Good Luck to the Rutgers Women in Storrs

Watch the Rutgers women's basketball team react to their NCAA tournament selection:

National Championship Winners

The Rutgers women just completed their quest for the 2014 WNIT championship before 12,000 loud UTEP fans in El Paso.

Late-game heroine Tyler Scaife seconds after the final buzzer.

The 2014 WNIT trophy.

Congratulations to C. Vivian Stringer and all the players, all of whom should be back next year to face the Big Ten.

Pittsburgh won't want to see any Scarlet uniforms again soon.

Tonight:
The Rutgers men just beat the Pittsburgh Panthers 62-39 for their first Big East road win of the season in Pittsburgh.

Last night:
The Rutgers women beat the Pitt Panthers 63-39 in their Big East road opener in Pittsburgh.

So much for home court advantage.

Go Knights!

Rutgers Professionals

Did anyone else notice that the Rutgers women who play in Madison Square Garden are in the running to win the WNBA championship?

Flipping around last night I caught the last five minutes of the NY Liberty's win against Indiana and 3 of the 5 Libertariennes on the court throughout the end of the game that clinched a spot in the East Finals were Scarlet Knights (there's no such thing as an ex-Scarlet Knight): Cappie Pondexter, Essence Carson, and Kia Vaughn. Coach Stringer was in the stands lending her support. The only thing wrong with the picture was the color of the uniforms.

Don Imus Thinks He's Back on Television

Here are two facts that you should not reveal to Don Imus.

1. "Fox Business" is not a real television station that people watch or have even heard of; it's simply a shady tax write-off for Rupert Murdoch. (Let him feel like he has some self-esteem with a camera aimed at him even if no one is watching at the other end. He and Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity and Karl Rove can sit around talking to each other trying to convince themselves that they are sane and important and visible, but no one will get hurt or offended in the process.)
2. The twenty-gallon hat* and the inch-thick pancake makeup still make you look like a 85-year-old douchebag trying to relive your glory days as a vital 67-year-old faux cowboy.
   

Why does a Rutgers football blog care to comment about this mumbling senile old fart? Click on the "Imus" tag below, or read this one post from April 2007.

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*If Rutgers fans are going to pick political commentators by their headgear, we'll go with Michael Moore.

Congratulations to the Rutgers Women on making it to the Elite Eight

It's just awful to have to lose to the UConn Huskies on the way to the Final Four (the game in Greensboro just ended -- 66-56 -- and On The Banks of the Old Raritan is being played by the band in the background as I listen to the game on WRSU through my computer speakers).
But thanks again for another great season from C. Vivian Stringer and her team!

Did Don Imus help create a Rutgers Basketball Dynasty?

This Sunday all Scarlet eyes will be on the Sweet Sixteen game between Rutgers and George Washington in Greensboro, North Carolina (while trying hard not to look forward to meeting UConn again in the Elite Eight and Tennessee again in the Final).

But earlier this week at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee, it was the Rutgers stars of the future dominating the McDonald's All-American Game. Future Knights Nikki Speed of California and Brooklyn Pope of Texas were the co-MVPs for the winning West team. The West team had a third Scarlet Knight, Jasmine Dixon of California, and the East team also featured future Rutgers players April Sykes of Mississippi and Chelsey Lee of Florida.

Five MickeyD All Stars coming to the banks in one year! Rutgers has recruited stars from outside the New York metropolitan area in recent years (WNBA Rookie and Finals MVP Cappie Pondexter from Chicago comes immediately to mind), but they haven't previously had this ability to pick the biggest high school stars from every corner of the nation. Making it to the NCAA finals last year probably had something to do with their increased stock among the high-school elite, but I have to believe that Don Imus's racist and sexist rant, and the Knights' memorably classy response to that juvenile attack, put the Scarlet Knights firmly on the national map, and near the top of every recruits' wish list of top schools. So thanks Don (you jerk).

And aren't Nikki Speed and Brooklyn Pope two of the best names that you've ever heard?? I can't wait until they take the floor with Epiphanny Prince next year! Speed to Pope to Prince! They sound quick.

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Update 3/28: Here's a Harvey Araton article that appeared in the New York Times on March 8 that talks directly about the appeal of the team to the players and their families in the aftermath of the Imus attack.

RU did defeat the #1 team in the nation two weeks in a row!

Time sure drags in Tennessee. Only in Knoxville does 0.2 seconds not only feel like it lasts more than six times longer than other places, but here's the visual proof that 0.2 seconds lasts 1.3 seconds when the Lady Vols need a little help from the clock:

If the video link goes down, here's a succinct recap from Scarlet Knights Newzer.
Now the gamecast mystery from last night isn't so mysterious anymore; they had it right the first time.
Go Knights! And congratulations from Beat Visitor on the big win!

