Tara Sullivan entitles her column in The Record today "RU's Rice Should Go to NFL."
. . . Rice owes Rutgers nothing. He's not going to get any bigger or faster by playing one more season, but he surely will get a lot more tackled. And with one recent NFL Players Association report putting the average career of an NFL running back at 2.3 years (the lowest among all position groups and well below the 3.2 overall average), why wouldn't Rice want to start out as fresh and healthy as possible?
As one NFL executive put it recently, "Rice should go before Schiano gets him killed."
All that being said, and knowing that I would have personally had a great deal of trouble delaying a multi-million-dollar payday to spend another year On The Banks, I'd love to see Ray Rice follow Brian Leonard's example and come back to Rutgers for his senior season. He could be in the first class to go to four straight bowl games, he could raise the sword to direct the band in the Alma Mater on his Senior Day like Brian did last November versus Syracuse, and he could take another run at the Heisman trophy and the few remaining all-time Big East rushing records. But if he doesn't ... if he does do the logical thing for a talented man of limited financial means and start his professional career a year early, we can't blame him. We met a man from New Rochelle at last Friday's Army game who was sure that Ray will begin earning a big paycheck as soon as possible just because of the neighborhood he's from (and from which he wants to help his family escape). In any decision Ray makes, he is balancing noble motives against noble motives.
Whether he comes back for the 2008 season at Rutgers Stadium or not, we should cheer heartily every time number 27 touches the ball on Saturday against Pittsburgh. Cheer as if it may be the last time that we're privileged to see the sight on Rutgers' home field.
All that being said, Don't Go Ray.
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