Rutgers, Misunderstood

Rutgers University athletics is back in the news again this Memorial Day weekend, and again, it is for all the wrong reasons.  The new athletic director, Julie Hermann, hired after former AD Tim Pernetti was forced to resign in the wake of the Mike Rice scandal, apparently carries with her some baggage of her own.  Specifically, in the 1990s she resigned as head coach of the University of Tennessee women's volleyball team in the wake of a unanimous letter written by her players, describing some pretty horrible coaching methods.  Additionally, though this has been known for the past few weeks, she was found liable in 1997 in a wrongful termination lawsuit by a former assistant coach alleging that she had been fired due to wanting to become pregnant.

It is certainly possible, at this point, that the scandal will carry over to some hypothetical tipping point, and Rutgers University will end up dismissing the new athletic director for some bad decisions that happened over a decade ago.  I am not certain this would be the correct move to make, as people's behaviors and attitudes are allowed to change over time (certain things that are not politically correct to say in 2013 were way more acceptable to say in the 90's), and also as it's impossible for a person to move through the ranks in a highly competitive field such as athletics management without burning a few bridges in the process.  (In fact, some of Hermann's colleagues stepped to the plate today to dismiss yesterday's allegations.)  But, it may still happen.

With Rutgers' mismanagement of its athletics department continuing to make news, I am sure there are people within Rutgers' administration who are wondering when they will catch a break on a good thing that the school does in the mass media.  If only some professor's latest invention or cure or something would make the headlines on the nightly news the way the school's bungling their latest athletic hire does on ESPN these days.  Lately, it seems the school has been in the news for all of the wrong reasons, and the point of this blog post is to help to understand why.

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I attended Rutgers as an undergraduate between 2002 and 2006.  I graduated with a B.A. in Biology (and I did pretty well there as a student, to leave it at that).  Later, to provide some context, I attended Boston College for my master's degree - so I know what it's like to attend a school with a different philosophy (there is no such thing as a "B.C. Screw", though there is an "RU Screw," for instance).

I love Rutgers to the core, though, and while I primarily love Rutgers for the academic opportunities and high amount of value it provides to students for a quality education, I've also been a football season ticket holder since 2009 - which has been more painful than enjoyable, but hey, I am a glutton for punishment.

My first point, as an alumnus of the University, is that for the most part, Rutgers does not seek to excel - and this is perfectly okay.  Rutgers, if it had a philosophy on this - and it probably doesn't, but bear with me here - seeks to be "good enough" and a good value.  Rutgers is now experiencing the bad side of an equation it's been taking advantage of for a very long time.  Nationally, the Rutgers name exceeds what people in New Jersey think of Rutgers.  When I visit my family in Florida and meet someone new, and it comes up where I went to school, I mention Rutgers and they think "Wow, that's a great school, you must be successful."

I think Rutgers is great, and to the extent I am successful, Rutgers played a huge part in that, but think about it objectively: who goes to Rutgers?  In reality, it's a safety school that takes advantage of the fact that New Jersey graduates WAY more college-ready high school seniors than the national average (because our educational structure is pretty close to top notch, and because of genetics and having lots of smart parents here, etc.).  Any qualified honors student in a NJ public high school could write his or her ticket to any small, private liberal arts college in the U.S. - if they wanted to pay tons of money to attend.  On the flip side, the Ivy League schools have to be way more selective toward NJ students because too many are over-qualified and they seek to have a geographically diverse student body (transplant any of these NJ kids to Kansas and Princeton would admit them in a heartbeat).

So here lies Rutgers, with attractive in-state tuition and the opportunity to obtain a very good (but not world-class) education, close to home.  I could have attended a small, private, liberal-arts school, but I am so glad I attended Rutgers instead.  I write this well aware that, with the exception of one or two academic departments, Rutgers is not excellent at anything.  And of course bureaucratically, due to its complexity and uncommon dependence upon the state, Rutgers has always been a nightmare for everyone (students, professors, staff, etc.).  This bureaucratic awfulness had to have played a huge role in a few of the recent scandals - Rutgers' response to every problem is and always has been to form a committee, adding another layer of garbage and noise to the problem - but in the news coverage of the scandals, it's sort of hidden between the lines, as subtext.