What a Tease!, or That's enough of the Pink Uniforms

The gametracker at UTLadyVols.com ran the following final score a few minutes ago, confirming that the Scarlet Knights had done the impossible and the unprecedented, beating the #1 team in the country in consecutive games:

Then I called a friend who actually had a television with cable who told me that there was a foul and time on the clock. And two minutes later the teases at UTLadyVols.com posted this alternate (and final) final score:
The Scarlet Knights will have to save their victory over the Lady Volunteers for a date in very late March or very early April (and put their pink jerseys back into the closet).

Games don't get any bigger than this (... at least in the regular season)

Tonight at seven -- in just two hours -- the Rutgers women will have the opportunity to:

1) ... avenge the loss of April 3, 2007 in the NCAA finals (and the losses to Tennessee in 2005 and 2006 that ended the Scarlet Knights' runs in those NCAA tournaments).

2) ... become the first team to beat the #1 team in the country in consecutive games.

3) ... almost certainly clinch a top seed in the NCAA tournament.

&

4) Do it all while wearing pink uniforms.

Beating #1 Connecticut last week was only a warm up for tonight's match against #1 Tennessee.

No pressure (but if they win this one, they should be the Pink Knights for the duration of the '07-'08 season).

Go Knights!!

This is why you don't throw your white uniforms in the same washer with the scarlet ones!

The Rutgers women will be playing their rematch of last year's NCAA Championship game against Tennessee on Monday, February 11 down in Knoxville. Our team will be wearing the outfits to your left, not because of a foul-up in the laundry, but to support a cause.

Let's hope that Imus & Friends think that they look pretty in pink (though we don't really give a fuck what that old fart thinks).

Seriously though, with Rutgers having beaten #1 Connecticut this past Wednesday, Tennessee will move up into the top spot by the time Epiphanny Prince and friends travel south. Can the Scarlet Knights knock off the #1 team in the country two weeks in a row?

ABC: "Hey, we can be as racist and sexist as the next major American network!"

It's nice to see that Don Imus has paid his debt by getting a 6-month vacation and $20 million payoff from his former employers.
Now that we've all forgotten what he said on April 4th about the very young and talented women of Rutgers whose only sin was making it to the televised NCAA finals, ABC is free to prove that it can support racism and sexism for profit just as much as its identical siblings CBS and NBC.

"Only," as Don King likes to say, "in America."

If this is really were a free speech issue (which, of course, it's not), rather than an argument about what kind of lucrative speech all three of the major American networks choose to broadcast on the airwaves handed to them in trust by the public, then we should be free to chant FUCK IMUS at every Rutgers athletic event at which ABC or its child ESPN are present.
But, of course it won't come to that, since this is only a rumor, and ABC (and its corporate overlord, Mickey Mouse), would never allow this to really happen.

Never leave off the last "s" for savings, or "Nobody ever died for dear old Rutger Hauer"

Please click on the picture to enlarge for legibility.

This tastefully typeset block of type about ignorance appears this morning in the center of an otherwise blank page of this morning's New York Times. The only other items printed on the page are the header for page 5 of the April 15, 2007 Sports Sunday section and a small Nike swoosh at the foot of the page.

First of all, the sentiment is fine and should, at this point, be universal.

However, the University from which we graduated was named after Col. Henry Rutgers, and not Rutger Hauer, so line three of Nike's public service announcement should salute "the Rutgers team" and not "Rutger's team". Of course this is probably just an example of faulty copyediting (the same line ends with a sentence fragment and the first line is punctuated to make us believe that ignorance is thanking the reader rather than Nike thanking ignorance) or the same inexplicable theory of punctuation that leads people to put signs that say "The Smith's" rather than "The Smiths" on their front lawns and RVs. However, we can't help thinking Nike's mistaken belief that the team we root for is the "Rutger Scarlet Knights" is due to the fact Rutgers' athletic program still isn't high on Nike's radar screen. After all, we can't imagine America's big sneaker company making a similar mistake when writing about the Louisville Cardinals (little birds) and the Stanford Cardinal (like Scarlet and Crimson, a shade of red).

Despite the recent surge of notoriety, we may have to wait for the 2007 football season before that widespread ignorance about the school on the banks of the old Raritan finally changes forever.

Timeline of the past week in Rutgers women's basketball news

In case you hadn't heard, the Rutgers women's basketball team was attacked in racist and sexist terms on the day after they played in the National Championship game (and on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination) by a wrinkled and cowboy-hatted shock jockey on CBS radio (and formerly of MSNBC). Media Matters for America did a great job of bringing this outrage to light with video and transcripts on April 4, and now they've published an informative timeline of the past week's events that runs from the 4th up until last night's action by MSNBC.

