Mulcahy III’s Tiresome Lying

In a turgid and somnolent Star-Ledger op-ed (mercifully not online), Rutgers athletic director “Big Bob” Mulcahy III, he of the bottomless pit of scumbag entitlement, offered up a seemingly endless self-defense of his many missteps leading up to the current Schianogate scandal in which Rutgers finds itself. Reading Mulcahy III’s screed — to the extent we could, without falling asleep — what struck us was his determination to keep right on lying.

He writes, for instance “there’s a tremendous sense of pride” among students and alums due to football. Proof? He offers not a shred, neither of the alleged pride nor of the causal connection between football and this alleged pride.

Football, per Mulcahy III, has triggered an “unprecedented number” of applications. Simply untrue. A lie.

He writes: “The student academic profile continue to rise.” Duh. The current demographic bulge is lifting every school’s academic profile. But Rutgers is in fact lifted very, very little.

Mulcahy III even lies about sports. He writes that Greedy Greg Schiano has led Rutgers football to “two straight championships.” Untrue. Schiano has never brought a championship to Rutgers. In 2007, RU was tied for next to last in the Big East. In 2006, Rutgers was tied for third. In 2005, Rutgers was tied for third. There are no championships, none, and it is staggering that Mulcahy III would try to pass off this stinky lie in print.

Along the way Mulcahy III indulges in wildly baroque ethical leaps, still insisting it is perfectly OK — not a violation of commonly understood ethical precepts — to do a sweetheart, no bid deal with Nelligan Sports when your son the golfer is a vice president on the Nelligan payroll.

Were Mulcahy III a freshman in a rhetoric class, his paper would get an “F” — for bloat, for specious reasoning, and for flatulent language. It’s a document that reads like verbal vomit.

Here’s some reading for you, Mulcahy III: The Rutgers Fact Book. The numbers don’t lie. But you do. You paint a picture of a school transformed — energized! reborn! — because of football and the reality is that Rutgers is stumbling ahead with, if anything, deteriorating academics for which students are required to pay ever more.

As Rutgers continues its deterioration into the “Louisville of the North,” it becomes an ever worse deal for students.

Of course the cruelest irony is that Rutgers still has at best a mediocre football team that gets not a lone vote in ESPN’s power rankings. Sports Illustrated pegs Rutgers at fifth in the eight team Big east. Think about that. Millions poured into the Raritan for what? A team that scarcely cracks the top 50…and academics that long ago sunk to the river bottom. Academics and football, perfect together indeed, perfectly mediocre.

Much more insightful than Mulcahy III’s endless self-defense — printed in full by the Ledger, we imagine, because its very bulk illustrates the desperation of a Trenton hack in his last hours — is this Margulies cartoon from the Bergen Record. The sound of clapping is our applause for Margulies’ recognition that, at Rutgers, football does nothing but siphon off desperately needed money from academics.

Really now, Mulcahy III, it is time to sail to Byzantium, old man. You are ever more obviously but a paltry thing.