Then I’m going to blame Pitt for all of our troubles and I’m happy that Pitt football, which had been a national power, took a major step backward right after basketball joined the Big East.
We are putting Fred Grunninger in the Rutgers Sports Hall of Fame??????
- Thread starter Scarlet Shack
- Start date
That’s a great point why did Rutgers The State University of NJ get in a conference with those schools? Should have been in talks with Syracuse the whole time.Not Duquesne.
Might sound like a lot Colonel, he was here for a long time. He never should have had the opportunity to fire three coaches.
Frank Burns was/is the winningest coach in Rutgers history.Pretty sad.
“The Big Red is Dead with Fred at the Head”
Was banner a disgruntled fan had at one of the football gamesm. Pretty much nailed it.In his defense the administration was clueless when it came to athletics and the benefits it could provide the school. If they had, who knows how much success we could have had over the years.We always had tremendous talent in NJ in all sports.
Wasn’t till Bob Mulcahy got here that we even started thinking like one of the Big Boys.
Not fair to compare Pat Hobbs now. Being in the BIG and the resources on the horizon but he is tearing it up!
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my recollections
I am sure that all the eastern powers were invited to join the eastern eight, that including Syracuse, St Johns etc.......and they probably said no
so the list of invitees gets watered down to lesser programs
one of the problems we had was that Fred was instrumental in forming the eastern eight to start with.....and with that in mind, he had a hard time walking away from a league he helped form....had we been just another team that joined, maybe he would have pulled the trigger and left, like Nova
the big east formed when the better teams that had said no, saw some success that the eastern eight was having....I guess some pretty good tv coverage, fan following of a league, etc
if there was no eastern eight, the big east might not have been put together at the time it had been.... it might have come about, but the eastern eight helped
despite all that, I immediately knew that if St Johns was in a league, throw in Syracuse, the league would capture the hearts and minds of NYC, etc....it was a no brainer. I was pissed, I could see it slowly kill our program, our recruiting, and then Tom Young left because of it.
Fred could just not let go....we were invited as an original member to the big east, and there was rumblings a few years later that if we wanted in, we would be accepted.....but still Fred would not move
I agree that had we joined as an original member, we would have been a top 20 team almost continually, with a shot at the big prize now and then
In all fairness to Fred. They did have a verbal agreement on a all sports conference.Rutgers, Penn State, BC, Pitt, West Va. Nova,Cuse, and Temple.I was told this by someone who was there.
Dave Gavitt not only retained BC and Syracuse, he was also able to turn Pitt and Nova.
Paterno’s arrogance didn’t help. Who knows what kind of conference that could have been?
Add Maryland,VaTech, Cincinnati, U Conn?
Who knows they might have had a pretty good conference.
I am aware of the fb. bb conference efforts
I think our original invite to the big east was before any combined conference attempts
My recollection was that Pitt killed the football bb conference by accepting the big east offer
Nova was not a factor. They joined the
Big East in year 2. Still should have been in the Big east when the other conf fell apart we
Would have been ok
I'm glad to see there is some degree of perspective on this board.
The Eastern 8 was formed because eastern basketball deserved to have a "real" conference instead of the ECAC. (Few remember that our auto bid in 1976 was because we won the ECAC Metro tournament.) Although a lot of people know a lot about how the Big East came about, nobody cares how the Eastern 8 was formed, and I would like to know more.
BUT hindsight is so damn easy for you people. In 1979, we had Penn State, Pittsburgh, West Virginia and Villanova (which was NOT I-AA in football until they dropped the sport and brought it back later) with us. They all played football. Without seeing another Eastern basketball conference taking off right out of the gate (partially thanks to ESPN, let's not forget), I would side with that group over Syracuse and Boston College if your ultimate goal is an all-sports conference. (Connecticut, of course, was I-AA.)
Sure, we had great basketball rivalries with Syracuse and St John's, but still a majority of the football-playing schools were with us, not Gavitt. I can't blame Fred for not seeing how the Pittsburgh-Penn State hatred would get in the way of the dream. Then, of course, Villanova left followed by Pittsburgh, but by then the all-sports dream was over, only to be bastardized when the Big East finally expanded for us, West Virginia and Temple.
