Looking Forward to 2016.

2015 ended inauspiciously yesterday when Rutgers tried to sit on an early first half 31-10 lead over Maryland rather than play until the end of the game, with the inevitable result.

2016 began today when President Barchi fired Athletic Director Julie Hermann and Head Coach Kyle Flood. I won't say anything bad about either of them here, but I will say whom I'd love to see on the sidelines when football season starts again, so here's a poster and video meant to be seen by our brand new Athletic Director Pat Hobbs:

Fire Mike Rice or Get Rid of Men's Basketball at Rutgers.

It's that simple.

I don't read sports pages when Rutgers isn't playing football and I'm not a big follower of the game of "basket-ball", but this tape on ESPN was brought to my attention today. The asshole shown in these videos reminds me of the kind of fascistic gym teachers who made me hate scholastic sports when I was in Junior High in Los Angeles. If I played for him, I'd lose on purpose.

Not only does he need to be fired immediately, but every player on the team needs a free shot to throw a basketball at his balls before he leaves. I wish one of them would have decked him when he laid hands on them during practice.

Any reader of BeatVisitor.com will know that I'm not a sports fan, I'm a Rutgers fan. But fuck Rutgers Men's Basketball until Mike Rice is gone.

Rutgers in the Polls

On this off week, The 7-1 Scarlet Knights (4-0 Big East) rose back up to 20 in the Coaches Poll and 24 in the AP Poll.

It's also interesting to see that the 8-1 Kent State Golden Flashes (5-0 MAC), the one team to beat the Scarlet Knights, won again and are very close to being ranked in both polls themselves.

The Fakest of the @FakeBigEastCoaches

@SteveKragthorpe and @Kragthorpe have been given their walking papers by the University of Louisville today after their Cardinals were kragthorped by the Scarlet Knights for the second year in a row yesterday, so the question becomes: Who is now the funniest fake Twitter football coach in the Big East? This tweet from the person who takes the identity of Mountaineer Coach Bill Stewart earlier today may just show who is the funniest imposter of all.Sorry @FakeGregSchiano, @CoachBrianKelly, and @NotDougMarrone, but the fragmented fake folksiness dreamed up by the Twitter team behind @CoachStewart seems sometimes, like today, to have been drafted by the same comedy writers posing as the former Alaskan sports reporter known as @SarahPalinUSA.
But by quoting (without attribution) the Maréchal of France Ferdinand Foch: "Mon centre cède, ma droite recule, situation excellente, j'attaque," is he (are they) trying to compare our Scarlet Knights to Foch's German enemies? Is he calling us Krauts?? Them's fightin' words (as they say in the few mountains and hollers of West Virginia that haven't yet been leveled to yield piles of combustible coal and poisonous sludge)!

Would you leave New Brunswick NJ for State College PA?

Paul Salman has a post over at Bleacher Report today asking the age-old Nittany Lion question, "Penn State Succession Plan: Is Rutgers Head Coach Greg Schiano the right choice?"

He asks every important question but one, for which he seems to take an affirmative answer for granted, "Would Greg Schiano leave R House for Happy Valley?"

Anybody assuming that Greg Schiano would jump at the chance to coach at their school should remember that "everybody" thought that Greg Schiano would jump at the chance to take the Miami Hurricanes job when it was offered to him two years ago, and "anybody who knew anything about college football" knew that he would take the University of Michigan head coaching job when it was offered to him last year. Well, he's not living in among the palms of Florida or up in Ann Arbor. And while "everyone" seems to know that he's really been saving himself for the land of the whiteout because "Greg Schiano is a Penn State Man", I think he's truly bleeding a scarlet that's as deep as any bled by those of us who attended classes there many years ago.

At Penn State he could never be more than Joe Paterno's successor. At Rutgers he can be bigger than Joe Paterno. He can create his own program rather than continuing a legacy. He can be the man who brought college football back to the New York metropolitan area. He can be the man whose name is forever attached to the oldest football program in the country. His place here is more solid every year, and the expanded stadium will always be known as "The House that Schiano Built." The real secret of his recruiting success is that the kids he talks to know that he is going to be a Scarlet Knight for the duration of their careers On the Banks, and far beyond.

Read more discussion on Greg Schiano rumors here at Black Shoe Diaries.

