Pace University’s head football coach Andrew Rondeau was placed on “administrative leave” Monday in the wake of a published report that he physically and verbally abused his players.

The New York Post first reported the allegations in its Sunday edition prompting the university to take action. University President Stephen Friedman announced via a university-wide e-mail that the university would be investigating each claim independent of the Pace Athletics Department, and that Rondeau’s leave would be effective “immediately pending the outcome of [the] investigation.”

Allegations of abuse and claims of unfulfilled terms from recruitment contracts were levied by former Pace players Corey Reeder and Ransford Quarrie, who claimed that they were forcefully removed from the team by Rondeau two weeks ago.

The Post article featured the following account: “On Oct. 4 in the cafeteria at the Briarcliff campus, an enraged Rondeau, who was recovering from a hip injury, took his crutch and pushed it against a student’s throat, pinning him against a wall. He screamed at him for lining up for the breakfast buffet too early…”

Quarrie described Rondeau as having a “Jekyll and Hyde” like personality, mentioning to the Post that he would be calm one moment and then “snap, pick up a chair and throw it.”

Coach Rondeau declined to comment.

Reeder and Quarrie also mentioned that Rondeau made false promises regarding their education, claiming that Rondeau lied to them about the degrees they would obtain. Both players graduated from Villanova

University in May 2014, having played for the school’s Division I football team.

With one year of NCAA eligibility remaining, they were recruited heavily by Rondeau, but their hopes of obtaining a business minor did not come to fruition.

A source close to the team, who requested to remain anonymous, said that about two weeks ago he noticed an altercation occur between Quarrie and Rondeau.

“Quarrie confronted [Rondeau] about [their intended degrees] in the team huddle at the end of practice,” the source said. “Reeder and Quarrie were supposedly kicked off the team for breaking team rules. They didn’t attend a lifting session and Rondeau went off, but I also heard that Rondeau went off on everyone for not attending lift sessions, not just Reeder and Quarrie.”

The source added that Rondeau made Reeder and Quarrie “suffer through a very intense practice that Wednesday that the players were not happy about.”

Despite this information, Director of Athletics Mark Brown noted that both players “continuously ignored team and department rules,” according to the Post.

Brown could not be reached for comment.

Quarrie also accused Rondeau of racism, telling the Post that the head coach openly referred to a group of players as the “white-power group,” possibly insinuating that “they avoided black players on the team”.

The anonymous source stated that on one occasion, Reeder sat with the “white-power group” members, a term coined by Rondeau for members of the defensive line, to which Rondeau replied: “Why are you sitting over there? They don’t hang out with black folk.”

Rondeau came to Pace in January of this year after serving as defensive coordinator at the College of the Holy Cross in Worchester, MA. He formerly worked at Old Dominion University alongside Brown, who served as Associate Athletic Director of Business and Finance.