RU $wears it’s not about money

Who knows? By the time you read this, the Atlantic Coast Conference could have a Pacific Division, Northeastern and Northwestern could join the Sun Belt Conference and the Big East will continue to set slowly in the West.

But one thing never changes: The BS — baloney sandwiches — keep on coming.

In announcing Rutgers’ move to the Big Ten, last week, athletic director Tim Pernetti’s sincerity would have been more credible had he attached his remarks to a laugh track. Pernetti kept using the “A-word,” as if Rutgers was driven, to a significant degree, on academics. The best of Pernetti’s best: “It’s a transformative day for Rutgers University. The Big Ten is the ultimate academic neighborhood to live in and we’re now in that neighborhood.”

Of course, Pernetti was kind of stuck. It would have been indiscreet to tell the truth, that this move was predicated solely on money, most of it supplied by TV networks, none of which makes value judgments based on academics, either.

Rutgers decision to join the Vig Ten, er, Big Ten, has no more to do with academics than Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issues have to do with swimsuits. Or was RU turned down by the Ivy League?

Rutgers figures in exchange for the $10 million in buyout dough to abandon the Big East, it will, in time, at least triple its take from TV deals. But seeing how Rutgers doubles as a college, Pernetti — no Division I AD, for that matter — can tell such a stand-alone truth.

Academics, that’s rich. As if Big Ten schools are immune from academic fraud (see, for starters, Ohio State).

But perhaps Pernetti, once a Rutgers tight end then radio analyst, learned about discretion in late December 2008, when he addressed a pep rally before Rutgers played in the PapaJohns.com Bowl.

Feigning a nose-and-throat issue, Pernetti pulled out a copy of New Jersey’s Star-Ledger, gave it a look, blew his nose in it, crumpled it, threw it aside, grabbed a microphone, then, to cheers said, “That’s better.”

The newspaper had recently published an investigative series on how Rutgers sold its soul — was running up tens of millions of dollars in bills that would be paid by public and student funding — some of it intentionally hidden from view — to play “Big Time College Football.”

So Pernetti, who last week portrayed himself as an enlightened man in service to higher education, on this night publicly condemned the messenger to the contents of his nasal passages. Classy. Now, everyone to the library for the book burnings!

Academics? In order to throw every dime at football, Rutgers eliminated six varsity sports that regularly produced both All Americans and, not just genuine student-athletes, but scholar-athletes.

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