The notion that we should have joined the Big East is an easy one by about 1985, when it was clear we screwed ourselves. But not quite so clear in 1979. And don't forget, the invite we rejected was not to join the conference -- we even declined to go to the preliminary meetings to listen. So they offered Seton Hall, which was a nothing program.
But even taking all of that into account, some of you still think Fred had the sole power to make decisions. The Rutgers athletic department was very much a mom-and-pop operation (Rita Kay Thomas shuffling papers got us in trouble, need I say more?). Dick Vitale wrote years ago that he begged Gruninger for the basketball job after Lloyd left, and all Fred could do was forward his name with a recommendation to a committee. If they wouldn't trust the athletic director with hiring a basketball coach at a school with 2,800 seats to fill, do you really think they would trust him with something as important as leaving our conference to join a brand-new outfit? The first AD we had with any power was Mulcahy, and if Barchi was president at the time I have my doubts he would have had as much.
Fred was in over his head when we made the decision to go with the I-As instead of I-AAs at the time of the split. He would have been an outstanding athletic director at a I-AA school, which of course is basically what he was hired to do. He is a gracious, decent man who really didn't belong in the sometimes-cutthroat world of big-time college sports. But consider how Rutgers looks to an outsider who doesn't know all of the details:
Our football team went from a 23,000-seat stadium that put splinters in your ass into a 42,500-seat stadium which made future expansion realistic.
Our basketball team went from the Barn to a modern (at the time, funny now, isn't it?) field house that, depending on the year, seated 9,000, 8,800, 8,500 and whatever it is now,
Our swim team went from a room behind the gym floor to the Werblin Center.
Undefeated seasons by the two major sports in the same calendar year
Final Fours for men's basketball and men's soccer
Administering what had to be one of the largest athletic departments in the nation; I swear I remember we had 32 sports at one time
His hire of Theresa Grentz as the first full-time women's basketball coach is a landmark achievement all by itself.
And other things noted above.
As for firing Frank Burns being a mistake, he did go 5-6, 5-6 and 3-8 his final three years as our schedule was getting increasingly tougher. The bigger issue was that Rutgers was a I-AA program in every way but our schedule. No coach could succeed, but Burns was the one showing he couldn't field a winning team, so why not bring in the offensive coordinator from Penn State? That's hardly an illogical move. (Funny, bringing in the defensive coordinator from Ohio State reads the same way.) He should have fired Wenzel a year earlier than he did. And how big chunks of turf kept coming up during a televised night game is beyond me. Our academic support was garbage. (not totally his fault, but he obviously didn't help).
Look, I think I've been fair in outlining his flaws, but some of the biggest issues most of us have with him were things he was only a part of, not the sole decision-maker. And service to the university has to count for something. Of course Fred Gruninger should be in our hall of fame.
The Eastern 8 was formed because eastern basketball deserved to have a "real" conference instead of the ECAC. (Few remember that our auto bid in 1976 was because we won the ECAC Metro tournament.) Although a lot of people know a lot about how the Big East came about, nobody cares how the Eastern 8 was formed, and I would like to know more.
BUT hindsight is so damn easy for you people. In 1979, we had Penn State, Pittsburgh, West Virginia and Villanova (which was NOT I-AA in football until they dropped the sport and brought it back later) with us. They all played football. Without seeing another Eastern basketball conference taking off right out of the gate (partially thanks to ESPN, let's not forget), I would side with that group over Syracuse and Boston College if your ultimate goal is an all-sports conference. (Connecticut, of course, was I-AA.)
Sure, we had great basketball rivalries with Syracuse and St John's, but still a majority of the football-playing schools were with us, not Gavitt. I can't blame Fred for not seeing how the Pittsburgh-Penn State hatred would get in the way of the dream. Then, of course, Villanova left followed by Pittsburgh, but by then the all-sports dream was over, only to be bastardized when the Big East finally expanded for us, West Virginia and Temple.
The notion that we should have joined the Big East is an easy one by about 1985, when it was clear we screwed ourselves. But not quite so clear in 1979. And don't forget, the invite we rejected was not to join the conference -- we even declined to go to the preliminary meetings to listen. So they offered Seton Hall, which was a nothing program.