They also provide this important CBS Radio contact info:

• Karen L. Mateo Vice President, Communications (212) 846-7638
• Whitney Pray Communications Coordinator (212) 846-3906
• Dana McClintock Senior Vice President, CBS Communications Group (212) 975-1077

You can also write to fanmail@wfan.com ; put in a snappy subject line ("Fire Imus" is short and to the point) and please mention why you feel that way, and if you're writing because of a personal connection to Rutgers.
I'm also writing a thank you note to viewerservices@msnbc.com

MSNBC does the right thing (for the obvious reason); all pressure now shifts to CBS

ALL ABOUT THE MONEY

It may turn out to seem like a Pyrrhic victory when some right-wing pressure group leans on sponsors to get rid of something we like on the radio (though we only listen to NPR, which doesn't have sponsors), but for now it's just a victory. It was for the money (or fear of losing it) that major American corporations, afraid of being tarred as sponsors of racism, caused another major American corporation, NBC Universal (a subsidiary of General Electric), to pull the plug on the cameras this evening.

It would have been nice if NBC has made the decision immediately, a week ago, for less mercenary reasons, but it still feels good to know that this insult against the Scarlet Knights, women, and African Americans, has finally been appropriately addressed.The online announcement included the key lines here:

The network’s decision came after a growing list of sponsors — including American Express Co., Staples Inc., Procter & Gamble Co., and General Motors Corp. — said they were pulling ads from Imus’ show for the indefinite future.

But it did not end calls for Imus to be fired from the radio portion of his program. The show originates from WFAN-AM in New York City and is syndicated nationally by Westwood One, both of which are managed by CBS Corp. For its part, CBS has not announced plans to discontinue the show.

If the sponsors don't get to WFAN, then the pressure has to be put on athletes to follow Cal Ripken's example and refuse to deal with Imus or his station. I don't think it will take even that much though. CBS will not want to look more racist than NBC. It's as simple as that, or it should be.

OBAMA & HILLARY ARE TIED

Later in the MSNBC announcement was this bit about Barack Obama's statement today on Imus and the young women of Rutgers:

Before the announcement was made, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) had appeared on the MSNBC program "Hardball," where host David Gregory asked the senator and presidential candidate if he thought Imus should be fired.

"I don't think MSNBC should be carrying the kinds of hateful remarks that Imus uttered the other day," Obama said.

He went on to note that he and his wife have "two daughters who are African-American, gorgeous, tall, and I hope, at some point, are interested enough in sports that they get athletic scholarships. ... I don't want them to be getting a bunch of information that, somehow, they're less than anybody else. And I don't think MSNBC should want to promote that kind of language."

Obama went on to say that he would not be a guest on Imus' show in the future.

So, based on the statement I made in my last entry, both Obama and Clinton gained a point today in my early calculations to see who I'm voting for in the New Jersey primary next year.

Hillary Clinton's Respect for Rutgers Campaign

The Rutgers Women are starring on the front page of HillaryClinton.com this afternoon with a call to "Join Hillary in sending the young women of Rutgers a message of respect and support."

We here at BeatVisitor.com haven't yet made our decision about who we're voting for in the primary of 2008, but we have to say that putting the women of our favorite university on your splash page certainly earns you a brownie point (we should also warn candidates that any appearance on Imus in the Morning that we hear about will earn a candidate a minimum of 10 demerits -- yes, we are keeping very careful score!)

Now go send your message of Respect for Rutgers.

Then give to the charity Don Imus should be supporting (and the place where the bulk of my yearly charitable donations have gone for the last decade or so): The Rutgers University Foundation

GO KNIGHTS!

It was great seeing this front page on the New York Daily News...

... being held by my fellow commuters on the way to work this morning.

Every article about this scandal from now until the name "Don Imus" is long forgotten, should include at least as many pictures or profiles of these dedicated, talented, and intelligent young women as it does of the cowboy-hatted one (and has anyone else noticed how the cowboy hat suddenly disappeared when he stared The Apology Tour -- was that the work of a style consultant trying to tone down his swagger?).

And CBS radio and MSNBC should give C. Vivian Stringer a show of her own, but only in the off season, of course. Her contract is up at Rutgers this year, but it's just as important for the university to reward her appropriately as it is for us to retain Greg Schiano.

I'll say it again. I've never been prouder of my school since I started at Rutgers College in the fall of 1973!

GO KNIGHTS!

Where our focus belongs: Essence Carson & Heather Zurich

It's time to accentuate the positive.

It's definitely time for us to start focusing on the direct victims of last week's attack, and not on their soon-to-be-ex-shockjock attacker.

Read these transcripts of today's remarks from Heather Zurich: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/business/media/10cnd-rptext.html
And Essence Carson:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/business/media/10cnd-rctext.html

The difference between the poise of these well-spoken students and the slime of Mr. Imus could not be greater. They make me so proud of my alma mater on the banks of the Raritan!

