Rutgers is not in the Big Ten without Jim Delany. No one associated with the university would debate this statement because nothing happened during his 29 years as the league’s influential commissioner without his stamp of approval.

Delany, 74, is now retired, but that doesn’t mean his words still don’t carry weight — so much so, in fact, that he was reluctant to agree to an interview with NJ Advance Media on the 10-year anniversary of the Scarlet Knights accepting the league’s invitation. He said he wanted to “keep the environment clear” for Kevin Warren, his successor, to do his job.

“I’ve had my shot,” Delany said.

But at the end of a long discussion about the Big Ten’s then-controversial decision to invite Rutgers in 2012, Delany took the opportunity to deliver a message to the university and its supporters. Perhaps it would be too strong to call it a warning, but it was certainly a call-to-arms about a level of support for the Scarlet Knights that he considers substandard.

Let him have the floor …

“Rutgers is hundreds of millions of dollars behind other Big Ten institutions in (its) developmental process,” Delany said. “It’s pretty darn obvious to me that — what’s the right word for it? — there is not an appreciation for what Rutgers has had and what others have not had as history unfolded. Philanthropically, it has to be addressed in development and support.

“And their fans are going to have to come together and act like Big Ten fans — support, give — because you just can’t show up when the team is 8-2. The state must come together. I think that it’s clear (Rutgers) doesn’t have the support that exists in other places in the Big Ten. And that’s tough.”

That is a strong statement from a man who was careful not to comment on campus issues as Big Ten commissioner. When Rutgers had a rocky first few years as a Big Ten member with distracting scandals and mounting losses, he often sidestepped questions and made it clear he was focused on the big-picture, long-term relationship between the school and the league.

Delany, who grew up in South Orange, N.J., also understood that it would take years for Rutgers to catch up to the Big Ten competition when the league extended its invitation in November 2012. The university had not made a commitment to big-time athletics until the 1980s, decades after programs like Ohio State and Michigan had established themselves as national powers.

“Rutgers was coming from a different history and a different place,” he said. “And I understood that to be a process. I didn’t expect them (to win right away) — although they were more competitively in football, immediately, than I thought, and in basketball, they weren’t very good. But basketball has improved, and football is on a good trajectory. They may have made, in the past three years, more (strides) than any institution in the country.”

A changing dynamic

The response to Delany’s criticism from several people in the Rutgers athletics universe is two-fold:

1. We know.

2. We’re trying.

The university’s overall endowment has tripled in size since it joined the Big Ten, growing from $634.9 million to nearly $2 billion. That still ranks just 12th in the conference, ahead of only Nebraska ($1.7 billion) and Maryland ($997 million) and well behind leaders Michigan ($17.7 billion) and Northwestern ($16.1 billion), but the growth continues.

Athletics fundraising is a similar story. “It is very clear from the perspective of a donor and an alum that being in the Big Ten is a huge point of pride,” said Kimberly Hopely, president of the Rutgers University Foundation. A $100 million campaign called “R Big Ten Build,” launched by athletic director Patrick Hobbs in 2016, helped spur the construction of several much-needed facilities.

That successful campaign wouldn’t have been possible, Hobbs said, without the buzz from joining the Big Ten — and it has led to what Hobbs calls “the greatest chapter” in Rutgers athletics history. After a rocky start, teams have won league titles in women’s soccer, field hockey and men’s soccer, while the men’s basketball team ended a 30-year NCAA Tournament drought.

“The Big Ten changed the perception of Rutgers athletics,” Hobbs said. “It wasn’t just Rutgers’ perception of itself, it was Jim Delany who saw Rutgers not only as another program in the New York media market but as a program that could rise to the level of being competitive in the Big Ten. We’re starting to realize the level of success that Jim had envisioned for Rutgers coming into the conference.”

Rutgers has changed in the 10 years since accepting the Big Ten’s invitation. But it still doesn’t have the mega-donors willing to fire off the seven-digit checks or the overall donor base to rival its more-successful conference peers.

That’s a problem that’s not easily solved, and one that Jon Newman traces back to the university’s problematic entry into the league. Just six months after the press conference to announce the move, athletic director Tim Pernetti was forced to resign amid a scandal involving basketball coach Mike Rice — the first of a series of controversies that overshadowed everything.

