We don't fear the turtle.

Was anyone else thrilled when this Saturday's game was moved from Yankee Stadium to Rutgers? Anyone who had attended the Pinstripe Bowl games there knows that the field in the Bronx is no place to play or watch football.

See you in Piscataway in three days! It's time for a third B1G win, especially after so many critics picked Rutgers to go winless in the conference in 2017.

Keep Calm For The Seniors On Their Day at R House.

Leonte Carroo announced that he's definitely playing during his last chance to take the field at Rutgers Stadium this Saturday, so let's send him off with a victory (even if that means that Kyle Flood might have to think about switching from Laviano to Rettig at QB at some point earlier than the waning minutes of the fourth quarter).

We'll see you there to see off Carroo and the rest of the Seniors. We don't Fear The Turtle!

I don't exactly "Fear The Turtle," but you have to admit the way they can hide their heads & legs in their shells is more than little scary.

— Kyle Bobbleflood (@KyleBobbleflood) November 23, 2015

Video Highlights of Yesterday's Maryland Game

You won't see many defensive highlights here until the very end of the video, but there are a lot of explosive offensive plays starring Nova, Carroo, Grant, Patton, Martin, and Hicks.

Exceeding Expectations

This is not where Maryland and Rutgers were expected to end up in the Big Ten pecking order at the end of this, their inaugural season:

Maryland Chopped

If you missed today's Maryland game, be sure to look for the replay on BTN, or find someone who has it on their DVR, or at least watch the highlights online.

Rutgers wins and the Knights are 7-5 (3-5) in their first B1G season. That was a GREAT win. #MarylandChopped #RFootball
— Beat Visitor (@BeatVisitor) November 30, 2014

The Rutgers (lack of) defense was painful to watch in the first half, but the offense was steady throughout and Gary Nova acquitted himself excellently in his last regular season game as a Scarlet Knight. The comeback from 25 points down at 35-10 to win by 41-38 was impressive and historic and the perfect way to end this inaugural Big Ten season.
It's also not a bad way to begin a rivalry with an I-95 neighbor.
Or to silence all the negative nellies on Twitter.

Someone should get a game ball for whatever was said to the defense during halftime.

Throwback Uniforms from the 'Nineties for Saturday's Maryland Game

The Maryland Agricultural College (which became the University of Maryland in 1920) fielded its first football team in 1892.

The 1892 Maryland Agricultural College football team with their bowler-hatted overlord.

The 1891 Rutgers football team had a shady-looking guy in a black suit and bowler too.

This will be the last in a BeatVisitor.com series that began during this inaugural Big Ten year with early photos of  Michigan's football team and continued with Ohio State, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan State,

Unlike some of the other Big Ten matchups this year, these teams have a little bit of history between them; the Scarlet Knights' all-time record against the Terrapins, 4 wins and 5 losses, needs to be evened up this week.

Keep Calm and Chop Maryland

I was in a television- and internet-free zone almost all weekend, but I see from the score that things didn't work out too well for the Scarlet Knights in East Lansing. I'm not sure I'll watch if it's re-run this week on BTN or dig back into my Twitter timeline to confirm that the whiny side of the Rutgers fan base was out in full force on Saturday afternoon.

The only goal this week is to go 1-0 against Maryland and finish the regular season with a 7-5 record that no one would have predicted for our first season in the Big Ten.
Here's this week's poster:

Lucky Member 13 of the Big Ten

Here are a few links about the reports today that Rutgers and Maryland may soon be invited to become the 13th and 14th members of the Big Ten [sic, of course, but no more ridiculous than the fact that the so-called "Big East" will soon include teams from San Diego, California and Boise, Idaho]:

• "Maryland, Rutgers to Join Big Ten?" from SI.com, giving the basic AP story that is available all over the web this morning.
• Video on ESPN.com on the possibility focusing more on Maryland than Rutgers, but bringing out important points about the Big Ten giving up on Notre Dame after the Dame picked the ACC. Also noting that Maryland and RU are both AAU academic institutions, Land Grant universities, in states contiguous to the current Big Ten, and in large TV markets the Big Ten Network would like to break into. The way Andy Katz descibes it in this video, you wonder why the Terrapins and the Knights aren't already playing the Wolverines, Buckeyes, and Nittany Lions.
• "Rutgers coach Kyle Flood is mum on possible move to the Big Ten" from NJ.com quotes Coach Flood, who echoes the feelings of all long-time Scarlet Knights fans: ``I’ve heard a lot of things over the last eight years and I’ve come to realize that the best thing for me to do is the not react to it. Those types of decisions I leave up to Tim Pernetti and the athletic department. I know they’re going to make sure that regardless of what happens, we’ll be in a good place.’’  He needs to concentrate on only one thing, making sure the 9-1 Knights are 1-0 again this week against Pitt.
• Steve Politi's take on the change on NJ.com puts the case for the change in its best light, and includes the following quote from former AD Bob Mulcahy: "The Big Ten is the dream scenario. That’s what I always felt. I felt the combination of land grant universities and research universities, plus athletics, Rutgers would fit right in.”

Also, it's hard to imagine a more natural rivalry than the one that could develop between the state universities of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Joe Lefeged's Big Hits

Do you think that Matt Grothe has seen this clip yet? If he sees it before Thursday night, he'll be looking for number 26 out of the corner of his eye all night long.



He's not a starter, but true freshman safety Joe Lefeged won Big East defensive player of the week honors for his play last Saturday even though he has left the coaches of Syracuse and Maryland crying about his hard hits on their quarterbacks.
What's so amazing about the hit shown above is the way the ball squirts out. The sack was so arresting that no one (other than a couple of alert RU linemen) seemed to even notice the ball. The cameras and directors during the game only seemed to notice that RU had recovered the ball as an afterthought.