It's been over a year since the Knights have been unranked

Last year, on September 23rd during week 5 of the season, the 4-0 Scarlet Knights began their most recent appearance in the national polls, at 23 in both the AP and Coaches polls. They stayed in both polls from 9/23/06 until this past Sunday, 10/7/07, hitting highs of 7 in the 2006 poll and 10 in the 2007 poll. The end of this year-long streak is worth commemorating here simply because the Scarlet Knights have never had anywhere near this kind of run of national prominence in their long history.

That being said, this season isn't over. This important month isn't over. October could easily end with the Knights in a position much higher in the polls than "Other teams receiving votes".

There are three games left in October. Two of them at home against teams that are currently ranked in the top ten.

• A win against Syracuse at the Carrier Dome next Saturday probably won't get the Knights back into the top 25 unless it's another week of carnage among the ranked (but a win, of course, is absolutely necessary).
• A win against #5/5 South Florida at home on the 18th on Thursday-night TV will definitely move the Knights back into the national rankings, maybe into the teens (assuming, of course, that RU had taken care of business against the Orange 5 days earlier).
• Following up a win over USF with a win against #8/9 West Virginia on the 27th would definitely have them ranked back in the teens with a good chance of taking the Big East crown (and the conference's BCS bowl).

This season is far from over.

Go Knights!

(And since I started this entry by mentioning last season's success, I have to mention that last season's star, Brian Leonard, had 102 yards rushing on 18 carries & 33 receiving on five catches for the St. Louis Rams yesterday. If they had been winning rather than losing, maybe he would have had the opportunity to run even more at the end of the game. Go Rams! )

Scarlet Knights hit the Top Ten for the 2nd straight year

Last year it was the Texas Bowl . . . This year it will be the . . .?

Add another streak to the 10 straight Rutgers Stadium home wins, the 17 straight polls in the national rankings, the 6 straight games scoring 30+ points, and the 6 straight games without allowing a sack. It is now 2 straight years with the Scarlet Knights making an appearance in the top ten. They are now number 10 in both the AP and the Coaches polls out this afternoon.

I know it's early in the season and a lot will change from this point in the season (e.g., Syracuse & Connecticut are currently sharing the Big East lead after their victories over Louisville & Pittsburgh yesterday, but they probably won't be there in December), but let's hope that the Knights continue their upward climb in the rankings and that it's not another one-week appearance at these rarified heights, like it was between the Louisville and Cincinnati games last November. And speaking of Louisville and Cincinnati, Louisville has dropped out of the top 25 in both polls out today, but Cincinnati has entered the AP poll at #24 and is first among the "others receiving votes" in the Coaches poll (in other Big East rankings, West Virginia is still 5/5 and South Florida is up to 18/18.)

Rutgers at #11 in both polls out this afternoon

Going into an off week, not only is Rutgers at #11 in both the AP and the Coaches polls, but there are now four Big East teams, half the conference, ranked in the top 25: West Virginia (5 ap/5 coaches), Rutgers (11/11), Louisville (18/19), and newcomer South Florida (23/24).

The Scarlet Knights score a sweet 16 in the preseason USA Today Coaches' poll out today . . .

. . . just behind Tennessee and just ahead of UCLA.
Click Here for more details.

These 1882 wearers of the Block R would be proud!

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Update 8/8/07: For those of you wondering about the "other" major preseason poll:

(AP) The preseason AP college football poll will move on Saturday, Aug. 18, for immediate release.
The first regular-season poll will move Tuesday, Sept. 4, because of Monday night games. Thereafter, the poll will move on Sundays.

My guess, and it's only a guess, is that the Scarlet Knights will be one spot higher, at 15, in the AP.

Another First for Fans of the Knights: Watching the Preseason Polls

There was absolutely no dissent after the Scarlet Knights' Bowl win in Houston. Every final poll issued after the dust from the bowls had settled was unanimous in ranking our boys number 12 in the country, finishing ahead of perennial powers and preseason favorites like Texas and Notre Dame. None of those major polls (or any of the preseason publications) had the psychic abilities to place Rutgers in their 2006 preseason top 25.

This year, of course, is different. Rutgers is ranked from #13 to #21 in the three 2007 preseason polls compiled on Wikipedia's 2007 rankings page so far. They are also #15 in this list from Dennis Dodd of CBS Sportsline that includes four Big East teams in the top 25 (with South Florida usurping the space usually reserved for unranked Florida State and Miami).

Is 2007 going to be a great year, or what?