"Beat Visitor" makes another surprising appearance

Here's the first paragraph of an article appearing in Grantland today titled "Don't Look Now -- Rutgers is 6-0":

"I don't know who these two guys were, if they pictured themselves as historical reenactors or professional ironists, but they felt to me like fitting ambassadors for a college football program still trafficking on a 50-man melee with Princeton that took place in 1869. They were sitting along the rail in a corner of the end zone that could generously be described as "semi-vacant," and one of them appeared to be wearing a leather helmet, and together they were holding up a handwritten sign that read, 'BEAT VISITOR.'"

There's even a link to an Instagram image of the sign that's much clearer and closer than the one that I took from long distance at Saturday's Syracuse game.

See the white box above the R in the corner.

The article by Michael Weinreb after that first paragraph rehashes a lot of the old anti-bigtime-Rutgers-football arguments that we've all heard -- and been having -- for the past thirty years, but it's good to see the Beat Visitor "brand" getting another plug, even if it is being misunderstood by an outsider (Why can't one be an "historical reenactor", "professional ironist," and a simple bleeding-scarlet Rutgers fan at the same time? Or none of the above?). Any sign at a sporting event that elicits any thought at all is better than the normal arrangements of words beginning with large capital letters "E", "S", "P", and "N" designed to attract the network television cameras for ten seconds.

"gotta keep it beatin for all the hoppin cretins" -- The Song of the Day

Not to keep beating a dead horse, but I can't get the bitter last line of the last entry on the Rutgers 1000 blog out of my head --"... in our eyes, cretinism has triumphed."-- especially since it immediately brought to mind this catchy little number from my college years on the banks, The Ramones' "Cretin Hop". This 1'46" video of the song was recorded at CBGBs in New York City (home of the Syracuse Orange) in 1977.
Enjoy the nostalgia.
I don't know where he's going to have his equipment set up, or how the expanded Rutgers Stadium is going to be arranged for pregame activities on September 7, but DJ Yoshi has announced on Twitter that he'll be DJing Rutgers football games again this year. I think he might get some of us cretins hoppin' and celebrating our triumph with this ditty cranking through the scoreboard's new sound system. Consider that a formal request.

The Knights Who Say Nay seem strangely silent

Over at MGOBLOG today, there's an update about the construction going on at Michigan Stadium with notes about a group called Save the Big House, which had opposed the current expansion going on there.
Sound familiar?

The state of the new endzone on August 13th (from ScarletKnights.com)

Now that the South Endzone seats at Rutgers Stadium are obviously going to be finished and filled with fans on Labor Day for the opener against the University of Cincinnati Bearcats, where are our naysayers and prophets of doom?

Where is the Stop Rutgers Stadium Expansion blog, which called the Stadium expansion plans "Panglossian to the point of hallucination" on January 31, 2008? Well, you can still find it on the web by clicking the link in this paragraph, but it posted its last entry at the end of February 2008.

And where, oh where, is Rutgers 1000? This is the group that famously opposed every expansion of the sports programs at Rutgers and gleefully started a "Stadium Expansion Death Watch" on April 25, 2008: "Keep reading this space. The obit for this foolhardy and reckless plan already is being drafted." Again, you can find the lifeless hulk of their blog by clicking the links in this paragraph, but they posted their own obituary on December 12, 2008.

Couldn't they even stick around long enough for us say "We told you so"?

(If the opponents of the Stadium want to announce their continued existence, they are welcome to do so in the Comments here. Unlike both the blogs mentioned above, the comments on Beat Visitor are not moderated, i.e., censored, and they do not require names or registration.)

Please Don't Send Me Any Money!

Is it only in New Jersey that you find such idiocy as that spelled out in this unsigned article that appears today on CentralJersey.com, Lounge Project Speaks Poorly to Rutgers' Priorities?

"...here's how officials could have — should have — responded to the donors. They should have graciously explained that given the current economic conditions and pressures it simply wouldn't be appropriate to accept that much money for such a frivolous project. To pursue the lounge, some of the donated money would have to redirected to another worthy cause, either in academics or even to some of the more neglected sports. Some funds could even have gone to restoring the lost sports programs that a coalition of supporters is still fighting to bring back.
And if the donors refused, school officials could have politely declined the offer and moved on..."

Is this writer really telling Rutgers' Board of Governors that they should have refused a gift of five million dollars because they might have wanted to put the $5 million into something other than the Recruits' Lounge at the Expanding Rutgers Stadium? When he was a kid, did the writer ask Santa Claus to drop cash down the chimney with no strings attached? (And is it possible that the bloggers of Rutgers 1000 have moved to CentralJersey.com?)