This is because Rutgers' national reputation does not include any of the above truths about what Rutgers is like!  So when a series of scandals like those that have plagued the athletic department over the past few months happen, everyone in the national sports media goes "Wow, Rutgers?!  That pillar of academic excellence?!  How can they be so messed up?!"  To which every Rutgers alumni responds back with a face palm and a "Duh," because even the best students at Rutgers who excelled at everything HAVE to remember waiting in line after line, being shuffled from department to department, in order to get anything administrative accomplished while they were a Rutgers student.  That is the not-so-hidden truth about Rutgers.

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Every candidate for the athletic director position at Rutgers had to have known all the good, and the bad, about working at Rutgers. The good had to the have outweighed the bad, though, because a number of qualified candidates were finalists for the position. But "qualified" and "without warts" are two different things, which leads me to my second point: Rutgers was never going to find someone to be their AD that did not have something checkered in their past.

Here am I speculating a bit, because I do not work in this industry, but it seems reasonable to assume that college athletics are a fairly murky area with lots of potential booby traps: NCAA infractions, overzealous and hyper-competitive recruiting of top athletes, academic scandals, shady AAU coaches, etc.  There seem to be too many ways for a person to fall into possible trouble while climbing the ranks of athletic management at the university level.  And Rutgers, which - let's face it - is not known for its athletics, was also not offering a large sum of money to the athletic director.  If Hermann keeps her job, I believe she will be paid $450,000 annually - I'd take it, and you'd take it, but it's not a huge sum of money for the position and for the responsibility.

So what did we expect to get from our new AD?  Former AD Tim Pernetti was a great find, but not without risk - he did not have a traditional AD background (he came from broadcasting) and as a Rutgers alum who loved the school, he was willing to be paid what was Rutgers was willing to pay.  (I would also assume that as a former TV exec, he was already so wealthy at the time of his hire that he was thinking of the position almost like working for a non-profit, a career change that many wealthy people make at mid-career.)  And it turns out that his flaw - keeping Mike Rice on board when he should have fired him - was probably at least partially a result of his non-traditional AD background.

I am not sure if Rutgers will end up dismissing Hermann for this, but the damage has been done already.  The real problem is that the Rutgers Committee to Select the Members of the Committee to Select the Athletic Director appears to have not known something about Hermann that anyone who reads the On the Banks blog knew about two weeks ago - specifically, that wrongful termination lawsuit (with an actual jury verdict, not an out-of-court settlement) from 1997.

That, above everything else that's happened over the past few months, looks really bad for Rutgers University, and it speaks to the core of the problem, which is that Rutgers seems to be a rudderless ship, constantly reacting to these issues without ever being proactive.  Whatever his good traits, new Rutgers President Robert Barchi has shown time and time again that he has no clue, or interest in, managing a medium-profile athletics department.  Athletics, whatever its warts, is fine marketing for the University, and if Barchi can't fix this series of negative news about Rutgers very quickly, in my opinion, he needs to be dismissed as President.

What I think doesn't really matter, though - there are plenty of influential alumni boosters who have to feel the same way about this, and if your money talks and if my money talks, their money SCREAMS.  And once that goes away, the Board of Governors will have no choice except to let the big boss go.  Let's see what happens in the days and weeks ahead...

CNN: Journalism for Stupid People

Earlier today, I Facebook shared an image of the below "BREAKING NEWS" on CNN.com:

I'll get to this bullcrap in more detail in just a second, but first, some background.  I will admit that I mindlessly check the CNN.com home page a few times a day.  It's no New York Times (to be charitable), but the New York Times instituted a 10 article per month viewing limit and I try not to break it too badly.  Further, I'll admit that part of the attraction of CNN.com is watching the cars crash into each other (kind of like when the shit hits the fan and they routinely jump the gun reporting the news - did you hear the Supreme Court completely overruled health care reform last summer?). 