Go Knights!!

Thank You Al Roker!

http://allday.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/04/10/116906.aspx

Yesterday I asked: "Where are the high profile CBS and NBC personalities? Are they working behind the scenes to cleanse the racism from their organization? Do any of them have the guts to actually speak out about this stain on the network that feeds them? "

Well, here's one, as far as I know the first one, Al Roker, and he does so with logic and without pulling his punches:

The “I’m a good person who said a bad thing” apology doesn’t cut it. At least he didn’t try to weasel out of this by hiding behind alcohol or drug abuse. Still, he said it and a two-week suspension doesn’t cut it. It is, at best, a slap on the wrist. A vacation. Nothing.

The general manager of Cartoon Network resigned after a publicity stunt went wrong and caused a panic in Boston. He did the right thing. Don Imus should do the right thing and resign. Not talk about taking a two-week suspension with dignity. I don’t think Don Imus gets it.

After watching and listening to him this morning during an interview with Matt Lauer, Don Imus doesn’t get it. Maybe it’s being stuck in a studio for 35 years or being stuck in the 1980’s. Either way, it’s obvious that he needs to move on. Citing “context within a comedy show” is not an excuse.

He has to take his punishment and start over. Guess what? He’ll get re-hired and we’ll go on like nothing happened. CBS Radio and NBC News needs to remove Don Imus from the airwaves. That is what needs to happen. Otherwise, it just looks like profits and ratings rule over decency and justice.

(http://allday.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/04/10/116906.aspx)

THANK YOU AL, but where are your white colleagues? Without a broad multi-hued opposition, we'll continue to see comments like those at the bottom of your blog entry -- the typical boilerplate racist defenses of Imus and non-sequiturial and nonsensical attacks on Al Sharpton and gangster rappers (I didn't read them all, but you just know that some "wit" has already decided to call you "Reverend Al Roker").

crossposted at TrueBlueLiberal.org

UPDATE 11 April 07:
PLEASE READ THE FIRST COMMENT TO THE CROSSPOST AT TRUEBLUELIBERAL.ORG FROM ANONYMOUS FOR ANOTHER UNIQUE PERSPECTIVE ON "IMUS IN THE MORNING" FROM A THOUGHFUL AND INSIGHTFUL EX-LISTENER

This is NOT About Don Imus, It's About the Racism of CBS and NBC

When Don Imus said to Al Sharpton this afternoon, "I can't get anyplace with you people," it became more obvious than ever that he lives in a world that is sharply divided between black and white. "You people" can only be taken one way. The other key statement from his interview with Reverend Sharpton is that he has no intention of resigning. It's also clear, after 40 years in the business, that he's not changing his stripes. He is who he is, and he's not leaving on his own.

The FCC (according to reports on CBS News tonight) will take no action because no nipples or f-words were involved.

So, with neither resignation nor government action imminent, the ball is now totally in the court of CBS (owner of his radio outlet) and NBC (owner of his television simulcaster). They either need to pull the plug on his microphone, or they are officially condoning racist slurs and the ability of old men to comment on the appearance and sexual habits of very young women.

This evening MSNBC administered its first wrist slap, but a two-week hiatus in the simulcast cannot be considered a punishment

And by the way, "You People" does not just include the "You People" of whom Al Sharpton is a member. There is also the sexist component of the term "nappy-headed hos" that has millions of women understandably upset. Here is an easy to follow campaign organized by the National Organization for Women that will help you send letters to the appropriate people at CBS and NBC.

Where are the high profile CBS and NBC personalities? Are they working behind the scenes to cleanse the racism from their organization? Do any of them have the guts to actually speak out about this stain on the network that feeds them? THAT probably would lead to a firing. This is America in 2007, where you can say anything you want about people younger and darker and weaker than you, but leave your bosses alone.

Where are the high profile professional athletes? How quickly would WFAN-AM in New York drop Imus if Derek Jeter and Eli Manning and David Wright refused to interact with that sports radio station until the I-man was gone? Beat Visitor is pleased to see that Cal Ripken is the first guest to cancel a scheduled Imus appearance, so maybe that wall is breaking too, but it is amazing to see, over and over again, how people get more cowardly when they have more to lose.

So, NBCBS overlords, please drop him soon, so I can get back to writing about Rutgers football before the Scarlet-White Game on April 21. If he's not gone by then, it will become the "April 21 Anti-Imus Rutgers Stadium Rally."
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UPDATE: Now CBS Radio has suspended Imus for two weeks "due to the events of the past week." (i.e., the protests, not the hateful comments about Rutgers women made on April 4). If he comes back onto CBS radio and MSNBC simulcasting in 2 weeks, it means that NBCBS is knowingly rehiring a racist, and the protest, at least on this site, will be twice as loud.