Well, I'll never give $5 million dollars to anyone, but I am a season-ticket holder who has given money to the Rutgers University Foundation (click this link to start giving to RU yourself) for over ten straight years and I've designated most of my contributions to go to the Library and the History Department. If someone told me that my thousands of dollars had been redirected to the Business school or some Mathematics (ecccch) research, they'd never get another check from me.

A gift is a gift and if someone gives you $5 million, you say a simple Thank You.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Addendum: I wrote this about an hour ago, but I can't stop thinking about the whining of the (soon-to-be-defunct) New Jersey press on every topic related to Rutgers, but especially to Rutgers Football. These writers must be so angry that they can't write the story they want to write about how no private donors are giving any money to the Stadium expansion. (There are brand-new pictures posted today of the current state of the new south endzone in the Construction Photo Gallery here.)

The Company We Keep

I stumbled upon this website for CollegeBands.net through one of the Google links in my sidebar this afternoon.
I find it interesting that the only schools represented on their products are Georgetown, Harvard, Princeton, and Rutgers. If the Rutgers 1000 blog hadn't committed suicide on December 12, I'm sure they would have been very proud (or bemused or affronted or horrified).

The Knights Who Say "Nay" Have Returned

I stumbled upon what seems to be a month-old blog from the folks at Rutgers 1000, subtitled "Friends of Rutgers Academics". More than a pro-Academics site, the posts on this blog should be familiar to anyone who heard the anti-bigtime-college-sports arguments of William C. Dowling and Rutgers 1000 around the turn of the century.

We are told in their mission statement that moving of the Rutgers football and basketball teams to the 1AA level with Rhode Island and UMass will help to improve the academic standing of our Alma Mater. In addition to this demand, their "About" page also praises my old President, Ed Bloustein, for wanting to make Rutgers "The Berkeley of the East," ignoring the fact that Berkeley has the California Golden Bears clawing for supremacy in the Pac-10 year after year.

I sense a generally elitist attitude in this group -- an attitude that Rutgers should return to a mythical golden age when the entire campus was singularly devoted to the grinding of noses on academic sharpening stones. That golden age never existed. Rutgers always has been, and always should be, the place that Junot Díaz described in my post from yesterday morning, where "It felt like the world was given a university, not like the rich and the special and the privileged were given a university." A place where there's room for excellence in academics and athletics (and for the kids who are just trying to find themselves, or find a party, or get into medical/law school to please a parent, or impress a member of the opposite sex with their wonderfulness). Rutgers will never be Williams or Middlebury. It's a city, with a city's diversity. It's the State University of New Jersey, and those of us who won Phi Beta Kappa keys can appreciate those who work to win trophies instead. And on Saturday afternoons (and some Thursday nights) we can all wear red and feel like we're part of the same family. I'd wish the same good feeling for those writing for this new blue blog.

Isn't it just a little bit ironic that an attack on big-time sports at Rutgers is being published by Penn State University Press??

If it weren't for big-time college football, would anyone outside of the Keystone State even know there was a Penn State University?

Confessions of a Spoilsport: My Life and Hard Times Fighting Sports Corruption at an Old Eastern University, by William C. Dowling will be published by Penn State University Press at the end of this week. Some Rutgers football fans may remember Professor Dowling as the leader of a group known as Rutgers 1000 that opposed the entry of Rutgers into the Big East. The group didn't call for an end to intercollegiate athletics at RU, but they felt that the athletic program should be kept in its extracurricular place; they pictured the State University of New Jersey joining the small colleges of the Patriot League and bringing back a golden age of uncommercial competition between true student-athletes. In the years directly preceding Brian Leonard and Greg Schiano, William Dowling probably earned more ink for Rutgers football in the pages of the New York Times than anyone else.

I have a confession to make too. As someone who attended classes On the Banks when our football competition was Princeton, Columbia (OK, Columbia was NEVER competition; they were just an easy 72-0 win), Bucknell, Lehigh, et al., and as a Phi Beta Kappa liberal arts graduate whose pride in Rutgers has always been primarily an academic pride, I saw the point that this group was making. I was on their mailing list. I believed . . . I still believe, that big-time sports can corrupt a university and cause it to lose its core educational values. But, I don't believe that big-time sports have to be a corrupting influence. I believe that schools like Penn State and Rutgers can help show that you don't have to sink to the level of some of our great southern and midwestern football factories in order to compete. Joe Paterno and Greg Schiano can help show the country the way a college football program should be run. And as fans, we can take as much pride in our league-leading APR as we can in our star running backs and receivers. We should continue to hold our team to those high standards, and let the school know that athletic success is great, but not at any cost, and certainly not at the cost of our academic soul.