Recently, Rutgers athletic director Keli Zinn filmed a podcast with Chris Carlin and University President William Tate IV, where she had the opportunity to discuss several happenings in the athletic department. One topic discussed on the podcast was scholarship and NIL aid for various Olympic sports on campus.
The first and most significant thing she mentioned was that, even with football and basketball getting most of the attention, there is still space for the coaches of the Olympic programs to
push for what they need, according to Zinn, who made this clear to them during a meeting last fall. This means that real NIL support is being made readily available to the coaches of the Olympic sports for really the first time at Rutgers.
“Our absence in that space. Over the past three or four years, I do believe it has had a direct impact on where you see some of our Olympic sports performing right now. We needed to fix that, and our Olympic coaches heard back in the fall, me tell them, hey, this isn’t just about football and basketball, it’s going to be about you too.”
Another important thing that Zinn noted during the podcast, which revolves around Olympic sports, was the overall improvement of scholarship support for the Olympic sports programs at Rutgers. Zinn noted that when she first set foot on campus, it became increasingly clear that scholarship support for the Olympic sports had some deficiencies. While she did not specify what exactly those deficiencies were, she noted that the gift received from Motorola CEO Greg Brown helped them close that gap and bring the Olympic sports scholarship situation to a Big Ten level. However, since it was a matching challenge, it wasn’t just Brown who made it possible, but the thousands of fans who chose to donate on Rutgers Giving Day that made the matching price as high as it needed to be. With the success of the matching campaign, Zinn noted that they are looking to do more like it in the future.
It has been noted before on this site that a lot of Olympic sports had breakout seasons this year. The hope is that with this newfound support, they can continue their overall upward trajectory.
