With the lucrative business of college sports becoming ever more crucial to a university s prominence not to mention its bottom line the choice of Pernetti seemed to pay off. Sports at Rutgers were on the rise and last November the school received a coveted invitation to join the Big Ten an athletic conference that guaranteed vast exposure and huge television revenue.
But now with outrage growing over the abusive behavior of the university s high profile basketball coach Mr. Pernetti and the university s president Robert L. Barchi find themselves under harsh scrutiny for their handling of the case. Their jobs may be in jeopardy and their university is once again attracting unflattering national attention just two years after Tyler Clementi an 18 year old gay student there killed himself after a bullying incident.
On Wednesday morning Rutgers fired the men s basketball coach Mike Rice a day after video surfaced of him berating his players during practices throwing basketballs at them kicking them and taunting them with vulgar language including homophobic slurs.
But Mr. Rice s dismissal did little to quiet critics including elected officials faculty members and students who called for the dismissal of Mr. Pernetti and Mr. Barchi and demanded to know why Rutgers had not fired Mr. Rice after it initially investigated the abuse allegations last November.
Mr. Pernetti and Mr. Barchi acknowledged Wednesday that they were made aware of Mr. Rice s abusive behavior more than four months ago and they responded by suspending him for three games fining him $50 000 and ordering him to take anger management counseling.
College sports analysts noted that the video of Mr. Rice first surfaced just as Rutgers was engaged in sensitive negotiations with the Big Ten when the university would have been especially wary of attracting negative attention of any kind at that time.
They had a lot of things going on said Tyrone Thomas a Washington lawyer who advises universities on N.C.A.A. matters. Any type of controversy would have been poorly timed for them.
They had to be sensitive to anything that could rock the boat publicly in any way at that point he added.
In a statement Wednesday Mr. Pernetti said he regretted how the initial disciplining of Mr. Rice was handled.
I thought it was in the best interest of everyone to rehabilitate but I was wrong Mr. Pernetti said. Moving forward I will work to regain the trust of the Rutgers community.
That was not good enough for state officials in Trenton who said they would hold hearings into how Mr. Pernetti and other Rutgers officials responded to initial reports of the abuse. Stephen M. Sweeney a Democrat and the president of the State Senate said officials should strongly consider firing Mr. Pernetti.
Sheila Y. Oliver a Democrat and the speaker of the State Assembly said I want to know what role everybody took in the whole fiasco.
Gov. Chris Christie a Republican said he supported Mr. Rice s dismissal adding The way these young men were treated by the head coach was completely unacceptable and violates the trust those parents put in Rutgers University.
At least 10 faculty members including the dean of the Graduate School at Rutgers in Newark signed a letter calling for Mr. Barchi just seven months into his term to resign for his inexcusable handling of Coach Mike Rice s homophobic and misogynist abuse of our students.
The faculty members charged Mr. Barchi with covering up the coach s behavior by neglecting to tell them and the student body about the extent of it in the fall. In the meantime in December President Barchi reviewed Coach Rice s $700 000 contract and renewed it the letter said.
Top Rutgers officials held an emergency meeting Wednesday afternoon on the university s New Brunswick campus.
Ariel Kaminer contributed reporting.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction
Correction April 3 2013
An earlier version of a picture caption with this article misstated the day Mike Rice was fired. It was Wednesday not Monday.
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