Out With the Old...

So long, Mike Rice.

I wish I could have listened in to Mike Rice's exit interview.  Since I couldn't, I prefer to imagine it going something like this:

"Tim, what's up?"

"I'm sorry, Mike, but I have to let you go."

"What? Why?"
"Come on, Mike.  You know.  The video."

"Yeah but so what?  I thought we resolved all that?"

"That was before it showed up on SportsCenter."

"Oh."

What else could Rutgers A.D. Tim Pernetti say?  Clearly, if ESPN hadn't broadcast Rice's "antics", the coach's job would be secure today.  Instead, the video was seen in several million homes, making us all reminisce over the Bob Knight-Neil Reed video. And everyone concluded Rice was much, much worse.

What choice did Pernetti have?  He had to fire Rice, and fire him quickly, because he's square in the cross hairs himself.

The moral to the story is, Rice was fired not for what he did, but because what he did was leaked on television and all over the internet.