Rutgers football faces UNC in Quick Lane Bowl
Athletic Director Julie Hermann talks to fans in the pre-game tailgate party as Rutgers football faces North Carolina in the Quick Lane Bowl at Ford Field. 12/26/14 Detroit, MI (John Munson | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)
(John Munson)
Jason Baum showed up for his final day of work at Rutgers while passing a kidney stone. He left the emergency room in the early afternoon in Detroit, loaded up on pain killers that did not appear to be doing the job, and made it to Ford Field an hour before kickoff to ask the stunned radio and TV broadcasters if they had any questions.
No one would have said a word had he retreated to the team hotel and ordered room service on company dime. Instead, he cut the hospital bracelet off his wrist and started tweeting enthusiastically about the big Rutgers victory.
“I question his toughness a little bit,” head coach Kyle Flood joked in his postgame news conference, “but I don’t question his dedication to the program, that’s for sure.”
That's the life of a sports information director – a thankless, 24/7 job negotiating between media and coaches who often have opposite agendas. Baum filled that role for nine years and 116 straight football games at Rutgers, dealing not only with requests and questions from major news outlets but average fans on social media.
That ended after the Quick Lane Bowl. Baum, who sent an email to people who cover the team regularly explaining that he had resigned, would not comment about the circumstances of his departure. But everyone around the athletic department knows he was forced out, one of the first — but almost certainly not the last — casualties under athletic director Julie Hermann.
Hermann, according to multiple sources at Rutgers who didn't want to be named for fear of their own jobs, made Baum the fall guy for her own collection of media gaffes. Essentially, Hermann couldn't fire the media so she fired the media guy, and the departure of the popular SID left many in the department stunned and angry.
Asked for a statement on Baum's departure, Hermann, through spokesman Tom Luicci, said this: “We thank Jason for his many years of service and wish him luck in his future endeavors.” It's clear that Luicci, who was hired in April after years covering Rutgers for The Star-Ledger, teamed with Hermann to throw Baum overboard in a power struggle for control of the communications department.
“It's hard to see him go, man,” Eric LeGrand, the paralyzed football player turned broadcaster, said of Baum. “Pretty much anything I needed at Rutgers, Jay was my guy. He always did me right when I was there. He always put the program first and did his job to the best of his abilities.”
LeGrand's mother, Karen, was in tears when she heard the news that Baum was leaving, and it's easy to understand why. Baum was the first line of defense when her son was in intensive care early after the injury.
“He protected me and my family from all the different news cameras that were offered money to nurses and stuff,” LeGrand said.
Look, I didn't always agree with Baum during his nine years here, nor did he always agree with what I wrote. The relationship between a communications director at a Division I university and a sports columnist is going to be confrontational at times. But I never doubted his professionalism and certainly not his work ethic, and I never felt that he was doing anything but protecting the place where he worked.
And that's what makes this decision so incredible, really. I've racked my brain trying to come up with a controversy involving something a football player said to the media over the past nine years, and I've asked others who cover the team more closely, and no one came up with anything.
Nine years, and not one fire to put out involving the often immature college students in the football program, and that's because Baum briefed every player on talking points before they sat down for interviews. Many have carried that professionalism in dealing with the media to the NFL, with several of them tweeting their support for Baum in the past 24 hours.
Think about the contrast, then, when Hermann took over at Rutgers and made national headlines for all the wrong reasons several times in her first year alone. She was the one hired to be the face of the department, and part of that is dealing with the media. How was any of that Baum's fault?
What concerns me most — and what should concern fans the most, too — is that Rutgers may now begin limiting access to its programs and players. It has more availability than most major programs, something that Baum recognized was a necessity in the competitive market, but already there are whispers that this will change.
That would be a shame, really, because Baum understood the benefits of showcasing the best football players each week to the media, of letting someone like Darius Hamilton or David Milewski not only shine a positive light on the football program, but on the entire university.
“Jason gave so much to Rutgers over the past nine years,” radio voice Chris Carlin said. “He always put the student athlete and the Block R first. He never made it about him.”
It won't be about him now. But it will be telling if the media policies that have helped spotlight Rutgers athletes change in his absence, and if a cordial relationship between the media and the football program becomes confrontational.
Then, maybe Hermann will regret the decision to push aside the PR guy who played hurt on his final day of work.
Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevePoliti. Find NJ.com on Facebook.