Former player: Hermann called us whores

Kelly Hanlon Dow was on a University of Tennessee volleyball team coached by Rutgers University's new Athletic Director Julie Hermann in the 1990s. Hanlon Dow tells Anderson Cooper that Hermann was abusive to her and the other players. "I never understood the motivation when she was screaming at us and calling us names," she says.

The accusations about Hermann's past are making headlines now because she was recently hired to help the Rutgers' athletic program recover from  a scandal involving the treatment of players by basketball coach Mike Rice. Rice was fired in April and the previous athletic director, Tim Pernetti, resigned after video surfaced showing the coach's behavior during practice.

According to Hanlon Dow and her former teammates, the "mental cruelty" they endured was so unbearable that they wrote a letter and presented it to their coach. Hermann claims she wasn't notified about the letter, and she denies the allegations, calling herself an "intense" coach, but not abusive. "It was read out loud in front of her and the entire team," says Hanlon Dow. "I don't know how she could forget it ... her last words were 'I choose not to coach you' and she walked out of the room."