The Quote of the Day ...and more!

The quote of the day comes from the book I was reading on my way home from work on the North Jersey Coast Line tonight. The book is Rocket Men by Craig Nelson (Viking 2009, page 226). The quote from the first man to set foot on the moon is not particularly about Rutgers football, but I love what it says about real football versus its inferior televised facsimile. These are words Neil Armstrong spoke as he orbited our planet's satellite for the first time.

Armstrong: The pictures and maps brought back by Apollos 8 and 10 have given us a very good preview of what to look at here--it looks very much like the pictures, but like the difference between watching a real football game and watching it on TV. There's no substitute for actually being here. [emphasis added]

And there's no substitute for actually being at Rutgers Stadium on the day of a game. So what a great coincidence that I found my tickets in the mailbox while I still had this quotation in my head.

Watching on television, you are never part of this!

It always feels like Christmas when the envelope with the season tickets and parking passes arrives, but I especially love the design this year for the 140th anniversary of football at Rutgers from the drawing of College Field in the 1869 season on the Cincinnati ticket to the architect's drawing of the new south entrance to the 2009 stadium on the West Virginia ticket, with photos of Neilson Field in 1932 and Rutgers Stadium in 1961, 1985, 1994, and 2006 on the tickets for games 2 through 6. The designer did a great job.