one more time in twenty ten -- Beat the Mountaineers!

I'll be opening up http://twitter.com/beatvisitor in a few minutes and turning my television on to ABC to watch the Scarlet Knights play the Mountaineers in West Virginia. I have no predictions, but I can say for sure that if the Knights win today, it will be one of the most memorable games in the college careers of those young men wearing Scarlet -- Go Knights!

HALFTIME UPDATE: It's West Virginia 14 and Rutgers 7 at the half, but the Scarlet Knights get the ball to start the second half and they ended the first with momentum, having scored the last touchdown and then prevented the Mountaineers from scoring what looked to be their sure third touchdown with a sack by Antonio Lowery, a broken up pass in the endzone by Joe Lefeged, and a blocked field goal attempt by Charlie Noonan. The Mountaineers also had two possessions ended with fumbles, so it could easily be 35-7 rather than 14-7. The Scarlet Knights are still in this important game.

IT'S FINAL: The college football season of 2010 is over, ending with a 35-14 loss to the Mountaineers. As a longtime Rutgers fan, that 0-17 record in Morgantown is a lot more painful than the fact that the Scarlet Knights won't be going to a sixth straight bowl game this year.

The Football Season is FAR from Over

This will be the first year since 2005 that the Scarlet Knights aren't going to a bowl game, but they still have one game remaining, a game more important than ANY bowl game other than a BCS bowl. If the Scarlet Knights can win next week and end their twenty ten campaign by starting to make up for the-game-that-must-not-be-named and for approximately 500 years of futility in Morgantown, then this season with its young players and its many injuries, will be at least a partial success and the mood will be much better going in twenty eleven.

This Morning's(?!) Game Against Louisville

This is the first year since 2006 that I haven't received a package full of Rutgers football tickets in late August, so I didn't know until about half an hour ago that the 11/26 game against Louisville was an eleven A.M. start (that's 8 AM for those alumni and students who may live on the West Coast), on a Friday when all of the students are off and at home for the Thansgiving break. Has there ever been a more badly scheduled game? Not only are the students not in New Brunswick (or in the student section in Piscataway), but a large percentage of them aren't even awake yet. Has there ever been a more badly-scheduled Senior Day? It's now noon as I write this and the score is 28-0 Louisville with 8:25 left in the first half. If ESPN2 loses interest in broadcasting Rutgers games, can we go back to playing on Saturday afternoons?
I may say a few things over at http://twitter.com/BeatVisitor as this game continues, but probably not too enthusiastically.
FINAL UPDATE: It ended up 40-13 in Piscataway today, and West Virginia is well on its way to defeating the Pitt Panthers in Ketchup Stadium. So it's now official that Rutgers will not have the opportunity to go to a third-rank bowl game this year and it's almost official that Pitt will not be going to the Big East's BCS bowl. So here's the question. Which would be more satisfying for a Rutgers football fan: Appearing in a "Beef'O'Brady's Bowl" or beating the Mountaineers in West Virginia next weekend? Is it even really a question?

Tonight's Game versus the Bearcats

I'm over at http://twitter.com/BeatVisitor commenting on the game there. It's Cincinnati 20 and Rutgers 17 with 10 minutes left in the 1st half.

Halftime Update: An Arena Football League game has broken out at Nippert Stadium, where it is currently 41 to 24 in the Bearcats' favor. The Rutgers offense has 260 yards and 24 points, which would have been plenty in any other game, but the Rutgers defense has given up 41 points and over 416 (in a half) yards to the bad guys.

Final Update: Cincinnati 69--Rutgers 38. The missed extra point at the beginning when it was RU 7-Cincy 6 was important in the end; it kept the Bearcats from scoring 70. Even so, it ended up being the highest scoring game in Big East history. There were bright spots on the offensive side of the ball; Rutgers scored on the first play from scrimmage in each half and the passing game was going well, but there were -9 rushing yards. The defensive game isn't worth mentioning, but it would have been nice if they put 11 men on the field rather than 8 or 9; there were large holes wherever the Bearcats ran or threw the ball.

Je m'accuse...

... or mea culpa (mea maxima culpa) for those of you who don't understand French. It is totally my fault that the Scarlet Knights are back to their form and record of a decade ago. I just read that the Syracuse Orange beat the Rutgers Scarlet Knights in a close game two days ago. If I had followed the pattern of the last four years I would have been at every home game at Rutgers Stadium this year and I would have been religiously following Rule #12 and its corollaries. And the Scarlet Knights would have, of course, won.
So blame this fan who moved out of state (to a place that makes New Jersey look like... well, not to belittle the Garden State ... look like "New Jersey") for last Saturday's 13-10 home loss to the Orange. If I had been singing the school songs and screaming until my vocal cords bled, then my team would have won. Don't blame Coach Schiano or any of the student athletes who are proudly wearing Scarlet. I haven't read any comments on the interwebs about last Saturday's game, but I'm sure that the normal lineup of moaners, whiners, nitpickers. and Sunday morning quarterbacks are busy moaning, whining, picking nits, and backseat coaching and quarterbacking, as always. Those assholes are welcome to blame me, if they can find me. They can comment below too, knowing that I won't read their comments.

