The Losing Streak Is Over

The only two games at Rutgers Stadium that I missed last year were the two wins, so it was great to be there today for the 65-0 win over Morgan State.
To celebrate, here's the band playing 'The Bells Must Ring' before the game.

Last Saturday's Halftime Show at R House

For those of you who weren't there (or for those of you who were waiting in line through halftime for a hot chocolate or a urinal), here's the joint patriotic appearance of the Rutgers University Marching Scarlet Knights and the Indiana University Marching Hundred on video:

I'm sorry this home season is over so early, but I hope we see this kind of joint appearance again soon, like when Ohio State comes to Rutgers Stadium next year.

A Big Ten Musical Challenge to Rutgers from The Best Damn Band in the Land

Here's the halftime show that wasn't shown on ABC television when Rutgers visited Columbus, Ohio for the first time yesterday:

I think we'll be competing with Ohio State on the football field before the Marching Scarlet Knights (a.k.a. "The Pride of New Jersey") are able to compete with the choreography of the TBDBITL when the men in pads relinquish the field.

Musically TPONJ is not bad at all, but we want marching Frankensteins and people smashing guitars.

New BlogPoll, Pryor Restraint & "AC Speech," Booing, and a Bold Prediction for the Howard game!

• The updated BlogPoll (of which my contribution constitutes 0.99009% [or 1 of 101 votes] again this week) has been posted at CBSSports.com. Cincinnati is at #22 according to this sample of the college football blogiverse.


• Click Here to see the reason that teams should consider installing some content-based version of Auto-Tune for their players during post-game press conferences. In the same way that singers who wouldn't know a B flat if it bit them on their asses can sing note-perfect on their multi-platinum Disney albums with the help of software, maybe some computer algorithm prodigy could come up with the code that would change Terrelle Pryor's "Not everybody's the perfect person in the world. I mean everyone kills people, murders people, steals from you, steals from me, whatever. I think that people need a second chance, and I've always looked up to Mike Vick, and I always will." into an athletically-correct (or AC) postgame boilerplate, "We're taking this season one day at a time. As long as my teammates and I continue to give 110 percent, we'll keep on winning ball games." Note that AC speech does not require statistical correctness; as a matter of fact, a mere "100%" is always athletically incorrect when speaking of effort.


• Speaking of sticking strictly to AC speech, Brian Bennett tackled the issue of booing in Big East stadiums last weekend in his Big East Blog on ESPN.com today. He writes at one point that "In the past, I've heard from fans who said they were just booing the coaching staff, not the players. But that's like carpet bombing a city and saying you're only trying to take out one evil guy." I don't think there's any doubt that the boos I heard in my section at Rutgers Stadium last Monday were aimed squarely at the well-paid coaching staff. Certainly most of the negative comments I heard were aimed at the men in the khaki slacks and not at the student athletes. No one ever criticizes the "Jabu package" and its drive-killing timing without praising Jabu Lovelace himself. I don't think it takes an abnormal amount of critical acumen to know when it's the coaches who are being reprimanded by the fans.


• A HOWARD UNIVERSITY VICTORY IS ASSURED ON SATURDAY! I know that I've called Beat Visitor dot com a prediction-free zone in the past, but this prediction is such a no brainer that I have to make it in bold type. Howard University will obliterate Rutgers University in the Battle of the Marching Bands on Saturday. The Marching Scarlet Knights ("The Pride of New Jersey") put some dance moves into their halftime tribute to Michael Jackson on Monday, but I predict that Thriller is going to be no match whatsoever for whatever the Showtime band has in store for us. The last time the amazing Howard band was in Rutgers Stadium, we watched them stretching on the sideline for 10 minutes before taking the field. Remember to take your drink & restroom break before or after halftime on Saturday, but not during it.

Where Will the Children Play?!?

Not that I'm shopping for more season tickets for myself, but out of curiosity I checked the Rutgers ticket office today to see which sections have seats being offered for new season-ticket holders in the expanding Stadium. As you can see by the sections highlighted in red below, none are being offered from the new South Endzone sections 131-144, but they are being offered in the former student sections in the northwest corner (sections 110-115) and in some of the upper deck sideline sections.

Which brought up the question in my mind of where the students were going to be sitting and how it was going to affect the crowd dynamics in R House this fall. I found the confirmation of my fears here in the 2009-2010 RUTGERS FOOTBALL STUDENT TICKET POLICY that the students will be entering through the new South Endzone entrance and sitting far from me in sections 134-141. From my seats in section 123 I've often felt like we were the main recipients of the students' enthusiatic "R"s to which we replied with our feeble "U"s. We also were in the thick of the "Upstream Red Team" cheers after scores and "First Down Touchdown Go R U" cheers after first downs. Does losing the students mean that we also lost our proximity to the band and the cheerleaders?? If so, I hope that the new occupants of the northwest corner do their homework and learn all the cheers before September 7th. And while they're at it, they need to learn all the verses of "On the Banks of the Old Raritan" too.

Having the students filling one entire end of the Stadium could change the dynamics for the better, leading to calls and responses that involve the entire Stadium (including those people in the lower level between the twenty-yard lines who seem to think they should be able to sit during a Rutgers football game), but we'll see soon.

"On the Banks of the Old Raritan" -- A Sing-A-Long Video

Here's the one song that every fan at Rutgers Stadium should sing out loud with the band right after the national anthem, and with the players at the end of the game. And you won't have to sing all five of the verses in this video, just the first verse and the chorus.

"On the Banks of the Old Raritan" was written by Howard Fullerton, a graduate of the Rutgers College class of 1874, in 1873. The version on this video with one voice and guitar replacing the traditional marching band and/or glee club, was played by a graduate of the Rutgers College class of 1978 on May 9, 2008. If this little ditty has one thing, it's longevity.

• Here's another video of the song, showing the team singing the first verse and chorus on the road in North Carolina in September 2006 with great spirit (though it takes half the song before they begin to agree on a key).
  
• Here's a video of New Brunswick street scenes after the Navy game in September 2007 backed by a rock version of "On the Banks...", with two verses, the chorus, and a long outro, played by Chris Batten and the Woods.
  
• And this link has an mp3 of the Rutgers Glee Club singing the first and last verses and three choruses with great vocal skill (though it drives me crazy when they prounce "Man" and "Raritan" to rhyme with "John" rather than "Fan").

TBA has been replaced by the Morgan State Bears on September 27

The Rutgers Scarlet Knights finally have 12 teams on the 2008 schedule with the addition of the Morgan State Bears (and the Morgan State Magnificent Marching Machine!) coming up from Baltimore on September 27.
Replacing Howard University with Fresno State meant that we would be missing a repeat of the best halftime show ever performed at Rutgers Stadium, but I'm sure the Morgan State band will try to reach that same high level, blowing (with all due respect to "The Pride of New Jersey") the Marching Scarlet Knights off the field as easily as the folks from Norfolk State did last year.

A Poetry Break for this fallow period in the football calendar

The Marching Scarlet Knights enter Rutgers Stadium, 30 August 2007

from The Quarry
by W.H. Auden

O what is that sound which so thrills the ear
Down in the valley drumming, drumming?
Only the scarlet soldiers, dear,
The soldiers coming.

O what is that light I see flashing so clear
Over the distance brightly, brightly?
Only the sun on their weapons, dear,
As they step lightly.

O what are they doing with all that gear,
What are they doing this morning, this morning?
Only their usual manoeuvres, dear,
Or perhaps a warning.
....