Rutgers Controversy Was One Of Don Imus's Biggest Regrets

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ — Famed radio host Don Imus, who died this past Friday at the age of 79, had few regrets in his illustrious 50-year career. Except for that "Rutgers thing."

Right before he was about to retire in March of 2018, Imus gave this interview to CBS' Anthony Mason, where he spoke about his work on the airways as a professional flame-thrower and agent provocateur. Imus told Mason he'd been fired four times in his career, the most recent being in 2007, when he infamously called the members of the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy headed hos." He was fired over the comments, and his career never fully recovered.

Eleven years later, in the 2018 interview, Mason asked, "Do you have any regrets?"

"A few. The Rutgers thing I regret," said Imus.

"What do you regret about it?"

"'Cause I knew better ... It did change my feeling about making fun of some people who didn't deserve to be made fun of, and didn't have a mechanism to defend themselves," Imus continued.

You can watch that CBS interview here:

At the time of his remarks, the Rutgers Scarlet Knights women's basketball team were an extremely high-achieving group of athletes who had competed in the 2007 NCAA women's basketball tournament. They had just lost to the University of Tennessee in the championship game the night before. Tennessee was a powerhouse, having won the championship seven times in a row, and it was remarkable that the Rutgers team had even made it that far.

It was the second time in Rutgers' history that the women's team made it to the championships, the first being in 2000, and both times were under legendary head coach C. Vivian Stringer, who still coaches Rutgers women's basketball today.

Imus made his remarks the morning after the game. According to Media Matters, this is a transcript of his now-infamous April 4, 2007 on-air radio comments:

IMUS: So, I watched the basketball game last night between — a little bit of Rutgers and Tennessee, the women's final.

(former Imus sports announcer Sid) ROSENBERG: Yeah, Tennessee won last night — seventh championship for [Tennessee coach] Pat Summitt, I-Man. They beat Rutgers by 13 points.

IMUS: That's some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos and —

(the show's executive producer, Bernard) McGUIRK: Some hard-core hos.

IMUS: That's some nappy-headed hos there. I'm gonna tell you that now, man, that's some — woo. And the girls from Tennessee, they all look cute, you know, so, like — kinda like — I don't know.

Imus apologized for the comment, and met with members of the Rutgers team, but it wasn't enough. CBS canceled his long-running show, and MSNBC also pulled his TV show. The comments sparked a national outcry, with some defending Imus as merely politically incorrect and many others saying he was an outright racist — and that it wasn't the first time. Gwen Ifill, a trail-blazing African-American journalist, who is also now dead, revealed in this New York Times op-ed — written at the height of the outcry — that Imus once described her as "the cleaning lady" the New York Times has covering the White House.

“Friends of mine wanted to defend me,” Imus told the Washington Post after he was fired. “They wanted people to consider what a wonderful guy I was, because I helped kids with cancer. Being a wonderful person doesn’t enable you to say whatever the [blank] you want to say.”

Even though Imus returned to radio at the end of 2007, he remained controversial right up until his death. On Twitter, the reaction to his passing was mixed, with even news anchor Soledad O'Brien, who is half Afro-Cuban, weighing in over the weekend:

Read his Patch obituary: Don Imus Dead; Longtime Iconic Radio Host Was 79