattan helicopter ride for the million-dollar head coach.
It cost $10,000 to hobnob with the elite of college football at a black-tie dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria.
Rings, pendants and other mementos honoring the team's runner-up appearance in last year's Insight Bowl ran nearly $90,000.
A review of university financial records by The Record shows that, in its drive to become a football powerhouse, Rutgers has spent millions more on the team than it's taken in. Even the trappings are costly.
Leaders at the state's flagship public university say that's the price of competing -- a price they are willing to pay.
"We're doing it because of the extreme visibility of the football program and its importance to the image and reputation of the university," said President Richard McCormick.
While football spending has been climbing, and hit a new high of more than $13 million last season, Rutgers is coping with an $80 million shortfall in state aid. More than 600 jobs and 800 course sections have been lost. Six high-performing Olympic sports are being axed.
From bus schedules to library hours, students are feeling the pinch. Tuition is up 8 percent this year. At just under $20,000 for a full-time student who lives on campus, Rutgers is among the most expensive state universities in the nation.
"It's a straight upward line for the football team and a straight downward line for the academic and physical conditions here," said Richard Gundy, a statistics professor. "This is a political issue, not only within the university, but it should be a political issue in the state."
For some it's already decided.
"It's great for the university," said state Senate President Richard Codey, who proudly wears one of the Insight Bowl rings. "On New Year's Day, if there is a choice between watching the Gator Bowl or the academic bowl, I'd want to watch the Gator Bowl."
With fans in high places, Rutgers officials have embarked on a publicly funded quest to rise to the elite of Division I-A. It's a world where the key people are media and marketing executives, corporate sponsors, bowl officials and recruits -- and lavish spending is the norm.
Coach Greg Schiano, who's led the Scarlet Knights to an 8-0 start, is the highest paid state employee and will make more than $1 million this year. The university also pays $998 a month for his Cadillac Escalade and has spent at least $158,000 preparing a piece of its ecological preserve that Schiano bought to build a new home. <li type="square"> Despite a payout of $1.25 million, Rutgers lost money on the Insight Bowl appearance in Arizona last year. The university paid the way for an entourage of nearly 300, including school officials and family members. Bonuses totaling more than $200,000 were handed out to coaches and other staffers. It cost nearly $175,000 to put the team up at a local hotel for six home games; that item alone exceeds the entire budget for the tennis team, one of the six eliminated sports. The university has plowed millions into new facilities for football -- from $12.5 million for a state-of-the-art training center to $750,000 for synthetic grass. A flashy lobby display honoring the team ran $450,000. Subsidies needed
Rutgers officials see the football spending as part of an investment that's starting to pay off. The team is undefeated, home games are selling out and the future looks hopeful with a Heisman Trophy contender and commitments from star recruits. The athletic director thinks ticket sales will hit a high of $2.6 million by the end of the season.
Rutgers, says Athletic Director Robert E. Mulcahy III, has been trying to "catch up" to other schools in Division I-A, the most competitive tier in collegiate football. He bristles at being "nickled and dimed."
"People can make arguments about whether this expenditure should happen and that expenditure should happen -- I understand that," he said. "If you're not going to do things in a first-class fashion ... then you're not going to attract the kinds of recruiting classes that we've been able to attract in the last few years."
He also envisions the football program making money within five years.
A poll by The Record shows nearly two out of three New Jerseyans are aware of the team's growing prominence; of those expressing an opinion, a slight majority said it's worth the investment by Rutgers.
The team reached its perch -- last week it was ranked 15th by the Associated Press -- aided by a soft early schedule against teams not in its Big East Conference. Nonetheless, its midseason 20-10 victory over formidable Pittsburgh convinced even longtime skeptics that Rutgers, at last, might have what it takes.
Much is riding on Thursday night's game with Louisville. A victory would propel Rutgers to the top tier of the national rankings.
"These are heady times," said alumnus Joe Nackson, a Hackensack attorney who's a longtime season-ticket holder and a member of the Class of 1969. "We've been waiting 30 years in the wilderness and now we can see the Promised Land."
Football revenue is up -- most recently due to increased ticket sales and more television exposure. But so is spending.
Although Rutgers officials balked at releasing budget figures, it is clear that each year the university subsidizes football. Last year, the figure was $2.65 million in direct support and student fees, according to an unaudited statement. Each undergraduate in New Brunswick pays $270 a season in intercollegiate athletic fees. In return, students get free seats at all Rutgers sporting events.
Since Mulcahy took the reins in 1998, athletic spending has nearly doubled, hitting a high of more than $41 million last year -- about a third going for football.
