Ray Who?

Can you name one famous NFL Scarlet Knight who hasn't been included on this IBEW wall behind Section 107?

Are You Watching New Jersey's College Team tonight, or one of its pro teams?

It's not even close on this current NJ.com poll:

Rutgers North meets Rutgers South this Friday in Foxborough...

..and the Patriots and Buccaneers are engaging in joint practices at Gillette Stadium leading up to the nationally-televised preseason game. 

Here are the nine Rutgers players on each current roster as displayed on ESPN SportsCenter yesterday:

And, of course, Rutgers South is still coached by Greg Schiano.

The Rutgers Football quotes of the month come from Tampa Bay

I'm a little slow catching up with the news from the NFL this month, but it's just recently come to my attention that our favorite Knight Brian Leonard is hooking up with  his college coach Greg Schiano again and moving from the Bengals to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (otherwise known as the Scarlet Knights South in opposition to the Scarlet Knights North playing at Gillette Stadium).

Brian Leonard's last game wearing
the Scarlet's 23 on 12/26/06.

Here are a couple of quotes from the July 10 article in Brian's local Watertown Daily Times:

“We felt Brian could help us win and that’s why we brought him here. Brian Leonard’s a winner. I have a history with him since he was 16 years old. We’ve been through a lot together. This guy is an unselfish guy who will show up big when we need him.” -- Greg Schiano

and

“It’s comfortable going back to a coaching staff I already know and I’ll also be playing with some former teammates from Rutgers. [...] I’m excited. I had a great time in Cincinnati and have some good friends there, and the fans are great. But I needed a change and I think Coach Schiano knows how to use me. Hopefully I’ll progress throughout camp and show my skills, and my role with the team will get bigger and bigger.” -- Brian Leonard

It's hard not to wish them both the best. This is a coach/player combination that trumps any other loyalty I might have to any other NFL team.

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.

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.

I should apologize in advance for my actions this coming Sunday. . .

I'll be sitting way up under the press box for the last professional football game ever played at Giants Stadium on Sunday night. And most of the time (between shivers and the sound of my own teeth chattering) I'll be cheering for the gang in green to beat the team from Cincinnati with the tiger stripes on their helmets, but there will be one exception. If number 40 from the Bengals touches the ball, I'll be rooting for the visitors, even though number 40 usually only touches the ball in key third-down situations.

"I get pumped up when I get a first down," Leonard said. "To me, it is a touchdown. I see those sticks, and I feel like I've got to get past those sticks. And if I get past those sticks, guys seem get pretty pumped by it. It's my job; I've just got to make the extra effort to get it."

Read more in this article from The Daily News

So, apologies in advance to any Jets fans sitting around me in the cold on Sunday night, but my loyalties to Brian Leonard run deeper than loyalties to any mere professional sports corporation, or its playoff aspirations.

Wear Red to the Game!

Once a Scarlet Knight, Always a Scarlet Knight.

Congratulations to Ray Rice for his election to this year's Pro Bowl for his work with the Baltimore Ravens.
Here, for your viewing pleasure, is a video of Ray up in Toronto at the International Bowl during his last game wearing the R on his helmet.

Just Shut Up Already! The Quotes of the Day for Pitt Week.

Maybe the Whiners will soon be jumping off the bandwagon and riding off into the sunset (this shot of R House at the end of the TSU game also makes a nifty full-screen computer background courtesy of BeatVisitor.com)

"schiano is an idiot...I hope you are gone soon and Rutgers can save 2 million dollars a year from your salary." "...lets let Tom Savage throw the ball all over the field for interceptions and overthrows. The kid is not ready to play Big East football and the only thing that is saving his butt right now is that interception on the last drive being dropped." "Schiano better do something. The ticker is running! New Jersey wants a Big East Champion! ... Mulchahy is gone! Schiano...you gotta give us a winning year!" "Schiano is a stubborn donkey, he will never admit when he is wrong, and he is clearly wrong not to play Williams. Our o-line is not playing well and a back like martinek with no lateral quickness is not going to succeed. This line cannot open up holes, we need a back with speed and cut-back ability. It seems so obvious. Yet we keep trotting out our glorified fullback and hope we can run straight ahead. Pathetic play calling, the co-coordinators is a joke." "Don't play your fastest running back coach, good idea. Does anyone know how to start a real petition to FIRE GREG SCHIANO!! 9 YEARS IT THE LONGEST TENURE COACH IN THE BIG EAST AND EVERY OTHER SCHOOL EXCEPT S. FLORIDA HAS WON A BIG EAST CHAMPIONSHIP. TIME TO GO GREG" --actual quotes from random idiots who commented on just one Star-Ledger article yesterday

When Saturday Night Live did skits with Bob and Wendy Whiner, did anyone doubt for a second that the Whiners were from some bedroom community in North Jersey? I've learned to ignore the Whiners and continue reading my book as they blame the conductor on NJ Transit for an Amtrak power or switch failure, or the weather. I was hoping I could ignore all this negative chatter on the internet the way I try to ignore all the frustrated head coaches sitting around me in the stands every week, but this has now reached a fevered pitch, and we've only lost twice -- to two ranked teams.

Did it ever occur to any of these Whiners that these are college kids playing a game? A game in which the ball takes funny bounces and luck takes more than a minor role every week? Bill Stull threw at least two third-down passes up for grabs on Friday night when he was in the grasp of the defense that could easily have been intercepted and returned for touchdowns by the Scarlet Knights but instead came down as first downs for the Panthers. Professional quarterbacks for at least two teams yesterday would have been happy to have had Tom Savage's line of 248 yards with 1TD and 1INT (the Titans had Kerry Collins and Vince Young combine for 2 of 14 with minus 7 yards and 2 interceptions; and the Jets' star rookie Mark Sanchez was 10 of 30 with 5 interceptions). It doesn't make these quarterbacks untalented or their coaches inept. They just had bad days (as I'm hoping the nattering nabobs of negativity quoted up above were having on a rainy Sunday with their favorite college and pro teams all losing). They were simply on the losing end of a game. It wasn't their day.

And the season isn't over. There's another game next week for all of these teams. Beat Army! (And shut up if I quoted you up above.)

Fun, but still a poor substitute for the real thing

I went to the preseason Jets-Rams game at the Meadowlands last night. Along with the Mark Sanchez coming in for one quick series that started on his own 7 with a 48-yard pass and ended a few plays later with a touchdown, the highlight was watching for numbers 55 and 47 on defense.

A tribute to #47 on his last day at Rutgers Stadium on 11/17/2007.

Jamaal Westerman (55) and Brandon Renkart (47) both got a lot of time at linebacker in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th quarters and both looked good. Renkart, in his second preseason with the Jets, was in almost constantly in the second half and looked especially strong (and left with a team-leading 5 tackles on the night), but when Westerman and Renkart shared a tackle on a relatively routine play at the line of scrimmage, there was noticeable cheer that went up from scattered groups around the thin preseason crowd. One guy at the end of my row pointed at me and asked, "Rutgers?" I nodded, and we both ended up agreeing that we can't wait for the real season to start (in only 23 days!).

Ron Girault is a Kansas City Chief, Sosa a Viking, Renkart a Jet, and Ito a Saint (though we all knew that)

Click here for a short article on the latest free agent signings of this year's Scarlet Knight seniors.