Scarlet Knights vs Black Knights this Saturday

We should be able to keep calm this week, but ...

The Perfect Rutgers Road Game for 2015

Today, with half a winter and a full spring and summer between us and the resumption of Rutgers football, we just got some great news about the 2015 season. The game between the Scarlet Knights and the Black Knights will be moving from the evil field in the Bronx to one of the best football locations in the nation, Michie Stadium at West Point.

I'll be there with my traveling companion. I hope it's better weather than the cold rain and snow mix we had in 2007. Other than being cold and wet, I remember that game for Ray Rice's 243 rushing yards and watching James Gandolfini mingling with the cadets on the sidelines. There were tons of empty seats in the wet upper deck that year, but let's fill it with scarlet in 2015.

Rutgers Loses a Loyal Son, James Gandolfini (B.A., 1983)

I just heard the sad news that James Gandolfini has passed away suddenly at the young age of 51 while on vacation in Italy.


We'll all remember him as Tony Soprano, of course, but I'll always remember him as one of the Scarlet Knights' most important supporters when very few people had jumped on our bandwagon.  There was the video he did in support of Rutgers football right after Greg Schiano was hired (but which I can't find right now on YouTube or anywhere else), but there are three Rutgers football moments that stand out in my mind on this sad night.  Here they are in reverse chronological order.
I remember seeing him at a spring Scarlet and White game in '08 or '09 with a young child on his shoulders walking around the field with all the other fans and players and while everyone was asking the players for their autographs, the families on the field left this family man and fellow fan alone even though we all recognized him.
I also remember seeing him on the sideline during a very cold and wet night at Michie Stadium in November 2007 as Jabu Lovelace and Ray Rice and the rest of the Scarlet Knights ran all over the Black Knights. Tony Soprano, dressed in Scarlet, was spending a lot of time on the home team's sideline in the soaking rain and wet snow talking to every West Point cadet who wanted to spend a few moments with him.
Finally, I remember September 4, 2004 when Rutgers beat Michigan State in the season opener, long before even the most wild-eyed Knights fans had any thoughts of joining the Big Ten.  It was an important upset win in the Schiano era and students immediately started flooding the field as the game ended.  My son, turning 15 that month, asked if he could hop the wall and join the students and I said yes. I watched from the seats as he wandered around in the end zone at the open end of the field with a smile on his face.  I noticed that the star of The Sopranos was standing about 10 feet from him, so I called my son's cell phone and asked him to turn around.  I watched as he walked right up to James Gandolfini and shook his hand. As we walked back to the car I asked him what he had said to the star of his favorite show.
My son had said, "Mr. Gandolfini, I love your show."
"You're too young to watch my show," Mr. Gandolfini had said.

More than any line from The Sopranos or any of his movies, that's the one quote I'll always remember when I think of this larger-than-life loyal son of Rutgers.

Rest in Peace.

Don't Forget Me

I'd love to be there at West Point to see the game tonight; for those of you who are going, have a great time watching the Scarlet Knights dismembering the Black Knights again (if for some strange reason you haven't seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail, be sure to watch the clip below) and leveling the all-time record between the long-time rivals at 18-18.

I won't be able to see the game on television tonight, and after I send this last missive into the electronic ether cloud, I won't even be touching a computer for another few days. Don't forget that BeatVisitor.com exists while I'm observing radio silence. It's amazing how quickly blog traffic drops off when you shut your mouth for a couple of days.



Beat Army!

More on this Friday's Coming Tournament

There's a great breakdown of what the Black Knights of Army need to do to beat the Scarlet Knights on the gridiron Friday night over at The Unbalanced Line,
an independent Army football blog.
After the venom poured on Rutgers' football team by some Rutgers "fans" after the Pittsburgh loss, it's interesting to see T.U.L. referring to the "Hollywood glitz and Big East swagger" of Rutgers. This year Rutgers will not be taking a victory over Army for granted and it should be a better game than it was the last time our red knights visited West Point and Jabu Lovelace and Ray Rice ran wild over the wet field (I still have a chill in the marrow of my bones from the cold wet sleet and snow that pelted us that night in the upper deck of Michie Stadium -- it was too cold and wet to sit; we stood through the whole game, but at least we had multiple opportunities to scream the Upstream Red Team chant). I'd love to visit West Point again, but I'm going to be away this weekend. It's a trip I'd recommend to any Scarlet Knight fan (or any football or history fan); if you don't have plans for Friday night, consider a trip up the Hudson, especially since the Rutgers-Army rivalry will soon be moving to bigger and less interesting venues in the Meadowlands and the Bronx.
Beat Army.

Who'll Stop the Rain?

I hoped to get some nice pictures of Michie Stadium and the Corps of Cadets to illustrate this entry about last night's tournament of traditional gridiron skills between the Black Knights of the Hudson and the Scarlet Knights of the Raritan, but, as with the West Virginia game, I didn't feel like sacrificing my camera to the rain (and snow last night), so here's an appropriate picture taken before this season's USF game back in October.

It was obviously the Ray Rice show up at West Point last night with his school-record-breaking 243 yards and fifth game of 200+ yards. He now has 1,500 yards on the season with Pittsburgh and Louisville still to come.

But it was also at least partially the Jabu Lovelace show. He was the starting quarterback for every offensive touchdown in last night's 41-6 victory and he was in the game long enough -- between Mike Teel's 1st-quarter start and Chris Paul-Etienne's 4th-quarter mopping up -- to show a mix of play calls. Of course, given the weather conditions and the game situation, it was mostly a variety of rushing plays, but he even had one great long ball thrown to Tim Brown in the end zone that was only called back because Tim had placed a foot out of bounds on his dash down the sideline.

It was also a great defensive performance. The defense did not allow a single point or one sustained drive. The six points that Army put on the board were given to them via a sideline interception thrown by Mike Teel (quarterback rating 2.1 on 1 of 4 passing last night) in the first quarter. The coaches seriously need to think about finally giving Jabu Lovelace his first start next Saturday against Pitt. If Mike Teel's thumb isn't fully healed in the next week, they'd be stupid to do otherwise.

The most amazing statistic of last night's victory comes from the article about the game on ScarletKnights.com stating that this is the "...first road victory in the month of November since the 1998 season and the first of the Greg Schiano era." For long-time fans, one of the of the best things about the last three years is seeing these ugly monkeys falling from the back of the Knights.

See You All at Michie Stadium on Friday at 8pm -- Wear Red to the Game

There are still tickets available at ScarletKnights. com for this Friday night's game between the Black Knights of Army and the Scarlet Knights of Rutgers, a series of jousts that dates back to 1891, the second year that they were playing football at West Point (The Black Knights lead the series 18-15, but the Scarlet Knights are on a three-game winning streak).

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The Army website is calling for a "Blackout" at Michie Stadium, so be sure to get some scarlet outerwear if you're driving up to West Point for the game.

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I hope to see you there, and Go Knights! (you know which ones we mean)