But even taking all of that into account, some of you still think Fred had the sole power to make decisions. The Rutgers athletic department was very much a mom-and-pop operation (Rita Kay Thomas shuffling papers got us in trouble, need I say more?). Dick Vitale wrote years ago that he begged Gruninger for the basketball job after Lloyd left, and all Fred could do was forward his name with a recommendation to a committee. If they wouldn't trust the athletic director with hiring a basketball coach at a school with 2,800 seats to fill, do you really think they would trust him with something as important as leaving our conference to join a brand-new outfit? The first AD we had with any power was Mulcahy, and if Barchi was president at the time I have my doubts he would have had as much.
Fred was in over his head when we made the decision to go with the I-As instead of I-AAs at the time of the split. He would have been an outstanding athletic director at a I-AA school, which of course is basically what he was hired to do. He is a gracious, decent man who really didn't belong in the sometimes-cutthroat world of big-time college sports. But consider how Rutgers looks to an outsider who doesn't know all of the details:
Our football team went from a 23,000-seat stadium that put splinters in your ass into a 42,500-seat stadium which made future expansion realistic.
Our basketball team went from the Barn to a modern (at the time, funny now, isn't it?) field house that, depending on the year, seated 9,000, 8,800, 8,500 and whatever it is now,
Our swim team went from a room behind the gym floor to the Werblin Center.
Undefeated seasons by the two major sports in the same calendar year
Final Fours for men's basketball and men's soccer
Administering what had to be one of the largest athletic departments in the nation; I swear I remember we had 32 sports at one time
His hire of Theresa Grentz as the first full-time women's basketball coach is a landmark achievement all by itself.
And other things noted above.
As for firing Frank Burns being a mistake, he did go 5-6, 5-6 and 3-8 his final three years as our schedule was getting increasingly tougher. The bigger issue was that Rutgers was a I-AA program in every way but our schedule. No coach could succeed, but Burns was the one showing he couldn't field a winning team, so why not bring in the offensive coordinator from Penn State? That's hardly an illogical move. (Funny, bringing in the defensive coordinator from Ohio State reads the same way.) He should have fired Wenzel a year earlier than he did. And how big chunks of turf kept coming up during a televised night game is beyond me. Our academic support was garbage. (not totally his fault, but he obviously didn't help).
Look, I think I've been fair in outlining his flaws, but some of the biggest issues most of us have with him were things he was only a part of, not the sole decision-maker. And service to the university has to count for something. Of course Fred Gruninger should be in our hall of fame.
Boro
A lot of the formation of the eastern 8 was out of concern for the auto bid qualification for the ncaa tournament. I believe the 1976-1977 was the last year you coujd be sanctioned as a league and get an auto ncaa bid for the next season (remember, this was before seeding came about). Even the big east had to wait a couple of years before getting an auto bid to the ncaa.
The ncaa was 32 teams in 1976 and 40 teams in 1979. Getting your conference an auto ncaa bid was huge...back then. Lot of very good teams ended up in the NIT (like our 77-78 team that was 21-6) because most of the ncaa was made up of league tournament champs. Very few “at large bids”
And I believe the ECAC was close to losing their auto bid for some reason
So the auto bid to the ncaa is a big part of the reason at the time for schools to band together to play ...and this was before the cable TV era wheee media rights for the conference was huge.
Boro, I really appreciate the background info you provided. I think we're close in age and I remember that era very well. The reason I've been so harsh, is because even if what you stated is spot on regarding who controlled the purse strings and the decision making, Fred G. was still the face of the department and what transpired there right or wrong, set Rutgers back decades.
So if true then a pox on all those concerned especially the BOG and president at the time, although I like Edward Bloustein a lot.
So if true then a pox on all those concerned especially the BOG and president at the time, although I like Edward Bloustein a lot.
This post, which is meant to highlight why he is qualified, in fact highlights his ineptitude. He was here for 25 years! The list of accomplishments is paltry, and would be overshadowed at many, many schools. Only at Rutgers would this record be considered a success for a 2 and a half decade period:
Multiple banners in WBB
A (singular) player of the year in soccer
FInal fours in a single non-revenue sport
Hired a baseball coach who had winning seasons.
