Rutgers athletics director Pat Hobbs had to have had some pretty good street cred with Rutgers students after a tailgate this past weekend. But then the school had to step in and ruin the fun.
Prior to the Scarlet Knights’ game versus New Mexico, Hobbs spoke to students at “The Alley,” which is a student tailgate area that was started by the school this year. While speaking to students, Hobbs took a beer from the crowd and drank it. And in the overreaction of overreactions, Rutgers has since shut down the tailgate space after video of Hobbs accepting the beer ended up on the internet.
Soon after the video was released, Hobbs had to explain his decision to drink a beer (even though he is completely legal in doing so). Here’s the first (and probably last) time you’ll see an explanation for drinking beer.
“My first concern is always for the safety and well-being of our students,” Hobbs said. “Anyone who was at the (student tailgate) Saturday knows that I was acting to ensure that.”
The school quickly followed that up with the announcement that it would be ending the student tailgate after just two home games.
I’m guessing the safety concerns are something other than a grown man drinking a beer, but who knows?
As you could probably guess, students didn’t take very well to the announcement.
Just ridiculousness all the way around. You’d think that Rutgers has fallen so far as an athletic department it wouldn’t care about one beer, but here we are.