Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Kings, Barons, Knights or Peasants? Guess where Stewart Mandel of SI.com ranks Rutgers Football






In his attempt today in SI.com's College Football Mailbag to rank the "prestige level" of all 66 BCS schools by dividing them into four tiers, Kings, Barons, Knights, and Peasants, Stewart Mandel puts the Scarlet Knights, despite their long history and their recent winning ways, and their noble mounted mascot, firmly among the Peasants.

You can write to him to express your disagreement, but this is probably exactly what the Scarlet Knights need (like their recent #70 ranking on ESPN.com) to keep in the players' minds that there is still a lot to prove to the rest of the country, despite the recent successes on the field, in the media, and at the box office.
The entire Big East takes their lumps in these feudalistic rankings. There are four Peasants (Cincinnati, Connecticut, Rutgers, and South Florida), three Knights (Pittsburgh, Syracuse, and West Virginia), and no Barons or Kings. The eighth school in the Big East, Louisville, is the only BCS school that he left off the list entirely, because "History-wise, the Cardinals are peasants, but the program has completely reinvented itself over the past decade and now gets mentioned with the kings and barons. For now, we'll just say: TBD. "

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