And besides, where else can you find amazing graphics such as what I've copied below?

Let's break down how awesomely awful this graphic (which I downloaded a few years ago but still kept on my desktop - labeled "horrible image.jpg" - because I could not believe that something this horrible and stupid made its way onto a reputable news organization's web site) is.

1. The colors are too close to each other in hue, and do not organize in any reasonable fashion: bright red for a near-certainty of default and... pastel orange for a relatively low possibility of default?  Presumably these colors should be on a spectrum of some kind, since the variable they're describing is interval in nature.
2. The legend, holy smokes, the legend.  This legend looks like it was designed by a mentally challenged third grader on bring your child to work day, or, at the very least, someone who's never seen a chart before.  
3. In order to interpret this chart, I need to look at the nation I am interested in (luckily I'm good at geography!), try to decipher the color, and then move my eyes over to the Legend That Will Burn Your Eyeballs in order to determine... Ireland has a 51% probability of default?
4. But what does that mean, exactly?  Why should I care, and how does this relate to the rest of Europe, a/k/a that amorphous grey blob in between Ireland and the rest of Southern Europe?

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Since it's such breaking news that most of us still like Obama, let's look at the article in more detail and try to figure out why the hell this is BREAKING NEWS.

President Barack Obama's personal popularity may be one reason he came out of what was arguably the worst week of his presidency with his approval rating holding steady, according to a new national poll.

Oh, I see.  CNN sponsored a research survey, and in order to maximize page views, they disguised the one potentially interesting finding in a press release labeled "BREAKING NEWS".  Because that doesn't spoil actual breaking news, like, I don't know...

The other breaking news story: THAT GIANT TORNADO THAT IS HEADING RIGHT FOR A MAJOR AMERICAN CITY. 

God, CNN is just awful.  People are about to die in a massive natural disaster in Oklahoma City, and some dumbass web editor is sitting at his or her cubicle, herping and derping about search engine optimization and new visitors because OMG, most of us still like Obama.  Sometimes I wish I lived in the 18th century.

Anyway, back to the article itself.  Hmm, President Barack Obama's personal popularity may be one reason his approval rating held steady?  Wow, this reeks of expecting a certain result in a survey, not finding it, and designing some straw man excuse for not finding the result you were looking for.


The new numbers indicate that Obama remains popular, with 79% of Americans saying the president is likable.

"This underscores just how important the president's personal characteristics have been to him, and how useful it is to the White House that IRS, Benghazi, and AP controversies have not dimmed Obama's personal popularity so far," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

Or, alternatively, it means nothing.  It means nothing because politicians are almost always inherently likable people - Bill Clinton?  Ronald Reagan?  Everyone loved those guys.  Smooth operator, that Slick Willie.  He could charm the pants off a cowboy. 

But likability has nothing to do with approval - approval exists along party lines, and likability is a personal characteristic.  So, I don't know, maybe this happened:

• The entire political machine has its head up its collective ass when it comes to interpreting and understanding research; specifically, they tend to over-state marginal differences and try to materialize stories out of the ether when no true data patterns exist.
• The political establishment thinks the American people care about Benghazi, the IRS scandal, and other issues ostensibly plaguing the Presidency.  In reality, most American people do not, and the data supporting the opposite point is rigged - specifically engineered by research companies on behalf of their journalistic-machine clients to make it look like randomly selected Americans participating in a research survey care about something they do not care about.
• Because no one cares in the universe about these issues, Obama's approval ratings don't move.
• BUT WAIT, EVERYONE CARES!  IT MUST BE BECAUSE HE'S SO DURN LIKABLE, THAT OBAMA.

