It's Good to Be Back

It wasn't too impressive a first half, but we weren't beginning the season against Cincinnati this year and there was plenty of time to turn things around, so it was fun to listen to the Scarlet Knights come together in the second half and end up dispatching Norfolk State by a respectable score of 31-0.

Because I'm not living within an easy drive of Piscataway this year I didn't renew my tickets. These weeknight games are extremely hard for me to get to, but I do hope to catch a couple of Saturday games at R House (or R New Guest House in the Swamps of East Rutherford) and I hope to be able to write more in a Beat Visitor blog that's been more than a little moribund lately.

Rutgers Professionals

Did anyone else notice that the Rutgers women who play in Madison Square Garden are in the running to win the WNBA championship?

Flipping around last night I caught the last five minutes of the NY Liberty's win against Indiana and 3 of the 5 Libertariennes on the court throughout the end of the game that clinched a spot in the East Finals were Scarlet Knights (there's no such thing as an ex-Scarlet Knight): Cappie Pondexter, Essence Carson, and Kia Vaughn. Coach Stringer was in the stands lending her support. The only thing wrong with the picture was the color of the uniforms.

2010 Begins Tonight

Not that there's been a big clamor for information, but the rumors of the death of the Beat Visitor dot com Rutgers football blog have been exaggerated.
Tonight's game is the first home game at Rutgers Stadium that I've missed since I was traveling for business during the 2007 Navy game. I'm now living outside of the Garden State for the first time since 1981 and my new internet service provider has not reached an agreement with the Evil Friggin' Disney Empire to show ESPN 3 (reduced from 360), so I'm only "watching" tonight's game against Norfolk State on GameTracker and listening to it on WCTC dot com. With the Knights only leading by 3-0 with 7:01 left in the first half (San San Te just missed his 2nd of 3 field goal attempts), I don't think I'm missing a lot by not being down in New Jersey tonight.
But here's the real question for both Rutgers and the Big East (other than why the Scarlet Knights aren't leading by at least three touchdowns): Why schedule a game for a Thursday night if it's not going to be on television?

Video of Yesterday's Upset

This video of the sights and sounds of Georgetown's loss at Rutgers on Valentine's Day was posted by The Hoya Online.
Enjoy.

Rutgers 71 -- (#8) Georgetown 68

Congratulations to the Rutgers Scarlet Knights on their victory over the nationally-ranked Georgetown Hoyas in the game that just completed at the RAC, otherwise known as the Louis Brown Athletic Center in Piscataway, NJ.

Despite my doubts voiced last month, it seems that there is a men's team playing the game of basket-ball on the Banks of the Old Raritan.

Congratulations!

Revisiting the 1869 College Football Season

I've mentioned The Unbalanced Line here before because I think it it without a doubt the most historically aware college football blog; this seems appropriate, since the writer's home team is the team that plays its home games at West Point (and, occasionally, Yankees Stadium).
I've been busy with work and other things, but today's unexpected snow day from work has allowed me to slow down and reconnect a little with blogs and Twitter. Wandering around the interweb, I discovered that T.U.L.'s most recent post from yesterday -- "Year by Year: 1869 Season" -- is of special interest to all fans of the Rutgers Scarlet Knights.

The Twenty Ten Rutgers Football Schedule Has Been Posted

The times of most games are still to be posted, but in 2009 and 2008 it took until the middle of April to get this basic information about the names of the teams on Rutgers' football schedule.

2010 Rutgers Football Schedule (with games at R House in Bold)

• Thursday, September 2 Norfolk State
• Saturday, September 11 at Florida International
• Saturday, September 25 North Carolina
• Saturday, October 2 Tulane
• Friday, October 8 Connecticut (ESPN, 7:30 p.m.)
• Saturday, October 16 Army (New Meadowlands)
• Saturday, October 23 at Pittsburgh
• Wednesday, November 3 at USF (ESPN2, 7 p.m.)
• Saturday, November 13 Syracuse
• Saturday, November 20 at Cincinnati
• Friday, November 26 Louisville (National TV)
• Saturday, December 4 at West Virginia (National TV)

Though we'll miss the exciting Texas Southern rivalry, it's nice to see that there is only one second division football team on the schedule this year, and it's great to see that the Green Wave team that will be visiting us at Rutgers Stadium on October 2nd will be visiting from New Orleans, and not driving west on Route 18 from Long Branch High School.

