In April, Rutgers University announced it had hired TurnkeyZRG, the college sports consulting and executive search firm, to lead a national hunt for its next athletic director. The move came eight months after the controversial resignation of former AD Pat Hobbs, who had been under an internal investigation over an inappropriate relationship with gymnastics coach Umme Salim-Beasley, one of his subordinates.
While Hobbs cited health reasons for his sudden Aug. 16, 2024 resignation, NJ.com later revealed he stepped down just before he was scheduled to surrender his school-issued electronic devices as part of the inquiry.
On Dec. 12, 2024, outgoing Rutgers president Jonathan Holloway signed a master services agreement with TurnkeyZRG and simultaneously authorized the firm to begin work on finding Hobbs’ replacement.
By then, Holloway had already announced his own resignation, set to take effect at the end of the 2024-25 academic year. Thus commenced an awkward situation in which the next Rutgers president would inherit an athletic director who had just been hired by his predecessor.
Ultimately, the dynamic led to a stalled process in which months of work and tens of thousands of dollars were wasted.
According to a copy of the deal, obtained via a public records request, the Big Ten school agreed to pay TurnkeyZRG $175,000 in total for the search, with a $100,000, nonrefundable first installment due at the start. Invoices acquired through a separate public records request show that the school also reimbursed the firm an additional $19,563.75 in expenses.
A Rutgers spokesperson confirmed receipt of questions Sportico sent this week but did not provide further comment.
Despite being formally retained in early December, TurnkeyZRG’s engagement was not made public until late April—nearly five months later.
TurnkeyZRG does not typically comment on its searches. However, in a rare on-the-record interview in early June with NJ.com, company CEO Len Perna touted Rutgers’ AD search as “pioneering the new phase of what athletic directors will look like,” by focusing on candidates with a commercial background. (Perna declined to comment this week when reached by Sportico.)
Sure enough, a month later, NJ.com reported that Rutgers was targeting veteran sports executive Brian Lafemina—a former Scarlet Knight diver who served as chief business officer for LA28 and is now a partner at Arctos. By that time, Holloway’s successor William F. Tate IV, formerly the president at LSU, had officially taken the helm at Rutgers.
Just a week after Lafemina’s name become publicly linked to the search, he formally removed himself from consideration. Two weeks later, NJ.com, citing anonymous sources, reported that Rutgers was “parting ways” with TurnkeyZRG. The school declined to comment.
On July 30, Tate named Keli Zinn, LSU’s executive deputy AD, as Rutgers’ new director of intercollegiate athletics, filling a vacancy that had remained open for nearly a year. Zinn’s selection marked a clear departure from TurnkeyZRG’s focus on candidates with commercial backgrounds. Her five-year contract, which starts at $1.35 million annually, matches the target compensation Rutgers outlined in the authorization form it executed with TurnkeyZRG last year.
The future of Rutgers and TurnkeyZRG’s working relationship remains unclear, but the master services agreement remains in effect. Despite the report of them parting ways, a public records request did not produce any formal notice the school sent to the company seeking to terminate their relationship.
#Rutgers #Paid #120K #Firm #Dropped #Search