Keli Zinn came into Rutgers with a brutal to-do list. When she took over as athletic director in July 2025, the department was dealing with no NIL infrastructure, outdated stadiums and heavy debt from years of unnecessary spending. She’s already made progress on those fronts in her first year on the Banks.
The part she says has lagged behind is the one tied to something a lot harder to measure: whether students actually feel invested in Rutgers sports.
“We didn't spend much time on that piece over the past 12 months,” Zinn said to the media on Thursday. “But it's something that, now being more stable in some of the other areas that were most critical, it has started to be a focal point for us. We are actually in the midst of hiring due to some attrition, an individual who has a really strong touchpoint with our students, student marketing, etc.”
That admission landed on a rough night for the Scarlet Knights. A packed student section, including plenty of freshmen seeing Rutgers football in person for the first time, watched UMass come in and leave with a 37-21 win after outplaying and outcoaching Rutgers.
Zinn pointed to the Rutgers Riot Squad, the small but loud group of students who show up early, pack the front row at sporting events and even tailgate beforehand. In recent years, they’ve traveled to places like Maryland, Virginia Tech and Indiana to support the Knights.
“My question to the students here will be: Are you showing up here looking forward to be a Riot Squad member?” Zinn said.
“And if not, and the answer is no, or a lot of people are saying, I'm not quite sure. We need to spend some time on that area, so I'd love to visit with [students] on that because you've been here, you've lived it, and you're going to see it start to be a focal point for us here once we get that higher end.
Up to this point, we have not had a full-time professional tied to that group, and I think that's part of what you're seeing when you don't have that tie-in.”
For now, though, the Riot Squad feels like the exception rather than the rule on campus. Rutgers undergrads never lived through football’s mid-to-late 2000s peak, and most weren’t around for men’s basketball’s back-to-back NCAA Tournament runs. Their version of Rutgers sports has been shaped more by disappointment than celebration.
That’s part of the challenge Zinn is walking into. Student pride around the programs is low, and losing has become the default expectation.
In college sports, that kind of mindset is much harder to shake than it is in the pro game. Rutgers’ financial picture is getting better, but it still isn’t where it needs to be.
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Rutgers Fans Now Have One Big Reason To Judge Keli Zinn
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Zinn has also pointed to progress in football under Greg Schiano, saying recruiting and the use of resources have improved since she arrived. For Rutgers fans, the larger question now is whether those moves are the start of a broader reset or just the first visible steps in a longer rebuild, with Zinns judgment on the departments biggest pieces set to be watched closely from here. [Read more 🡒]