By Matt Rooney
New Jersey taxpayers have spent decades treating Rutgers University like another branch of state government.
Maybe it’s time to cut the cord, Save Jerseyans.
Thursday night’s football debacle provides an almost comically perfect illustration of why.
Rutgers lost 37-21 — at home — to UMass, a program that went 0-12 last season, hadn’t won a game since October 2024 and entered Thursday riding a 16-game losing streak. The Minutemen were roughly four-touchdown underdogs.
And Rutgers reportedly paid UMass $1.55 million to come to Piscataway and beat them.
You couldn’t script a better metaphor for government spending if you tried.
The New Jersey Assembly Republican account subsequently highlighted another inconvenient number: this year’s state budget includes $5 million for Rutgers under the heading of “Events Attraction and Marketing,” money which has been discussed amid the increasingly expensive college athletics/NIL arms race.
This isn’t merely Republican spin. The Associated Press recently reported on states pouring public money into college athletics and specifically noted New Jersey’s $5 million Rutgers appropriation. Rutgers declined to tell AP whether that money would ultimately support athletics.
Meanwhile, state economic-development officials have explicitly defended public support for a Rutgers NIL marketing campaign, arguing that Scarlet Knights athletics can promote New Jersey nationally and help attract businesses and talent.
Fine. Let’s judge the investment.
UMass 37. Rutgers 21.
More seriously, why are taxpayers involved in this business at all?
Rutgers competes in the Big Ten, one of the richest conferences in college athletics. College football is increasingly a professional entertainment enterprise wrapped in university colors. Players can receive NIL compensation and schools operate in a national arms race involving television contracts, facilities, coaches, recruiting and athlete compensation.
If Rutgers wants to compete in that marketplace, then Rutgers donors, boosters, sponsors, television partners and ticket-buying fans should finance it.
Not a family in Ocean County struggling with its electric bill.
Not a retiree in Bergen County facing another property-tax increase.
Not a small-business owner getting hammered by New Jersey’s cost of doing business.
And the same principle should extend beyond football.
Rutgers boosters will argue that the notoriously far-Left university performs important academic and research functions. Cool? But “Rutgers does worthwhile things” isn’t an argument for writing it a blank check. Trenton should begin forcing the university to distinguish between genuine public missions and expenditures that can be supported through tuition, philanthropy, private partnerships and Rutgers’ own enormous institutional apparatus.
Start with athletics. Eliminate taxpayer subsidies connected to NIL and sports marketing. Then conduct a comprehensive audit of Rutgers’ state appropriations, administrative spending and nonacademic programs. Require every taxpayer-supported expenditure to demonstrate a measurable public benefit.
Rutgers can keep playing Big Ten football.
Rutgers can chase five-star recruits.
Rutgers can spend whatever its donors and customers are willing to provide.
But New Jersey taxpayers shouldn’t be drafted into the NIL arms race — especially when they’re apparently paying millions for the privilege of watching an 0-12 team come to Piscataway and administer a beating.
Rutgers doesn’t need another blank check.
It needs a taxpayer diet.
