Bonnie Bernstein Billed University of Maryland $118,000 as Part of Commission Investigating Football Culture

The University of Maryland paid over $1.5 million to a special commission to investigate D.J. Durkin’s football culture in the aftermath of Jordan McNair’s death, according to an investigation by the Washington Post. Those fees included six-figure bills submitted by four individual members of the commission, including sports journalist Bonnie Bernstein, a Maryland alumnus.

Bernstein sent this message out in early August:

She, along with Doug Williams and others, were appointed to the panel on August 24th of last year, less than two weeks after that tweet. Durkin was reinstated on October 30th, and then fired a day later after heavy public outcry over that decision. That means her involvement in the school investigation covered a period of about nine-and-a-half weeks.

According to the Washington Post, all the commission members charged an hourly rate of $650 for their work during the investigation. Bernstein billed a total of $118,463, including billing about $2,600 for each of 14 train rides to and from New York.

A spokesman for the Board of Regents said that the commission “expended hundreds of hours interviewing 165 current and former players, parents, coaches, university officials and others, and reviewing thousands of documents, emails and text messages,” and also added that “the expenses incurred are in line with those of investigations of similar scope conducted at Big Ten and other NCAA Division I universities.”

Can you find big law firms where the top partners charge well over $650 per hour? Sure you can, and from that perspective one could justify these rates. It still feels like those serving the university and being specially appointed to those roles (without a competitive bid process) should not be enriching themselves to that extent to do this work, when a reasonable rate could still compensate for the time involved.

For someone billing at $100,000 or more, at the $650 hourly rate, that would mean they put in more than 150 hours of work on the investigation over a nine-week period. Bernstein, who was a former sideline reporter for CBS, is now heavily involved in the speaking circuit, and also hosts “Country on Campus,” a TV show on the Country Music Channel (CMT).

It’s good money if you can get it. Those figures have to be particularly galling for Maryland supporters considering that Durkin was retained initially, and then suffered a public relations nightmare because of the initial decision by the Board of Regents.