Rick Bay Takes Over at Minnesota

Rick Bay, who resigned last year as Ohio State’s athletic director in protest over the firing of football coach Earle Bruce, was hired Friday as men’s athletic director at Minnesota.

Bay inherits an athletic department plagued by scandals in the last 10 years, but he urged the university to dwell on past glories, not present problems.

“If I didn’t think (the problems were) just a passing phase, I wouldn’t be here,” said Bay, 46, who was Oregon’s athletic director before he took the Ohio State job.

Bay reportedly will earn $100,000 a year on a 5-year contract. He replaces Paul Giel, who held the job for 16 1/2 years before he was fired July 5 by the university’s interim president, Richard Sauer.

The most recent series of scandals started in January 1986, when 3 Minnesota basketball players were charged with raping a woman in a Madison, Wis., hotel. The three were acquitted.

Last March, the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. issued sanctions against the university’s athletic department after concluding an 18-month investigation with a finding of 40 rules violations. The department is again under investigation for alleged illegal payments to football and basketball players.