Rutgers has been embarrassment since being added to Big Ten

The official preseason biography issued by Rutgers on men's basketball coach Eddie Jordan includes the following:

" … Rutgers had many achievements under Jordan in 2014-15. Playing its inaugural Big Ten season, RU defeated No. 4-ranked Wisconsin, 67-62, on Jan. 11. It was the highest ranked victory in program history. RU also defeated teams from the ACC (Clemson) and SEC (Vanderbilt), as well as earning a win at Madison Square Garden against Manhattan.''

There was a minor glitch in the Scarlet Knights' inaugural Big Ten season that failed to receive a mention from the chronicler of Coach Jordan's many achievements in 2014-15:

Rutgers lost its final 15 games in Big Ten, including the 80-68 loss to Richard Pitino's underachieving Gophers in the 2015 conference tournament. The 2-16 record in the regular season also allowed the Knights to wrap up 14^th place with two games to spare.

That unlikely victory vs. Wisconsin over which the Rutgers media staff gushes also remained the last in the Big Ten for Jordan as he brought his athletes into Williams Arena on Tuesday night.

The Knights reached 0-15 for this conference season with an 83-61 loss to the Gophers. The Gophers were 1-13 and entered the game as 12 1/2-point favorites. And after a playing a pathetic first half, they still covered easy.

There was an outbreak of collegiate cannibalism at the start of this decade that saw the number of major football conferences drop from six to five. The Big Ten's first foray into eating its competitors came with the addition of Nebraska.

In November 2012, there came the announcement that Maryland would leave the ACC and Rutgers would leave the soon-to-be destroyed Big East (now an excellent non-football conference) and create a 14-team Big Ten.

The reason behind conference expansions was television revenue. The majority of those millions came through the appeal of televising football games, and the remainder through televising men's basketball games.

Maryland has added zilch in football and prestige in men's basketball. Rutgers has been a blight on the Big Ten in both sports.

At least it took a while for the Scarlet Knights to become an embarrassment … just over three weeks.

The announcement that Rutgers would move to the Big Ten came on Nov. 20, 2012. The announcement that men's basketball coach Mike Rice was suspended for "inappropriate language and behavior'' came on Dec. 13, 2012.

It was at the end of the season that former assistant coach Eric Murdock leaked a videotape of the abuse that Rice was willing to heap on his players in practice.

Rice was fired on April 3, 2013. Jordan, a hero of Rutgers' Final Four team of 1976, was hired on April 22.

It was soon discovered that Eddie didn't have the college degree that coaches were supposed to have. He started taking some credits and graduated from Rutgers' School of Management in May.

That could be the problem. Maybe Eddie was studying too hard to devote himself fully to maintaining the basketball program.

The Mike Rice embarrassment was double-downed last fall by coach Kyle Flood and the football program. Flood was caught in a relentless attempt to get a part-time professor to change a failing grade for cornerback Nadir Barnwall.

Flood's intimidation succeeded and Barnwall became eligible. When Flood's unethical assistance was revealed by an academic adviser, he was suspended for three games.

And the assistance aimed at Barnwall looked even more ill-placed when Barnwall was among six players on the football roster charged in a series of crimes around the campus in Piscataway, N.J.

Those six players were dismissed from the team. Flood also was dismissed after Rutgers went 4-8 overall and 1-7 in the conference. The Knights have lost 20 conferences games in a row in men's basketball and football, dating to a football victory over Indiana last Oct. 17.

Rutgers has a new athletic director in Patrick Hobbs (Julie Herman was fired after 2 ½ blundering years). It has a new football coach in Chris Ash. Presumably, it will be getting a new men's basketball coach. And the athletic department is $25 million in debt.

Yeah, the state university of New Jersey has been quite an addition to the Big Ten. Call it [Commissioner] Jim Delany's Folly.