She’ll encounter plenty of the latter in New Jersey. But Zinn deftly brushed aside questions about the mess her predecessor, Patrick Hobbs, left in his wake. Her mentor spent many years watching Rutgers officials step on rakes from College Park, Maryland, and made a promise about the woman taking the job:

Keli Zinn, who has been deputy AD and chief operating officer at LSU since 2022, has been hired as the new athletic director at Rutgers.

Rutgers President William F. Tate IV today appointed Keli Zinn, a collegiate athletics leader with 20 years of power conference experience and a proven track record of transforming championship-level programs, as director of Intercollegiate Athletics for Rutgers-New Brunswick.