(CNN) -- Robert Barchi believed he had much more important business to deal with at Rutgers, and in many ways, he's probably right. He is overseeing a massive merger between the university and the state's medical schools, one that will shape higher education in New Jersey for generations. 

But now there was an issue involving a videotape of his basketball coach. This was early December, just after Rutgers had received a much-celebrated invitation to the Big Ten Conference. The tape contained clips of Mike Rice throwing basketballs at his players, shoving them and cursing at them, and using a homophobic slur. 

When it was given to ESPN months later, it dominated the airwaves for a week and sparked a scandal that rocked the Rutgers athletic department and, for many alums, disgraced the school. 

The tape was toxic. The tape overshadowed everything Barchi was trying to accomplish on the New Brunswick, New Jersey, campus. But he never watched that tape until after it aired. 

"It was a revelation," Barchi said a few weeks later, "that the intensity of the response, both within the community, within the state and nationally on this very important and very serious issue could totally swamp out all of the other issues we're trying to deal with and color everything else we're doing." 

Revelation isn't the right word. Reality is. Barchi isn't the first university president -- and he won't be the last -- to learn how a scandal in college athletics can shape his administration or, for some, end it entirely. 
How did the tape affect Barchi's efforts at Rutgers?
 The tape overshadowed everything Barchi was trying to accomplish 