Black is the new red at Mater Dei.

The recent installment of Servite’s Joel Hartmann as Mater Dei’s executive director of athletics a couple of months after former Servite principal Michael Brennan was named president at Mater Dei makes it look like Servite people are being hired to clean up Mater Dei’s mess.

This is a delicious development for Servite people but nauseating for Mater Dei people who don’t like seeing men in black, Servite’s prominent color scheme, wearing Mater Dei red these days.

Hartmann worked at Servite for 32 years, including the past 18 years as associate athletic director. Brennan was Servite’s principal from 2006 through the 2020-21 school year.

They have a great deal of work to do to reform Mater Dei’s image when Hartmann starts his new job July 1.

Mater Dei’s football program has been the subject of reports of alleged hazing and sexual harassment and assault. The family of a former Mater Dei football player who was injured in a fight in the football locker room on Feb. 4, 2021, filed suit against the school and the diocese in Orange County Superior Court on Nov. 23.

Mater Dei boys water polo is the subject of a Santa Ana Police Department investigation that is looking into allegations of hazing and assault in the program.

“There will be more things that are going to pop up,” Hartmann said. “Mike (Brennan) and I said we’re kind of like the Red Cross. We’re going to bandage it back up and get it back to working the best way it possibly can.”

Changes are coming.

The 2022 season is likely to be Bruce Rollinson’s final season as Mater Dei’s football coach. His departure will have the “on his own terms” look that he deserves but would not get if he left before summer camp begins.

Some will say he should have been ousted last fall when the hazing allegation arose and was followed by more unsavory reports. High school coaches say “if that happened at my school, I’d have been fired in 60 seconds.”

He does, though, qualify for flowers and sunshine when he leaves. Hundreds of ex-players who are great family men and scrupulous business leaders say that Rollinson, 72, the school’s head coach since 1989, gave them the correct life lessons. The rise of Mater Dei football pulled Orange County football along to a higher level.

The Mater Dei football program was a fun bunch in the 1990s. Winning and discipline were in balance, just like it was in the 1960s when Dick Coury was coaching great Monarchs like Eric Patton and Pete Sanchez and, yes, Bruce Rollinson.

Things got a little whacky at some point. The past several years have seen high achievement but low behavior. Nobody seemed willing to horse-collar a kid and say “we don’t do that here, and you’re not playing” often enough to make a difference.

Athletes transferring to Mater Dei for half of a school year to play football before returning to their original school should not be acceptable at any school, especially at Mater Dei that lives up to high standards in a vast number of areas. Sports mercenaries sat at a classroom desk that should have been occupied by a youngster who attended a parish school from kindergarten through eighth grade.

Brennan and Hartmann, with the support of the Diocese of Orange that placed them at Mater Dei, will correct that and more. Essential to that effort will be the coach who replaces Rollinson.

Private school alums who provide financial support, who pay to play at the fundraising golf tournaments and Venmo $800 for $400 worth of donated Angels tickets at the silent auction, like it when their alma mater hires someone with connections to their old school.

Lenny Vandermade is a Mater Dei guy.

Vandermade, an assistant coach at USC, was an All-Orange County lineman at Mater Dei in 1997 and ’98. He was Santa Margarita offensive coordinator and offensive line coach in 2016 and ‘17.

And Vandermade will be interested in becoming Rollinson’s successor.

“Absolutely,” said Vandermade, 41.  “That’s home for me. I love the place and I love the community.”

Vandermade sounds ready for his job interview.

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“I know what it’s about and I understand the traditions there,” he said. “I know I’d be a good fit, understand the landscape and the pressure that comes with it, and I like it.”

The men in black were hired to restore balance to the Mater Dei sports galaxy. Vandermade would add just the right amount of scarlet to the palette.