"When I was brought in, the mandate I was given was to restructure the department, make it competitive and fix football," Mulcahy said. "I have the backing of the board of governors and I have the backing of the president."
But at Rutgers some are asking "what price glory?"
"Real students are being marginalized and cheated in 100 different ways," said William Dowling, an English professor and longtime critic of Rutgers' Division I-A buildup. "Now the financial situation makes more dramatic what big-time athletics does to an institution."
Unequal treatment
Mulcahy has invested his hopes -- and no small amount of public money -- in Schiano. A 40-year-old native of Wyckoff, he returned to New Jersey in 2000 after assistant coaching stints at Penn State, Miami and in the National Football League.
"Greg has justified all my confidence in what he's been able to accomplish," Mulcahy said
Under Schiano, Rutgers reversed its losing streak and headed to its first bowl since 1978 -- the December 2005 Insight Bowl matchup with Arizona State. The Scarlet Knights lost 45-40, and Rutgers overspent its payout, running up bills on travel, parties and the rings and other mementos given to state officials, Rutgers staff and relatives, in addition to players and coaches.
Governor Corzine took office in January, not long after the bowl game, and began to tackle a state budget gap of more than $4 billion, declaring "the games are over. New Jersey must put its fiscal house in order."
In February, Mulcahy rewarded Schiano with a new contract that pumped his pay by 75 percent. The new package put him more in line with other top coaches in the nation.
The next month, Corzine detailed a spending plan that cut support to higher education by $169 million. President McCormick pledged there would be no sacred cows at Rutgers.
Football spending was not cut, but in May, Mulcahy sent a plan to McCormick calling for the elimination of as many as eight other sports.
His original proposal included wrestling and gymnastics, but they were spared. However, six sports, with combined budgets estimated by Mulcahy at $800,000, were not. Men's swimming and diving, heavyweight and lightweight crew, tennis, and men's and women's fencing will be dropped.
"I don't want to bad-mouth football. I'm a fan, I watch the games," said Matthew Gitterman, a graduate and former member of the tennis team. "But as a taxpayer of New Jersey, you start to scratch your head."
Mulcahy said it's about priorities. Rutgers is one of only three schools in the six major conferences that have 30 or more sports and the others -- Ohio State and Stanford -- have much larger athletic budgets.
"It was a shock to us," said Steve Wagner, coach of the crew team, Rutgers' oldest sport. The axed sports have strong athletic and academic records, with student grade-point averages ranging from 2.9 to 3.1 and graduation rates of nearly 100 percent.
Rutgers administration has lauded Schiano for improving the academics of the football team, which has a GPA of 2.58. McCormick notes that no player has left the team for academic reasons under his watch. Records show Schiano got a $25,000 bonus because of his players' academic progress. The team has a six-year graduation rate of 58 percent, according to the NCAA.
Supporters of the eliminated sports have appealed to the Legislature for reinstatement.
"The decision to cut these teams says to me that I should follow the crowd, money is the measure of success -- forget my passion," said Alexis Jemal, a former member of the fencing team. "It's better to be a bench warmer as part of a money-making sport than to be the NCAA champion in the sport I cherish."
The profit motive
Mulcahy makes no apologies for his focus on the marquee sports. He believes that men's basketball will one day be able to cover the cost of the women's team. He also sees football becoming self-sustaining, even profitable, within five years, and donations to athletics nearly doubling, to $10 million.
But experts note it takes more than one or two winning seasons to create a dominant college football program -- particularly in a state such as New Jersey, where there are three pro teams close by.
"If they have a $3 million deficit in football it's a chase for the Holy Grail," said Andrew Zimbalist, an economist at Smith College who has studied college sports. "It's not absolutely inconceivable that they'd ever become a surplus department, but it's quite unlikely, and a hundred other schools are out there trying to do the same thing."
Of the 1,000 schools in the NCAA, Zimbalist said, there are "a half-dozen to a dozen in any particular year that have a true surplus in their athletic programs. If you want to be an athletic department that has a surplus, you'd better be one of the top 10 football programs and do it consistently."
A 2005 NCAA study showed that, for most football and men's basketball programs in Division I, spending more money doesn't necessarily improve the bottom line.
To be sure, there are money-making football programs, and the payoff can be big: Michigan and Texas each reported surpluses of more than $35 million in 2004-05, according to reports filed with the federal government. A trip to a top bowl can yield a payout of $14 million to $17 million.
Indeed, nearly all the current Top 25 schools reported a surplus in football during 2004-05.
But the reports don't always tell the whole story. In that year, Rutgers reported that its football program broke even with $10.7 million in revenue. But that total counted as revenue nearly $3 million in university support and student fees.
Big football costs, such as stadium construction and debt service, very often are not included in athletic budgets.
