Rutgers grad sues school over ‘gross negligence’ in racking up $516 million sports debt
· Yahoo Sports
A Rutgers Universitygraduate has filed a class action lawsuit against his alma mater alleging that the school’s athletic department “has squandered tens of millions in taxpayer funding” through “wasteful spending, lack of oversight, and other gross negligence” and has “harmed New Jersey taxpayers“ while racking up a half-billion dollar deficit over the past decade.
The suit, filed Tuesday in Middlesex County Superior Court by attorney Hector Rodriguez, is seeking to “halt the ongoing waste and unlawful diversion of public funds” to the athletics department, which reported a record $78 million deficit for the 2024-25 academic year.
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Rodriguez, a class of 1975 Rutgers alum who was once a judge in Franklin Township, argues in the filing that the $516 million deficit Rutgers has accrued since joining the Big Ten in 2014 “constitutes a systemic misuse of public resources undertaken without meaningful oversight, without legislative authorization, and without a credible plan for fiscal sustainability.”
Seeking a trial by jury, Rodriguez requests that the court declare that the school’s “continued subsidization of athletics deficits with public funds violates New Jersey law” and orders “an independent financial audit of Rutgers athletics.” He also seeks to preventRutgers “from approving or funding athletic deficits using taxpayer-supported funds without legislative authorization” and demands that Rutgers “make restitution to the State of New Jersey for all amounts deemed to have been improperly used.”
President William Tate, the Board of Governors and Board of Trustees were all named as defendants.
In a statement to NJ.com, Rutgers spokeswoman Dory Devlin said the university “does not comment on pending litigation” and “will respond to the complaint through the legal process.”
“Rutgers’ academic mission and national profile have significantly advanced since the university joined the Big Ten,” Devlin said in the statement. “At the same time, despite major revenue growth from Big Ten distributions, costs driven by the talent and infrastructure required, including coaches’ salaries, high salary fringe rates, facilities, and student-athlete resources, have outpaced revenue.
“Rutgers is not alone: Rutgers athletics operating spending ranks 11 out of the 18 teams in the Big Ten. During this unprecedented time of change in collegiate athletics, the university is taking several steps to work toward a sustainable athletics budget, which currently makes up 3% of Rutgers’ $6 billion budget.”
Rodriguez was not immediately available for commentTuesday. Bruce Nagel, anattorney representing him in this case, said the lawsuit is about “stopping this wasteful spending of money that is resulting in huge losses to the taxpayers.”
“Rutgers has been running its athletic department at a shocking deficit,” Nagel told NJ.com. “It has generated over $500 million in losses. It is funded by taxpayer money, and it has got to stop.”
Since joining the Big Ten, Rutgers has reported $1,356,068,522 in operating expenses and $1,165,521,194 in operating revenue, a deficit of $190,547,328. But the revenue figure includes subsidies, which account for 28% of that total according to an NJ.com analysis.
When removing student fees ($138.1M), university support ($146.2M) and state funding ($42.1M) from the revenue total, Rutgers’ deficit since joining the Big Ten surpasses $516 million, marking the biggest in the league by a significant margin.
Most Big Ten schools rely on some form of subsidy, NJ.com analysis shows, but none come close to Rutgers. In the past four years, the New Jersey school took in the most combined state support, direct-university support and student-fee revenue ($109.6M) by a wide margin.
Rodriguez is seeking restitution for all of the state funds directed toward athletics, noting that only three of the Big Ten’s 13 non-west-coast public schools have received a subsidy from their respective state budgets over the last four years: Illinois ($29.6 million), Rutgers ($27.2M) and Wisconsin ($6.2M).
In a guest column on NJ.com, Tate argued that the “deficit figures reflect NCAA accounting rules, not how most athletic departments describe their actual operating results.” He notes that the $78 million deficit in the latest fiscal year includes “several forms of support, including $7 million in university funding, $8 million in state support, and $15.8 million in student fees,” which he believes should be “counted as revenue.”
Tate also noted that athletics “represents about 3% of the university’s $6 billion budget — less than half of average athletic expenses at the top Division I universities.”
In the 2024-25 academic year, athletic spending represented 3.67% of Rutgers’ budget, the seventh-highest rate among the Big Ten’s 16 public schools.
For Rodriguez, who is seeking to force Rutgers to use less subsidies and lower its athletics spending, that is far too much.
“We’re very confident that we will be successful in the effort to finally get accountability and stop the wasteful spending,” Nagel said.
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