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Last month, I was randomly selected to participate in Quinnipiac University's weekly political phone survey of New Jersey residents.  I was asked many "yes/no" style questions regarding my opinions on many different topics germane to current events in New Jersey.  For instance, should Mike Rice have been fired?  What about Rutgers President Barchi?  Do I approve of Governor Christie's performance regarding jobs and the economy?  Hurricane Sandy relief?

On several occasions, I did not know how to respond, so I simply said "I don't know."  But that's me being honest, and also being a survey researcher by trade and knowing that the "Don't know" option exists.  Most people, forced into a yes/no type question, will answer either yes or no.  And this is what ends up happening, as a result:

Fifty-five percent say the IRS and Benghazi matters are very important to the nation and 53% saying the same thing about the AP case.

"But that doesn't quite make either of them another Watergate - at least, not yet. Nearly two-thirds say [sic] that Watergate was very important to the nation at the time; 58% say [sic] Iran-Contra was very important during the Reagan administration," says Holland. "So Americans see the current controversies as very important - maybe as much as Iran-Contra, but not yet at Watergate levels."

First, how does something being "very important to the nation" translate to "I dislike how the President is performing, overall," even if the President were involved in the scandal (besides the point it's debatable the extent to which he knew about either issue)?

Second, I know virtually no one who thinks that the IRS, Benghazi, or AP scandals are very important to the nation - but maybe that's just my friends.  So I doubt your data's integrity, fundamentally speaking.

Third, what does it mean that Americans find these scandals roughly as important as Iran-Contra, but not as important as Watergate?  I know that Watergate got Nixon impeached and forced his eventual resignation; Iran-Contra is a blip in the history of the 1980's.  Some historical context would be useful, here.

The poll also indicates that 52% say the president can manage the government effectively. That's up 10 percentage points since the last time CNN asked the question, in 2011.

As always, Obama's Achilles heel remains policy issues. Most Americans say they don't agree with him on the size and power of the federal government.

How... how are you allowed to contradict yourself like that in the real world?  You just said one thing in Paragraph A, and the absolute opposite thing in Paragraph B.  Part and parcel of managing the government effectively is making policy decisions on the size and power of the government.  If I contradicted myself this blatantly, like, EVER, at my job, I'd get called out on it in a heartbeat.  And I'm not writing an article for the front page of a website that draws 10 gazillion page views her hour!

Seriously, did someone with a shred of common sense vet this article before going public with it?  Or were they too busy ironing out the pastel color scheme for their next incorrect use of a map, when a table would have sufficed?

Why Must We Live Someplace So Damn Expensive?

(Author's note: Occasionally I like to deep dive into personal finance topics, and this is one of those.  I swear, it'll be less boring than you think, but if this isn't your cup of tea, feel free to not read what I've painstakenly written. ::sniff::)

The projects of West Baltimore. Not where I currently live.

Like most people with a mortgage, I often fantasize about how awesome life would be if I didn't have a mortgage payment.  To me, this is the epitome of wealth; I'd keep working, and saving, and investing, but to not have to pay for the privilege to live somewhere would be the ideal way to live.  I think with the extra money I would have, I'd buy lots of socks, but wear each pair only once.

This led me to think about the practicality of ever not having a mortgage.  You see, houses in the part of New Jersey where I live are expensive.  I think there are good reasons why they are expensive - and I'll explore a few of them later in this post - but we bought our house for $375,000 two years ago, thinking we purchased a bargain, but thinking about the sheer magnitude of my mortgage payment is enough to make me wish I were paying rent again, instead.

When a person decides to live somewhere, they're not only selecting a neighborhood, a school system, and a town or city.  They're also selecting a specific micro-economy; a place where certain goods and services cost a certain amount, which is definitely different from the price your old college roommate is paying for their goods and services.  Some things, like a gallon of milk or an electric bill, cost more or less the same amount no matter where you live (with rare exception).  Others, like real estate and taxes, show incredible variance.