Good Luck to Jourdan Brooks!

The best of luck to number 39, Jourdan Brooks, who is transferring from Rutgers to Morgan State.
He had a number of important runs for the Scarlet Knights, but the most memorable run at R House may have come in the 2008 blowout of the Louisville Cardinals when his 60+-yard run was ended with one of his dreadlocks on the FieldTurf. Let's go to the video:
I hope he gets a lot of carries for the Morgan State Bears, where he should see a number of successful runs.
Good Luck Jourdan!

Today Beat Visitor dot com is rooting for Jamaal Westerman's team

Ignore the cartoonish lettering (doesn't it remind you of the Simpsons?) and the apostrophe abuse (hey, at least they didn't paint one in "Jet's"), but here's an example of some playoff spirit painted on the side of M + S Grocery on West End Court (yes, the ugly street on which Bruce Springsteen wrote Born to Run) in Long Branch. I just took this photo on the way to the store.
The game is on my static-filled radio and the GameCast and the Jets are up 17-13 over the Baltimore Indianapolis Colts late in the second quarter of the AFC Championship game as I write this.

J! - E! - T! - S! Jets! Jets! Jets!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
update @ 6:15pm: OK, so the Jets fell one game short of the Super Bowl (or half a game short) by losing to the Colts by a final score of 30-17 this afternoon, but they had a great run and should be proud of their 2009-2010 season when the sting of today's loss fades.
Two New Jersey teams with true rookie quarterbacks now have a lot to look forward to in September 2010.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
update on February 10: On this snow day wandering around on the internet, I discovered that this picture was actually reproduced on Apostrophe Abuse! I'm so proud.

College sports don't end on New Years Day? Who Knew?

This morning I opened a Scarlet Letter yearbook from the era when coaches were required to wear plaid sport jackets and I found evidence, between pages on major Rutgers sports like football and ultimate frisbee, that there was once a men's team playing the women's sport of "basket-ball" on the Banks of the Old Raritan.

Who knew?

It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

I'm not near a television, so I didn't see it happen, but it's great to see the stat line after the first quarter in Foxboro, Massachusetts with Ray Rice having 94 yards and two touchdowns for the Ravens after fifteen minutes of play.As I typed this and uploaded the picture of Ray from ESPN's splash page, I just watched Ray go over 100 yards on NFL GameCast with his 8th rush of the game at the beginning of the 2nd quarter. As I said in my headline, this success could not be happening to a nicer guy. He continues to make everyone with any connection to Rutgers extremely proud and happy that we shared some time with him on the Banks of the Old Raritan.
Run Ray Run, as they used to say on the t-shirts in Rutgers Stadium.

25 Football Teams that are not the Rutgers Scarlet Knights

Really, who cares? None of the teams on the following list wears a block R on their helmets or sings "On the Banks of the Old Raritan" after their games, but since I have religiously filled out the fifteen previous BlogPoll ballots this season, here is my sixteenth.

As always, you can click on the thumbnail on the upper right to check out the scribbled logic behind these rankings.

See you in April for the Scarlet-White Game!

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama
2	Boise State	3
3	Texas	1
4	Florida	2
5	TCU	1
6	Ohio State	1
7	Iowa	2
8	Cincinnati	5
9	Penn State	1
10	Pittsburgh	2
11	Virginia
12	Brigham Young	3
13	Oregon	5
14	Georgia Tech	3
15	Utah	4
16	Nebraska	5
17	LSU	3
18	Wisconsin	6
19	Mississippi
20	Miami (Florida)	4
21	Central Michigan	2
22	Southern Cal
23	Texas Tech
24	Navy
25	Oregon State	7
Last week's ballot

Dropped Out: Virginia Tech (#13), West Virginia (#17), Oklahoma State (#20), Stanford (#22), Houston (#25).

~~~~~~~~~
Update 11 January 2010:

OK, maybe I need to start proofreading. #11 on this final list should probably have been the 10-3 Virginia Tech Hokies and not the 3-9 Virginia Cavaliers. Though I love Charlottesville and I'm sure there was a least one Cavalier fan who was thrilled to see his team's name in a position high on the "Others Receiving Votes" list because of my carelessness, I'm sorry. Thanks to Brian Cook for singling out this error in the "Wack Ballot Watchdog" section of his Postseason Blogpoll wrapup earlier this afternoon.