The reports show that Rutgers spends as much as Michigan on football.
Robert H. Frank, an economics professor at Cornell, studied the revenue potential of Division I-A programs for the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics.
"If you're a school that has a history -- a University of Michigan, a University of Texas -- there are some built-in advantages," said Frank. "For somebody coming in from the outside hoping to crack that circle, it's almost certainly a losing proposition."
McCormick, the Rutgers president, also is wary of Mulcahy's prediction of a football team that could be a cash cow.
"Bob says five years? Good luck," said McCormick. "We're not doing this to make money."
Attracting donors
Boosters say a high-profile football program brings a host of benefits to the university. Some are intangible: good feelings, free publicity, happy alumni.
The televised Insight Bowl was a "three-hour infomercial" for Rutgers, said Mulcahy. "Those three hours were worth how many millions of dollars? But more importantly it's the sense of community that the university feels."
Winning teams also can reap a surge, albeit temporary, in applications although most research shows it doesn't improve the caliber of prospective students.
More immediately, donors are drawn by success on the field.
Fund raising for the athletic department last year hit a high of $5.9 million -- $2.1 million was given for football.
Richard H. Shindell approached his alma mater about making a football donation, which Rutgers directed toward the team display in the lobby of the training center.
But he also wound up endowing a $3 million chair in neurosciences.
"It all started with the fact that Richard came to a football game," said Jason Kroll, executive director of the Scarlet R Club, the athletic fund-raising arm of the Rutgers Foundation. "Why did he come? Because they were doing better than in the past."
More money may be coming in, but plenty is spent on frills in the name of competing in the Division I-A arms race.
Last year, $239,000 in recruiting costs included $31,640 spent at ESPN Zone, a dining and entertainment center.
For home games, rooms for players and coaches, food and rental of audiovisual equipment at the East Brunswick Hilton cost Rutgers more than $165,000. An additional $8,000 was spent busing the team between the training center and hotel.
Mulcahy says that's typical for Division I-A football; it's all about helping the players stay focused.
"There's an incredible amount of human intensity required in preparing and playing a football game," said McCormick.
The hotel is less than 10 minutes from the Hale Center, the headquarters for football and the showpiece for Rutgers athletics. A recent upgrade and expansion -- guided by Mulcahy and Schiano -- cost $12.5 million.
"The initial plans, when I got here, for it were significantly smaller," Mulcahy said, "but once we sat down and realized what we wanted to do, it got bigger."
It has a 60-yard artificial-turf track for sprinting practice and a weight room covering more than 14,000 square feet with over 100 machines and a high-tech stereo system. Flat screens at lifting stations provide digital imaging of proper technique. The training room has an underwater treadmill and hot and cold tubs. The football players' lounge has a plasma television and pool table.
The center's granite-columned lobby was designed to impress. Mulcahy says the showy entrance is "absolutely critical" to recruiting. Photographs of the team adorn the area. Displays celebrate the team's history and its appearance at last year's bowl: the runner-up trophy is the centerpiece.
Mulcahy and his top coaches travel in a style befitting corporate executives.
When Schiano accepted two speaking engagements two hours apart, he helicoptered between them. He spoke to New Jersey coaches in Atlantic City at 5 p.m., then hopped a $2,900 flight into Manhattan to speak to New York coaches.
"It would have been a slight not to show up," said Mulcahy, who approved the expenses.
Coaches and other staff have used drivers for meetings and recruiting trips. And when four staffers went to the National Football Foundation's annual awards dinner at the Waldorf, the bill for 10 hours of driver time, tolls and tip was $864.
The athletic division had two tables at the event that Mulcahy said "is the single biggest dinner in college football." He said half the $10,000 bill -- 20 people at $500 a head -- came from his discretionary fund and the other half from the Scarlet R Club.
Mulcahy's base salary as athletic director is $286,250 plus a $12,000 car stipend. The university also covers his membership dues at Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, which run about $8,000 a year.
"It brings a little bit of class to the program that definitely needed it, and because I was there it became a simple thing to do," he said of his membership at the exclusive club.
Already boosters are talking about enlarging and adding luxury boxes at Rutgers' 41,500-seat stadium, which is sold out for Louisville on Thursday.
On game night, Schiano and his Knights will do the Scarlet walk -- the ceremonial procession past the statue depicting the first intercollegiate football game in the United States. Rutgers won the 1869 matchup with Princeton.
The statue is "heroic sized," that is, slightly larger than life, and was donated by the Class of 1949. With its sinewy receiver in knit cap and lace-up leather boots, it's an homage to a simpler time, long before college ball became a multimillion-dollar enterprise.