How much variance, you ask?  Let's take a hypothetical family, who just happens to live in the same house that my wife and I share, but in some alternate universe.  They have a household income of exactly $100,000.  After some time, they elect to move, because their $2,000 monthly mortgage payment strikes them as highway robbery, and frankly they are just plain tired of living in New Jersey - too much fist-pumping and littering on the side of the road, maybe. 

But where to move?  Well, here are their hypothetical options, including how much money they'd need to make in order to match their household income in New Jersey (overall), and how much their mortgage payment would be (instead of $2,000 per month), assuming they wanted the exact same type of home in their new destination:

• Chapel Hill, NC: $86,626 annual income, $1,460 mortgage payment
• Jacksonville, FL: $71,352 annual income, $940 mortgage payment
• Austin, TX: $70,440 annual income, $940 mortgage payment
• Seattle, WA: $88,981 annual income, $1,480 mortgage payment

(All of the numbers above come from CNNMoney's Cost of Living Calculator - it's a fun tool to play around with.)

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The first thing I think when I see these numbers, to be completely honest, is: why the hell do I still live in New Jersey?  None of the locations in the above list strike me as horrible places to live.  Some of them, like Chapel Hill and especially Austin, are downright wonderful - they're not backwoodsy, or poorly-educated, and they do not lack for culture, entertainment, and the arts.  

But this brings me to my second thought: the economics of supply and demand, in a very meta sense, do not make huge mistakes very often.  That is, New Jersey is a more expensive place to live than Chapel Hill, Jacksonville, Austin, and Seattle precisely because more people want to live here (relative to supply) than the aforementioned locations.  Even when houses in New Jersey sometimes end up looking like this:

Someone's seven figure beach home, uprooted by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.  I hope they had flood insurance.

There are other valid reasons to want to live in New Jersey.  For instance, part of the high cost of living in New Jersey is the association with a high-tax infrastructure that provides essential services (e.g., police, education) at a high quality.  People can disagree until the cows come home about the goodness or badness of taxes.  Personally, I don't mind paying taxes, so long as I can see the result of paying them.  Students in the public school district in my town end up at Ivy League schools, like, all the time.  I grew up in a town kind of like the town where we currently live, and all of the best high school teachers in my school earned six figure incomes.  And you know what, high property taxes be damned, they all deserved to earn six figure incomes!  They had gone to fairly prestigious colleges and graduate schools, and instead of pursuing more practical careers with greater income potential, they instead climbed the most gradual income ladder in existence, dealt with all kinds of frustrations (in addition to dealing with most kids, who suck), and ended up giving me a damned solid public school education.

Rest assured that in the four cities listed in the above cost of living comparison, teachers are not earning six figures.  In fact, income inflation is a matter of fact in areas with higher cost of living, which brings me to my next point: if our hypothetical family decided not to move, but to stay in New Jersey, eventually they could move wherever they wanted (more or less) and live like kings.

Assuming their mortgage payment were not too much to handle, they'd pay it off eventually.  And once it was paid off, at least in theory, they'd be holding a fairly valuable asset in a very desirable location, and it would be 100% theirs.  They could sell it to someone else (again, in theory, there would be a line out the door to purchase the house) and buy a veritable mansion in Jacksonville, Florida.

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Later this week, I will visit my dad in Florida (Jacksonville, no less... ha!) and at some point soon after arrival, I will see a 5 bedroom, 4 bath house with 3,500 square feet, an in-ground inside pool, and a frigging bowling alley on the market for the same price as our current house.  And, like always, I'll get a little pissy and jealous inside about living where I live.  But, hopefully, I'll read the above and remember: hey, you can't beat the food, the diversity, and the educational opportunities for future generations in New Jersey.

Even if the weather here sucks ten months out of the year, the traffic is endless and interminable, and your property taxes would buy a gently used BMW sedan every single year.

Grr, Florida real estate prices piss me off...