Julie Hermann has come to her own defense.
The embattled Rutgers athletic director met briefly with reporters, Wednesday, calling herself "uniquely qualified" for her new job, based on her controversial past job as volleyball coach at the University of Tennessee, the Philadelphia Enquirer reports.
The newspaper cited the meeting to be less than 15 minutes. During that time outside the Hale Center at Rutgers' HighPoint Solutions Stadium, Hermann refused to talk in specifics about her time at Tennessee, which included a letter her players sent the Tennessee athletic director in 1996, accusing her of verbal abuse and inappropriate coaching behavior.
When asked directly about her recollections of that volleyball season, Hermann would only offer:
"That lesson of 17 years ago was honestly part of why I felt I was . . . very qualified, arguably uniquely qualified, because I'd been a student athlete, been an assistant coach, been a head coach, and now been an administrator," she said. "I've been in every spot that exists in an athletic department and I understand the challenges. And I've been successful with them and I had a failure with them."
The 1996 volleyball players' letter said Hermann called her players "whores, alcoholics, and learning disabled."
Hermann repeated to reporters that the accusations are false.
"I'm not a name caller," she said.
Hermann added that she disagreed with a jury verdict that awarded damages to an assistant coach at Tennessee who accused Hermann of firing her in 1997 for becoming pregnant. Hermann has said she fired the assistant based on performance.
The only light she did shed during the interview was admitting a bout of second-guessing herself for taking the Rutgers job but going through with it because of her commitment to collegiate athletics.
She added that the controversies surrounding her and the Rutgers athletic department has made fund-raising more difficult, the Inquirer reported.
"Am I going to have to work double time to connect with the people who are passionate about Rutgers? I am," she said.
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