Rutgers to hire Maryland Associate AD of Marketing Jordan Looby
Rutgers will hire Maryland Associate AD of Marketing & Revenue Strategy Jordan Looby to the athletic department, a source confirmed to TKR.
Football Rutgers to hire Maryland Associate AD of Marketing Jordan Looby
- Thread starter Alec Crouthamel
- Start date
She has upped NIL and sponsorship deals. I am not sure what some of you guys expect someone to do at Rutgers in just over a year.
Nobody wants to talk about this. In the past year, many senior hires brought on to newly created positions meant to produce more revenue but no big deals announced that close the $40 million gap between Rutgers and the Big Ten median on annual athletic department revenue. Unless Rutgers is signing new sponsorship deals but forgetting to announce them.
Hobbs has been gone for 2+ years and Keli has been in the job for more than a year. The blame Hobbs and Keli deserves time excuses have expired.
You must not be in a business of any scale. How long to you think it should take to create $30MM deals at Rutgers? What's your time line?
True, it's on Zinn now.
During her short reign
In her first year, Keli overhauled the department's infrastructure, modernized NIL operations, and restructured key leadership roles
For RU's NIL, she created a program almost from scratch ,after finding the department lacked proper staffing.
Centralized commercial assets to boost corporate support and marketing, helping to drive major revenue increases..
We must remember major revenue increases for Rutgers are much smaller then at the Michigan and OSU , but even starting to close that gap might be seen as a major accomplishment
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Did not see any experience with violence on the linked in profile. Snap.
3 years.
Rutgers athletics department revenue grew from $110 million in 2022 to $147 million in 2025 under Hobbs and two interims - all three unqualified to run a Division 1 athletic department.
Keli should be able to do better, especially with ally Tate pouring more university money into Keli’s department.
Reasonable. She's been here just over a year. So why the consternation?
A little early to compare metrics. Some items take a while to bear fruit. Sheesh.
Interesting comment from Alec in that article.
“He now returns to his alma mater in a similar role, overseeing marketing and game presentation, and also returns with Schiano still at the helm”
Operative word being STILL. Not sure if intentional.
A quick google search is proving your confidence in Keli's ability to do a better job spot on
(In June /2026)
Rutgers University Athletic Director Keli Zinn confirmed that the athletic department’s corporate revenue is eight figures north of where it stood the previous fiscal year
This significant financial surge is primarily attributed to a major modernization of the school's commercial strategy. To reverse historic budget deficits and boost funding in the NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) era, Zinn spearheaded the creation of Scarlet Knight Enterprises, Inc.. This unified corporate entity centralized multimedia rights, corporate sponsorships, and ticketing strategy, resulting in a 117% to 118% year-over-year revenue increase for those commercial assets.
If thats true, thats an incredible accomplishment and stat they gotta pump out publicly more! perception is huge. And probably 90% of us on this board had no idea about that level of accomplishment (and we're the die-hards!)
To me, it's a misplaced modifier. He worked under Schiano in 2011-12. "Still" could be interpreted to mean Schiano never left and is still at Rutgers. But it could also imply, "he's still here?!!!"
I would have wrote it as "and
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Kelly's biggest splashes so far are:
1. Building out and hiring a staff that seems to have the "big time" background and experience. And focusing on revenue generating positions
2. Seemingly a boost in NIL and corporate deals, but that is all mostly non-public. And unsure if the NIL has been significant enough to improve our competive standing in the conference. It seems thus far that our roster talent levels are as lowly as ever, so I think most of us don't consider this a success yet. Even if the numbers are drastically improved.
I think the fanbase is mostly yearning for excitement and momentum. Nothing points to any of that yet .
Also I'd love to see her finally announce and show plans for Jersey Mikes and SHI upgrades.
1. Building out and hiring a staff that seems to have the "big time" background and experience. And focusing on revenue generating positions
2. Seemingly a boost in NIL and corporate deals, but that is all mostly non-public. And unsure if the NIL has been significant enough to improve our competive standing in the conference. It seems thus far that our roster talent levels are as lowly as ever, so I think most of us don't consider this a success yet. Even if the numbers are drastically improved.
I think the fanbase is mostly yearning for excitement and momentum. Nothing points to any of that yet .
Also I'd love to see her finally announce and show plans for Jersey Mikes and SHI upgrades.
She's spoken about this in interviews but she also didn't backfill positions of people that left who weren't in revenue producing roles. It's very obvious where her focus is and will be.
I did not realize you wrote that. I thought it came from Rutgers athletics. I have told you before that you are fine writer. As a self-appointed cunning linguist, I am eminently qualified to make such judgements! I'm humble too! Nice work, and I like the ambiguity.
