Game Day

Today's free Scarlet Knight bobblehead is in his seat and anxious for this Tulane game to begin!

No, I haven't forgotten...

Here's the Keep-Calm-And-Chop poster for this Saturday's Tulane game.

Wishing Paul James the Best

You hate to hear the letters A, C, and L mentioned when talking about any football player, but it's very disappointing to know that 2014 will mirror 2013 in that we won't get to see Paul James realize his potential over a full season for the Scarlet Knights after a very promising start.

But the helmet that Paul James took to his knee in the second quarter wasn't an isolated incident; the number of low blocks and tackles from the Midshipmen was obvious even to me watching on a small laptop screen (special thanks to TimeWarnerCable for cutting out TV service in my area all weekend). If this Navy team were from any school other than a service academy, they'd be getting a lot more shit (and penalties) for their cut blocks and other attacks on their opponents lower extremities.

Even Kyle Flood couldn't help pointing this out after the game:

"You have to be really smart about how you operate because playing Navy is a very physical football game [...] the way they block on offense, the way they attack your legs on offense with your defense, even the way they tackle and take on blocks with their defense, it just creates a lot of very violent collisions and we're going to have to make sure we're being really smart here as we go through the week so that our bodies recover."

Overall, teams tend to have losing records the week after playing Navy, so it's good for the Scarlet Knights to have Tulane at home this weekend before facing Michigan, but Paul James will be missed all season.

I Apologize in Advance for this 'CHOP NAVY' Poster

Even though the official @RFootball Twitter feed is using the #ChopNavy hashtag in advance of this Saturday's game in Annapolis, I still have a sneaking feeling that the current Athletic Director would prefer it if the following poster said something less aggressive like "Keep Calm and Play Nicely With Midshipmen."

The people of Connecticut are still patiently waiting...

... for Julie Hermann to retroactively apologize for all the years of "Huck the Fuskies" buttons and t-shirts, now that she has apologized to Penn State.

I guess boorish football fans don't fit into the plan to turn R House into an idyllic sanitized "Disney World Experience." 

KEEP CALM AND CHOP PENN STATE

What a great win just now out in Seattle for the Scarlet Knights over Washington State. The team showed a lot of heart coming back over and over again tonight (this morning).

I have a season seat at Rutgers Stadium this year, but I'll be out of the country and away from television and computers during the first two home games against Howard and Penn State. I don't feel a need to do a KeepCalmAndChop poster for Howard, but I can't let the first Penn State game of Rutgers' Big Ten era pass without this:

The First Keep-Calm-and-Chop Poster of 2014

Continuing a long Beat Visitor dot com tradition, here's the Keep Calm and Chop WSU poster for the Big Ten / Pac-12 showdown that will be taking place in Seattle on Thursday to open the season.

"The Birthplace of College Football" Removed?

According to this article on NJ.com this afternoon, the letters spelling out "The Birthplace of College Football" have been removed from the field-level wall on the south end of Rutgers Stadium.
According to the statement in the article from Jason Baum, Rutgers' senior associate athletic director for communications, a new spot for the letters hasn't been decided yet, but I have a suggestion. Put them back on top of the scoreboard (photo below from the December 5, 2009 West Virginia game) where they were before the sponsorship deal that removed them and replaced them with the commercial name we have never used (and will never use) when referring to Rutgers Stadium or R House or The Birthplace of College Football.

And put the letters back on the south wall too.

If they insist on fooling with the lyrics to 'On The Banks of the Old Raritan'...

... maybe we can make 'Scarlet Begonias' our school song.


(After watching this video from the Capitol in 1976, I remember why I missed so many football games when I was in New Brunswick in the '70s.)

There's no video of this following show available, but here's the whole first set of the Jerry Garcia Band's show at The Barn on December 4, 1977. Anyone else there? I was in the second row after waiting for tickets overnight in the Brower Commons.

If I Wanted a Fucking "Disney World Experience," I'd Go to Fucking Disney World

"What I can promise you, one of the things we're working on most, is when you come see us at ball games, starting with High Point Solutions Stadium, you have a world-class, Disney World experience. That's important to us." --Julie Hermann, Rutgers Athletic Director

First of all, it's properly referred to as "Rutgers Stadium" or "R House".

Second, most of our fans are past the age of ten and couldn't imagine a worse hell than being subjected to a "Disney World experience" when attending a Rutgers football game.

Just thought I'd get that on the record. That's important to me.

Get Ready for the 2014 Season at R House

Yesterday we received our challenge from fans of that other football on the opposite side of the Atlantic, piloting one of the most accurate analog drones (formerly known here as "paper airplanes") in the history of sports during a friendly match between England and Peru:



Though our paper-airplane piloting dominance may have dropped since its high point in the middle of the last century, now we remember why the players in the American version of football started wearing helmets.

Rutgers Then-and-Now Photos

Here's a must see for anyone who ever spent any time On the Banks.
Elijah Reiss on the Muckgers website has done a wonderful job of presenting historical Rutgers photos and combining them with contemporary shots taken from the same perspective; a slider allows you to time travel.

Click here for the first group posted on April 28.

Click here for the second group posted on April 30.

It's amazing how little some of our favorite locations have changed in a century or more.