NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — Rutgers University’s Board of Governors met behind closed doors Friday amid the latest scandal to hit the sports program the school has been trying to build up.
Rutgers President Robert Barchi said the meeting, which dealt with the university’s athletics program, covered legal issues and that the board “an extensive and robust conversation, that they were fully briefed.”
Football coach Kyle Flood has kicked six players off the team after their arrests this month on charges that include armed robbery and home-invasion burglary and rioting. One of the former players was also charged in two home-invasion robberies.
Five of the players were dismissed before the Scarlet Knights season opener last week, a 63-13 win over Norfolk State. Rutgers plays Washington State on Saturday.
Rutgers is also probing whether Flood improperly contacted a teacher the grades of one of the players before Flood removed him after his arrest. That kind of contact could be a violation of university and NCAA rules.
Over the last decade, Rutgers has been trying hard to build up its major sports programs, something some in the university see as one way to improve the prestige of the New Jersey’s flagship state university. The university absorbed two medical schools in 2013 as part of a higher education restructuring in New Jersey designed largely to make Rutgers into a biomedical research powerhouse.
The football team, which had been to one bowl game in its history before 2005, has played in them following 9 of the last 10 seasons.