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Not true yet! Zinn is stuck with 2 awful coaches. Until Greg and Pike are gone and we have some winning and optimism in the program it will be very hard to sign corporate sponsorship.
Zinn already took basketball NIL from 3-11MM and Football from 5-25MM . Things moving in the right direction. Once Greggy is fired in the coming weeks and replaced at years end the corporate money will increase. Losing to UMASS was a huge step back
The idea that somehow any of RUs lack of success is due to Zinn is outrageous. There is nobody that can fix our financial status in just a year. She made progress year 1 and as long as she makes more progress instead 2, that’s all we can ask.
She inherited a s__thole athletic dept lacking money and success in nearly every sport.
She inherited a s__thole athletic dept lacking money and success in nearly every sport.
Her competence will be measured on how she handles schiano and his departure. That some people still think he’s the answer is beyond puzzling.
ADs only get canned for the following:
Felonious activities
Drug / alcohol abuse on the job
Chasing tail
Effing up the football or MBB programs (especially football except for a very few schools)
no one gets canned because you screwed up WBB, WSoc, Softball, Lacrosse and so on..no one
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Agree with that. I’m sure she’s waiting to see how the season progresses. It won’t happen but imagine we start 3-1 by upsetting USC. Whole narrative changes.
but I expect a 4 TD+ loss and we will either be 1-3 or 2-2. Then a likely loss to IU and we are 1-4 or 2-3. 1-4 he’s gone during bye week. 2-3 probably keeps him around.
The bye week would be the time to can him but who does she put in place in the interim? Kirk? Not sure he’s up to it. Johansen? No good option unless she’s already onboarding somebody now from the outside
The Rutgers Board of Governors approved a $30 million apparel deal. This amount was reported as fact here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and by many others.
Oops, nobody bothered to get the contract except for me. Actual deal value signed by Keli: $4.95 million.
The biggest revenue generation opportunity under the control of the athletic department was a spectacular failure. Of course, Keli's negotiating position was weakened by market conditions and Rutgers history with apparel suppliers. Still, the BofG was told $30 million. Rutgers signed a deal for $4.95 million. The media ignored it. This is a red flag.
To add insult to injury, Rutgers football staffers were flaunting Adidas apparel on the sidelines of the UMass game last Thursday, in blatant violation of the Rutgers-Nike contract.
Turning to the most recent Rutgers athletics sponsorship, Valley Bank. The company announced the Rutgers sponsorship by way of press release but curiously Rutgers did not announce the agreement.
The Illinois athletics department, a Rutgers peer we would like to believe, did a sponsorship deal with a local Illinois bank, Busey. The Illinois athletics department got a $5 million signing bonus plus $5 million per year for 5 years. Total value = $30 million.
One wonders what the terms of the Rutgers-Valley Bank sponsorship agreement are. My educated guess is far less than Illinois-Busey, and the Valley Bank deal is owned 100% by the current Rutgers athletic department.
If the Rutgers athletics department’s “corporate revenue” is up eight figures, then the only way that could explained is from the B1G and CFP media deals that were negotiated by the conference, not Rutgers. This would still be good news because it is more money to Rutgers.
On the 117% growth, Keli said at the 9:20 mark of a July 7, 2026, interview, "the current fiscal year that we're in we're seeing a growth of of roughly 117% in our revenue within Scarlet Knight Enterprises year-over-year as compared to the performance last year." I believe Keli misspoke and meant the previous fiscal year - fiscal year 2026 - not the current fiscal 2027 year.
On June 1, 2026, at the 8:30 mark, Keli said, "We're projecting here at that current close of the year up 117% from last fiscal year in the corporate partnership space alone."
The question is what is the line item that is enjoying the 117% growth? The financial reports have a line item for "Royalties, Licensing, Advertisement and Sponsorships."
Here are the fiscal year numbers reported by Rutgers for royalties, licensing, advertisement and sponsorships:
2022 $7,524,131
2023 $7,203,165
2024 $8,628,534
2025 $2,679,994
A few questions:
1) Why was 2025 fiscal year revenue 1/3 of previous years revenue, and why is the amount less than the $2,834,580 of naming rights payments SHI and Jersey Mike's owed Rutgers in the 2025 fiscal year?
2) Is the 117% growth quoted by Keli 117% higher than $2,679,994, or $5,815,587? That would be lowest in the B1G and lower than Rutgers brought in at least 10 years with the exception of the Covid year.
Maybe Rutgers changed how money formerly counted in this line is allocated and now counts it in another line item, such as media rights. It isn't clear.
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