Hudson River Ice

It's still a few months until we see football at Rutgers Stadium again.

Full House

I hope this crowd looked as good on television as it did from the stands at the beginning of the 4th quarter (with the Irish only leading by 3).

Football Weather at R House North

The Scarlet Knights leaving the dugout.

Another short video from yesterday's Pinstripe Bowl victory. Here are the Scarlet Knights taking the field from the dugut on the third-base line (if there were a third-base line at Yankee Stadium rather than a gridiron):
 
Watch in on YouTube to see the full width.

The big lie

Yeah, that's the only thing I hear anybody talking about on the streets of Manhattan : Syracuse Orange football!

I think they are lighting the Empire State Building in orange on November 21st in honor of Greg Paulus.

As an alternate avenue to gain fans, maybe they could just start winning.

In their deep desire to be known as "New York's College Football Team," the Syracuse Orange have taken the drastic step of scheduling three of their upcoming home games in the Meadowlands (so maybe they're trying to become ""New Jersey's College Football Team"?).

In any case, the biggest losers are the Syracuse students. (I've seen a lot of comments about the pros and cons for Alumni and other old fogeys, but nothing about the sacred right of students to be able to stumble out of bed and into the bleachers.) If you were a student who could fly like a crow from Syracuse to New York City, you would have to fly 195 miles. As a Rutgers fan I can't imagine the students and season ticket holders being told that our "home" games were going to be played 195 miles away in Baltimore or Boston. The distances are similar, but at least there are direct fast trains from New Brunswick, New Jersey to both those locations.

What's at stake in tomorrow's game versus Syracuse, or Who is "New York's College Team"?

On at least two occasions in the past year, during the Louisville game on November 9, 2006 and during the NCAA women's finals in early April 2007, the Empire State Building has been bathed in a scarlet glow in honor of the teams across the Hudson at Rutgers. The Knights' games are prominently featured on the nightly news of all the New York city stations, and even the New York Times has partially abandoned its traditional preference for Ivy League football to deign to talk about the teams of New Jersey's great public university. There is a real sense working in and around New York that Rutgers is New York's college team. Their recent losses are as much a topic of conversation as their wins. I don't know how many times I've heard the Maryland and Cincinnati disappointments lumped in with the recent Mets and Yankees collapses. You know that a team has worked its way into the city's psyche when the pain of its defeats are felt as strongly as its successes are celebrated.

So, why does the Syracuse University athletics website claim the name "New York's College Team" for themselves? They even have a large picture of the big copper lady who sits a few feet off the Jersey City shoreline prominently displayed over a NYC skyline in this header on their football page.

There definitely was a time when the closest successful football program to New York City was four hours away in western New York State (closer to Canada than to the Empire State Building) rather than 30 miles away on the Turnpike, but that time may be over. Games like tomorrow's are important in establishing the prominence of the Scarlet over the Orange. This is important not just for the bragging rights and the color of the light filters on the Empire State, but because Rutgers needs to continue winning the New York recruiting wars for the future Brian Leonards and Ray Rices (both of whom could easily have been wearing Orange).