Rumor Control: It is not true that Charlie Weis and Ralph Friedgen are quitting coaching . . .

... to join the sumo circuit full time.

It's purely a hobby for both of them.

It was not a good weekend to be a top ten team

This Beat Visitor poll has, of course, been removed from the sidebar now that its question has been answered by tonight's loss to the Terrapins. Of the 85 people who answered the question "The current Rutgers Stadium home win streak, which began in 2005, will end..." only one respondent had the correct answer.

With Florida, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Texas, and Rutgers all losing, and even USC only squeaking by, this was an awful week to be ranked in the top ten.
The question of where (if anywhere) the Scarlet Knights end up in the national rankings will be answered tomorrow afternoon, but it seems clear that the next two visitors to Rutgers Stadium (Cincinnati & South Florida) will now be ranked higher than the Knights, who will now need to see what they are truly made of.

Rutgers' streaks entering today's game

Key Streaks entering today's game against the Maryland Terrapins

17 -- Rutgers (#10 AP/ #10 Coaches) has now been nationally ranked in 17 consecutive polls, a school record.
10 -- The home winning streak, at ten games, is now the 7th longest in the country (after only USC, Florida, LSU, Ohio State, BC, & Oklahoma).
6 -- Six straight games scoring 30 points or more.
6-- Six straight games in which the offensive line has not allowed a sack.
2-- Two straight years with the Scarlet Knights hitting the top ten in both major polls.

I'll see you at the Stadium this afternoon.
Remember to bring your signs and face paint!

Other Sources, Other Teams

First of all, you may want to bone up on Saturday's competition with this "Tracking the Terps" blog from the Baltimore Sun, or the official Terrapins Football page from the University of Maryland.

Next, you might want to check out the sidebar where today I added a new "Big East Blogs" box, with links to classics like Mountainlair, Orange::44 (legendary home of the happy & crying children), and Pitt Blather. I have listed only one blog for each of the other seven football teams in the conference. Have you seen (or do you write) a better blog for the Yukon Huskies or the Cincy Bearcats or Florida's best new team of SEC slayers? If you do, let me know in the Comments. I want to provide the best links I can before the 2007 Big East conference competition begins in earnest.

SPEAR THE TURTLE!, or "Hey Kids! Get your face on ABC next Saturday."

Do you have your sign ready yet for next week's game versus the Maryland Terrapins on real television, the kind that every American can pick up with just rabbit ears and no cable or satellite fees? Are you prepared to receive that excited call from Grandma next Sunday saying, "I saw you on the Tee Vee yesterday!"?

Tip #1: Appeal to the network's vanity and need for constant self-promotion. TV networks love to take pictures of their own name or logo while the announcers are entertaining the couch potatoes at home by talking about the steak dinner they ate the night before or the key touchdown they scored in 1975. The picture below shows how a student waiting outside R house last November 9 appealed to the cameramen of ESPN while cheering Rutgers and commenting on a movie that had just appeared in the theaters.

For next Saturday, think of phrases that begin with the letters A, B, and C, and say something about the Knights or the Terrapins.

Always Be
Chopping

is our free suggestion, but I'm sure it's not the best. You can do much better.

Tip #2: Watch Your Grammar! You, by sitting in the stands at Rutgers Stadium and wearing scarlet, are -- whether you are a student, alumni, faculty member or not-- representing one of the oldest colleges (1766) and the oldest football program (1869) in the nation. Again, please note the sample from last year's Louisville game up above. Note the properly placed apostrophe in "it's"; a small thing maybe, but the writer of this poster would look like an idiot if it weren't there. I was behind a ten-year-old poster waver at the Norfolk State game with a sign that read, "Your in R House." What? That doesn't make any sense at all. Is it possible he meant "You're in R House"?

Tip #3: Watch Your Language? You want to be rude? Be rude. The Maryland Terrapins have much thicker skins (or shells) and freer tongues than the Naval Academy fans, as shown by this great article and legal opinion, "Fan Profanity" by Howard W. Wasserman, at firstamendment.org, which uses as a starting point the famous "F*ck Duke" chants and t-shirts at Maryland in 2004. Read the whole article if you're interested, especially about the way that PUBLIC universities are freer spaces than private schools, but here's a key concluding paragraph:

The grandstand at the arena or stadium has become the central public forum for cheering speech. Fans are invited to the arena and encouraged to speak, loudly and in however vivid or stark terms, to support, oppose, cheer, jeer, criticize and even taunt teams, players, coaches and officials in that game. Having created this forum for students to express themselves, a public university has ceded control over the manner in which students do so, at least within the parameters of protected speech. Fans must remain free to jeer as well as cheer players and teams and in as blatant or profane a manner as they wish.

So don't necessarily worry about keeping it clean, but keep it grammatical and clever! Remember, you're representing the great university of the State of New Jersey.

Tip #4: Be Original. The people with the Kiss-like painted faces and the "Knights In Schiano's Service" sign in first row of the closed endzone caught my eye last Saturday. Someone dressed as a Knight with the stuffed turtle on a (fake) sword (I doubt if real swords will make it past security) and a "Spear the Turtle!" sign might catch a camera's eye next Saturday.

Tip #5: Be Young. All a cute kid might need is a sign that reads, "Turtle? Tastes Like Chicken," but don't try to get away with it if you're older than about eleven or twelve.

Tip #6: Body Paint. I know that these painted red Knights and their gold Heisman trophy friend (I'm sorry I didn't get a picture of him in his statuette pose) made it onto ESPN at least once during the game last November. Try it yourself.
Tip #7: Go with the classics: "Upstream Red Team," "See Ray Run" or "Beat Visitor."

I'll take and post a few photos of the best signs and fans I see next week.

These off weeks are killers.

I should be at a Rutgers game today!