Hey Coach!

I'm thinking this might work against Syracuse on Saturday:

Wednesday Night Bull Fight

I'll be over at @BeatVisitor on Twitter tonight during the game between the Rutgers Scarlet Knights and South Florida Bulls. After last night on Twitter under my alias watching far too many Republicans gloating and avoiding questions during the midterm elections, it may be hard to watch a close or losing game tonight. It's 7-7 as I hit Post on this entry on the strength of two long punt returns. It's time for the Knights to start pulling away.
This is the third game in a row that Rutgers is playing in an ugly half-full professional football stadium. Pittsburgh and USF don't have excuses because they don't have stadiums of their own, but it's a shame that the last Rutgers "home game" had to be played in that pit at the Meadowlands.

A must-see video

Watch this Eric LeGrand video during halftime. It shows not a player, but a person and his families.

Today's Game

Rutgers is off to a nice 7-0 start at Ketchup (or Catsup?) Field in Pittsburgh with Charlie Noonan's interception and Joe Martinek's TD run. I plan to be over at Twitter (http://twitter.com/BeatVisitor)for most of the game.

Believe

In honor of Eric LeGrand, here's the "BELIEVE" sticker that the Rutgers players will be wearing on their helmets during Saturday's Pittsburgh game in place of the normal Big East logos above their face masks.

We'll all be thinking of #52 at noon on Saturday.

In tonight's replay of last Saturday's Army game on SNY, there was no replay of the kickoff during which Eric LeGrand was injured, nor any of the injury's aftermath. That was understandable, and I wasn't looking forward to seeing it, but why didn't they show Chas Dodd's 4th quarter 53-yard completion to D.C. Jefferson? There were so few offensive highlights for the Scarlet Knights that they didn't need to cut the longest Rutgers play from scrimmage, especially when they took the time to show every false start and every sack given up by the Scarlet Knights in the very ugly first three quarters.

Eric LeGrand

If you haven't already done so, send Eric LeGrand your best wishes through This Link on ScarletKnights.com

No more need to vote in our latest poll.

We won't take the poll away before Saturday. You can still register your feelings in the Chas Dodd and Tom Savage quarterback question if you want, but the word is out this afternoon that Greg Schiano is not going to keep the Rutgers football fans waiting until game time on Saturday for an announcement.The starter will be Chas Dodd. You can read more at Brian Bennett's ESPN Big East Blog.

Before Everyone Jumps on the Chas Dodd Bandwagon..

... remember the heroics from another freshman quarterback in the final seconds of last year's Scarlet Knights' victory over the Connecticut Huskies (with, of course, an heroic assist from a great senior receiver, Tim Brown):

Greg Schiano and Joe Lefeged on Rutgers' #1 APR (but why does this video only have 18 views?)

Here's a short segment on WNBC news with Bruce Beck talking to Greg Schiano and Joe Lefeged about Rutgers' #1 national ranking in the NCAA's 2010 Academic Progress Rates, and the importance of the student part of the student-athlete mix on the banks of the old Raritan River.

I'm sharing this here not only to show Joe Lefeged's part of the interview (he's more than just a long list of blocked punts, interceptions, forced fumbles and hard hits), but because it deserves MUCH more than the 18 views that it has on YouTube in the last four days since posting. Embedding here at Beat Visitor Dot Com should give it at least 4 or 5 more!

If you were Greg Schiano . . .

... who would you have as your starting quarterback against the Black Knights of Army next Saturday? Chas Dodd or Tom Savage?
Vote in the poll to your right; we're sure that Greg will be reading and taking note of our results.

2010 Began Tonight

How strange to watch true freshmen Chas Dodd and Jeremy Deering come on in 2010 the same way that freshmen Tom Savage and Mohamed Sanu stormed onto the scene in 2009. It's time to forget about the Tarheel and Green Wave disappointments. Rutgers is now 1-0 in Big East play and the year began tonight. Did the Dodd era start too?
It's going to be interesting to see the competition between Savage and Dodd for the starting quarterback position (and the competition between Sanu and Deering for the designated Wild Knight) as Tom Savage's hand heals and the year goes on. It's nice to see a quarterback who seems to love throwing the ball down the field, especially late in the game with the pressure to come from behind, but I don't know if I've ever seen a QB see that the short screen wasn't going to work so he threw for the 52-yard touchdown as his second read. Congrats to Chas Dodd for passing for 322 yards and 2 long TDs in his first start. Twenty Ten started tonight with his come-from-behind 27-24 victory over the UConn Huskies.
Go Knights!

