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Pernetti made this decision after viewing videos of Rice throwing balls and kicking players at practice and conducting "a thorough, lengthy and fair investigation."
On Tuesday, ESPN's "Outside The Lines," released said videos from Rice's practices, and after serious backlash, Peretti and Rutgers president Robert L. Barchi, fired Rice on Wednesday.
Good. We can all agree, after watching the video of Rice physically and verbally abusing his players, that he should not be allowed to coach anymore.
But the real question is, why did it take the videos going public to fire Rice? As Dan Shanoff at USA Today points out, it's obvious that Pernetti and Rutgers had no intention of getting rid of Rice until those videos were available for anyone, and everyone, to criticize.
Rice should have been fired on December 13, 2012 when he was only suspended and fined. Instead, Pernetti allowed Rice to keep "coaching" the basketball team, a move that put Rutgers student-athletes at risk.
Pernetti too, should be fired for this misjudgment.
After seeing that video yesterday, everyone's immediate reaction was to fire Rice. How could that not have been Peretti's reaction in December?