Whatever the pros and cons are, and there are plenty of both.....does someone who has that many warts deserve to be in a Hall of Fame?
That was some selective editing.
1 AIAW Championship and I believe a string of 12 NCAA appearances over a 13 year period including an Elite 8, 2 HOF coaches hired and National Player of Year is a bit more than “multiple banners”.
Last time I checked men’s basketball is a revenue sport and Gruninger’s hire coached it to a Final Four.
I believe 3 Final Four (including a final) and POY in soccer.. I guess we should’ve had more than 1? I believe Peter Vernes might’ve been co-POY too.
Nice that you minimize the accomplishments of a great baseball coach.
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I think they are saying he belongs there because he has the most accomplishments when compared against our other ADs. Yet, he probably also has more failures, including one glaring one. Perhaps they are trying to ensure that another non-athlete, particularly an AD is in the Hall. However, even if that’s the case, the list of ADs he’s being compared to is for the most part inept and comical. In this case, no Rutgers AD deserves to be in. If you want to give him an award for longevity, which they always do for old actors, then fine. However, please don’t call it a Lifetime Achievement Award. It’s more like a Lifetime-Mediocre-At-Best Award. Once again, he belongs no where near a Hall of Fame.
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Come on. Please compare this to any 25 year period you like at any peer school you choose. You are supposed to have successful programs. I am not minimizing anything - some of his hires did good things while he was here, but they are coaches...they get paid to win. Ultimately, FG's AD has 0 NC's across all sports in 25 years. Zero. A couple players of the year in a couple sports, and a couple final four appearances. A solid women's basketball program that never came close to winning it all, and a solid baseball team that never even made the College World Series. Then the counterpoint is the fact that due to FG's lack of foresight regarding conferences, Rutgers Athletics was set back decades, and may not recover for several more decades, if it ever does.
Sorry if that stings, but I live and breath Rutgers athletics as well. That's just how I see it.
I guess I’m getting soft in old age. Anyway, it’s a Hall of Fame and I find it a little sad that a guy associated with Rutgers athletics for basically his entire life would be shut out of it.
Its all good. I hope I didn't come across as berating you. I just get frustrated at stuff like this. Like when you look at the school there were so many missteps that prevented us from being where we could have. And really, if we had sustained football, it all would be water under the bridge.
I don’t know if anyone can calculate how much money he has cost Rutgers, but I am going to conservatively say $100 million—lost ticket sales, food, parking, merchandise sales, donations, TV and radio rights, advertising dollars, it just goes on and on
2020 hindsight looks very different from living the moment! The Big East was not proven. It’s all a leap of faith and a crapshoot. FG made decisions that were not let’s say advantageous but not wrong. There are those today that say RU should have never become a member of the Big 10. Are they right or wrong? We have no championships, nor do we have a winning record in any sport. Ok wrestling! That was 2 individual awards not team championships. Living during the time only gives you hope not assurances.
There was no doubt in my mind that we should have been a start up team in the big east. From the moment I heard of its formation and the other teams that signed on
He should have seen it that way also
Yep. It was pretty clear to anyone at the time. E8 had Umass not BC, GW not Georgetown, no St Johns or Syracuse. Duquesne? West Virginia and Pitt weren't exactly powers either. Villanova was in the E8, but they had fallen on hard times after their 1971 Final Four appearance was vacated.
I guess if we are reviewing Gruninger’s accomplishments, that means Coach Ash is a shoe-in for the Hall of Fame too.
My recollection is he was not present or active on the public scene. A friend in the ADept said he thought of himself as a wine and cheese high society socialite.
What is true is that frigging Joe Pa didn’t need a colonoscopy during those years. Freddie’s head was so far up Joe Pa’s ass he made sure things were good. If Joe Pa said wait for an all sports option, Freddie would have turn away all comers... and did.
What is true is that frigging Joe Pa didn’t need a colonoscopy during those years. Freddie’s head was so far up Joe Pa’s ass he made sure things were good. If Joe Pa said wait for an all sports option, Freddie would have turn away all comers... and did.