It's Good to Be Back

It wasn't too impressive a first half, but we weren't beginning the season against Cincinnati this year and there was plenty of time to turn things around, so it was fun to listen to the Scarlet Knights come together in the second half and end up dispatching Norfolk State by a respectable score of 31-0.

Because I'm not living within an easy drive of Piscataway this year I didn't renew my tickets. These weeknight games are extremely hard for me to get to, but I do hope to catch a couple of Saturday games at R House (or R New Guest House in the Swamps of East Rutherford) and I hope to be able to write more in a Beat Visitor blog that's been more than a little moribund lately.

Rutgers Professionals

Did anyone else notice that the Rutgers women who play in Madison Square Garden are in the running to win the WNBA championship?

Flipping around last night I caught the last five minutes of the NY Liberty's win against Indiana and 3 of the 5 Libertariennes on the court throughout the end of the game that clinched a spot in the East Finals were Scarlet Knights (there's no such thing as an ex-Scarlet Knight): Cappie Pondexter, Essence Carson, and Kia Vaughn. Coach Stringer was in the stands lending her support. The only thing wrong with the picture was the color of the uniforms.

2010 Begins Tonight

Not that there's been a big clamor for information, but the rumors of the death of the Beat Visitor dot com Rutgers football blog have been exaggerated.
Tonight's game is the first home game at Rutgers Stadium that I've missed since I was traveling for business during the 2007 Navy game. I'm now living outside of the Garden State for the first time since 1981 and my new internet service provider has not reached an agreement with the Evil Friggin' Disney Empire to show ESPN 3 (reduced from 360), so I'm only "watching" tonight's game against Norfolk State on GameTracker and listening to it on WCTC dot com. With the Knights only leading by 3-0 with 7:01 left in the first half (San San Te just missed his 2nd of 3 field goal attempts), I don't think I'm missing a lot by not being down in New Jersey tonight.
But here's the real question for both Rutgers and the Big East (other than why the Scarlet Knights aren't leading by at least three touchdowns): Why schedule a game for a Thursday night if it's not going to be on television?

Video of Yesterday's Upset

This video of the sights and sounds of Georgetown's loss at Rutgers on Valentine's Day was posted by The Hoya Online.
Enjoy.

Rutgers 71 -- (#8) Georgetown 68

Congratulations to the Rutgers Scarlet Knights on their victory over the nationally-ranked Georgetown Hoyas in the game that just completed at the RAC, otherwise known as the Louis Brown Athletic Center in Piscataway, NJ.

Despite my doubts voiced last month, it seems that there is a men's team playing the game of basket-ball on the Banks of the Old Raritan.

Congratulations!

Revisiting the 1869 College Football Season

I've mentioned The Unbalanced Line here before because I think it it without a doubt the most historically aware college football blog; this seems appropriate, since the writer's home team is the team that plays its home games at West Point (and, occasionally, Yankees Stadium).
I've been busy with work and other things, but today's unexpected snow day from work has allowed me to slow down and reconnect a little with blogs and Twitter. Wandering around the interweb, I discovered that T.U.L.'s most recent post from yesterday -- "Year by Year: 1869 Season" -- is of special interest to all fans of the Rutgers Scarlet Knights.

The Twenty Ten Rutgers Football Schedule Has Been Posted

The times of most games are still to be posted, but in 2009 and 2008 it took until the middle of April to get this basic information about the names of the teams on Rutgers' football schedule.

2010 Rutgers Football Schedule (with games at R House in Bold)

• Thursday, September 2 Norfolk State
• Saturday, September 11 at Florida International
• Saturday, September 25 North Carolina
• Saturday, October 2 Tulane
• Friday, October 8 Connecticut (ESPN, 7:30 p.m.)
• Saturday, October 16 Army (New Meadowlands)
• Saturday, October 23 at Pittsburgh
• Wednesday, November 3 at USF (ESPN2, 7 p.m.)
• Saturday, November 13 Syracuse
• Saturday, November 20 at Cincinnati
• Friday, November 26 Louisville (National TV)
• Saturday, December 4 at West Virginia (National TV)

Though we'll miss the exciting Texas Southern rivalry, it's nice to see that there is only one second division football team on the schedule this year, and it's great to see that the Green Wave team that will be visiting us at Rutgers Stadium on October 2nd will be visiting from New Orleans, and not driving west on Route 18 from Long Branch High School.

Good Luck to Jourdan Brooks!