“We did not take advantage of the fundraising momentum to get more people under the umbrella at that point, and we’re still suffering 10 years later,” said Newman, president of the Knights of the Raritan, a collective raising money for name, image and likeness payments to athletes. “We, as a fan base, need to start acting like we belong to a Big Ten school — and that donor base needs to be dramatically expanded.”

The existing donors have never been pulled in more directions. While football coach Greg Schiano has implored them to contribute to the NIL movement that has changed college sports dramatically, he also hasn’t given up on plans for a new football practice facility that is expected to cost more than $150 million. Meanwhile, as coaching salaries continue to skyrocket, Rutgers is chasing a moving target and perennial powers that are so far ahead in the race that they’re barely visible.

Meanwhile, a vocal minority of the faculty continues to rail against athletics spending in way that doesn’t happen on the campuses of longstanding Big Ten members. Rutgers can’t win unless it spends, but until the Scarlet Knights start winning, that spending remains the subject of criticism and consternation in what often feels like a never-ending cycle.

It all adds up to a challenge, to put it mildly.

Remaining bullish

Delany understands that. If the Big Ten’s former commissioner weren’t bullish on the untapped potential for Rutgers athletics, he wouldn’t have pushed a conference with deep midwestern roots toward the East Coast a decade ago.

That move was made with an eye on the millions of cable boxes that soon would have the Big Ten Network — his creation that became the league’s cash cow — and the correct calculation that conferences that weren’t growing would risk failing behind financially as the landscape in college sports shifted.

He said he wasn’t worried, as many people believed, about the Scarlet Knights’ struggles in some of its high-profile sports. What did give him pause was the amount of catching up Rutgers would have to do from an infrastructure and fundraising standpoint — areas, he believed, that would require a deeper level of commitment from the university.

“I was less concerned about competitive success than I was about the community of Rutgers coming together on a regular basis to support their institution,” Delany said. “For two reasons: First, it’s only been public for 40, 50 years. And, more than that, the investments hadn’t been made (because) they had been playing on a different playing field.

“They had had some success, but I’m talking about the kind of success that happens in conferences like the Big Ten,” he said. “You have to have that (investment) over time. You can’t expect as you join the Big Ten and participate in revenue sharing over a few years that that investment — that’s operational (money), that’s not investment.”

Delany, not surprisingly, doesn’t believe that the Big Ten’s new eight-year, $1.2 billion media-rights deal — and the expected annual payouts to all member schools that could top $75 million — will be a panacea in Piscataway. He praised Gov. Phil Murphy’s decision to earmark $100 million of state funds to renovate Jersey Mike’s Arena and build Schiano’s practice facility, but the key to consistent success at Rutgers will be a high level of private funding.

That has been a decades-long struggle in Piscataway, one that joining the Big Ten didn’t solve. Even recent projects that were launched with fundraising dollars, such as the RWJBarnabas Health Athletic Performance Center and the Gary and Barbara Rodkin Academic Success Center, required state funding and loans from the Big Ten to complete.

“You can see the recent competitive success at Rutgers, and that’s indicative of the coaches hired and the athletes that are around,” Delany said. “But if that’s going to continue and grow, there’s got to be continued investment. It’s hard, and it’s not an easy time to do it. We’ve had recessions and we may be on the cusp of one here. It’s not easy, but there tend to be more long-term cultural challenges and transformational challenges for a university and its supporters than it does competitively.”

Delany is aware of his unique place in Rutgers history. When asked if Rutgers fans had thanked him over the years for his role in saving the athletics department from an uncertain future, he laughed before acknowledging that he had heard from people. He said he was gratified that a move seen by many as a head scratcher is now widely accepted as beneficial — for both Rutgers and the Big Ten.

He also believes that 10 years, while an eternity in the career of an athlete or a coach, isn’t long enough to truly judge how the transition has gone for the Scarlet Knights.

“I always felt that we worked really hard to bring the Big Ten to the east as well as asking the east to accept the Big Ten,” Delany said. “I don’t think it was a one-way street. Rutgers and Maryland did a lot to embrace us, and we did a lot to embrace them. But it takes time. I’m not talking about two years. I’m talking about decades. That’s how I view these things — long term, institutional, athletic and academic assets that will grow and develop.”

Delany wouldn’t make a prediction for a decade from now. But he knows it won’t happen until Rutgers fans make it happen with their commitment, their support, and most of all, their wallets. The Big Ten has changed so much about Rutgers, but 10 years since the conference extended its invitation, many of the challenges remain the same.

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