The best of luck to number 39, Jourdan Brooks, who is transferring from Rutgers to Morgan State.
He had a number of important runs for the Scarlet Knights, but the most memorable run at R House may have come in the 2008 blowout of the Louisville Cardinals when his 60+-yard run was ended with one of his dreadlocks on the FieldTurf. Let's go to the video:
I hope he gets a lot of carries for the Morgan State Bears, where he should see a number of successful runs.
Good Luck Jourdan!

Today Beat Visitor dot com is rooting for Jamaal Westerman's team

Ignore the cartoonish lettering (doesn't it remind you of the Simpsons?) and the apostrophe abuse (hey, at least they didn't paint one in "Jet's"), but here's an example of some playoff spirit painted on the side of M + S Grocery on West End Court (yes, the ugly street on which Bruce Springsteen wrote Born to Run) in Long Branch. I just took this photo on the way to the store.
The game is on my static-filled radio and the GameCast and the Jets are up 17-13 over the Baltimore Indianapolis Colts late in the second quarter of the AFC Championship game as I write this.

J! - E! - T! - S! Jets! Jets! Jets!

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update @ 6:15pm: OK, so the Jets fell one game short of the Super Bowl (or half a game short) by losing to the Colts by a final score of 30-17 this afternoon, but they had a great run and should be proud of their 2009-2010 season when the sting of today's loss fades.
Two New Jersey teams with true rookie quarterbacks now have a lot to look forward to in September 2010.
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update on February 10: On this snow day wandering around on the internet, I discovered that this picture was actually reproduced on Apostrophe Abuse! I'm so proud.

College sports don't end on New Years Day? Who Knew?

This morning I opened a Scarlet Letter yearbook from the era when coaches were required to wear plaid sport jackets and I found evidence, between pages on major Rutgers sports like football and ultimate frisbee, that there was once a men's team playing the women's sport of "basket-ball" on the Banks of the Old Raritan.

Who knew?

It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

I'm not near a television, so I didn't see it happen, but it's great to see the stat line after the first quarter in Foxboro, Massachusetts with Ray Rice having 94 yards and two touchdowns for the Ravens after fifteen minutes of play.As I typed this and uploaded the picture of Ray from ESPN's splash page, I just watched Ray go over 100 yards on NFL GameCast with his 8th rush of the game at the beginning of the 2nd quarter. As I said in my headline, this success could not be happening to a nicer guy. He continues to make everyone with any connection to Rutgers extremely proud and happy that we shared some time with him on the Banks of the Old Raritan.
Run Ray Run, as they used to say on the t-shirts in Rutgers Stadium.

25 Football Teams that are not the Rutgers Scarlet Knights

Really, who cares? None of the teams on the following list wears a block R on their helmets or sings "On the Banks of the Old Raritan" after their games, but since I have religiously filled out the fifteen previous BlogPoll ballots this season, here is my sixteenth.

As always, you can click on the thumbnail on the upper right to check out the scribbled logic behind these rankings.

See you in April for the Scarlet-White Game!

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama
2	Boise State	3
3	Texas	1
4	Florida	2
5	TCU	1
6	Ohio State	1
7	Iowa	2
8	Cincinnati	5
9	Penn State	1
10	Pittsburgh	2
11	Virginia
12	Brigham Young	3
13	Oregon	5
14	Georgia Tech	3
15	Utah	4
16	Nebraska	5
17	LSU	3
18	Wisconsin	6
19	Mississippi
20	Miami (Florida)	4
21	Central Michigan	2
22	Southern Cal
23	Texas Tech
24	Navy
25	Oregon State	7
Last week's ballot

Dropped Out: Virginia Tech (#13), West Virginia (#17), Oklahoma State (#20), Stanford (#22), Houston (#25).

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Update 11 January 2010:

OK, maybe I need to start proofreading. #11 on this final list should probably have been the 10-3 Virginia Tech Hokies and not the 3-9 Virginia Cavaliers. Though I love Charlottesville and I'm sure there was a least one Cavalier fan who was thrilled to see his team's name in a position high on the "Others Receiving Votes" list because of my carelessness, I'm sorry. Thanks to Brian Cook for singling out this error in the "Wack Ballot Watchdog" section of his Postseason Blogpoll wrapup earlier this afternoon.

Name That Tune.

(once again, thanks to Wordle.net and their addictive little toy. Images of Wordles are covered by a Creative Commons license.)

The Visual State of Beat Visitor dot com on the Fifth of January Twenty Ten

It's obvious from this picture that I need to use the word Rutgers with more regularity. Rutgers. Rutgers. Rutgers. Visit Wordle.net to try one yourself for your own site, or for a website that you visit regularly.
I was surprised by the words that popped up most regularly on my blog. But I'll fix that. Rutgers. Rutgers. Rutgers. Scarlet Knights. Scarlet Kinghts. Scarlet Knights. Football. Football. Football.
This cloud of words was created using the tools at http://www.wordle.net/. Images of Wordles are licensed by a Creative Commons license.