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.

Déjà vu, or Didn't We Just Have a Team in the Top Three Playing in Rutgers Stadium on a Thursday Night?

9 November 2006. There's some FieldTurf under there somewhere.

The school whose most famous alumnus invented the Sledge-O-Matic® for squirting watermelon juice on ponchoed audience members is bringing the youngest team in college football to The Birthplace of College Football this Thursday for yet another nationally-televised ESPN game between the Knights and a team ranked in the top three.

We know that what happened against the #3 Louisville Cardinals last year is a real possibility against the #2/#3 USF Bulls this year, but it's important for those of us in the stands to do our part as well!

And speaking of déjà vu, didn't we already beat a team called the Bulls (albeit a team with more tradition and history) on a Thursday night earlier this season??

By the way, Gallagher will be unsheathing his Sledge-O-Matic® just down Route 18 from Rutgers at Monmouth University in West Long Branch on the 19th, so maybe he'll be at the game on the 18th, inspiring the Bulls and Bullfans with his antics. Of course, Gallagher graduated from USF in 1969 -- 28 years before his alma mater played its first intercollegiate football game (and 100 years after Rutgers and Princeton played the first) -- so he may not even know his old school has a team.

How many times did you hear, "He won't be able to do that in the NFL?"

He not only did it in the preseason against the Raiders, but he did it last week in a real game against the Cardinals (in which he had 102 yards rushing and 33 receiving).
I wish he were still doing it for the Scarlet Knights.

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).

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.

It's been over a year since the Knights have been unranked

Last year, on September 23rd during week 5 of the season, the 4-0 Scarlet Knights began their most recent appearance in the national polls, at 23 in both the AP and Coaches polls. They stayed in both polls from 9/23/06 until this past Sunday, 10/7/07, hitting highs of 7 in the 2006 poll and 10 in the 2007 poll. The end of this year-long streak is worth commemorating here simply because the Scarlet Knights have never had anywhere near this kind of run of national prominence in their long history.

That being said, this season isn't over. This important month isn't over. October could easily end with the Knights in a position much higher in the polls than "Other teams receiving votes".

There are three games left in October. Two of them at home against teams that are currently ranked in the top ten.

• A win against Syracuse at the Carrier Dome next Saturday probably won't get the Knights back into the top 25 unless it's another week of carnage among the ranked (but a win, of course, is absolutely necessary).
• A win against #5/5 South Florida at home on the 18th on Thursday-night TV will definitely move the Knights back into the national rankings, maybe into the teens (assuming, of course, that RU had taken care of business against the Orange 5 days earlier).
• Following up a win over USF with a win against #8/9 West Virginia on the 27th would definitely have them ranked back in the teens with a good chance of taking the Big East crown (and the conference's BCS bowl).

This season is far from over.

Go Knights!

(And since I started this entry by mentioning last season's success, I have to mention that last season's star, Brian Leonard, had 102 yards rushing on 18 carries & 33 receiving on five catches for the St. Louis Rams yesterday. If they had been winning rather than losing, maybe he would have had the opportunity to run even more at the end of the game. Go Rams! )

Ryan Hart was at the Stadium yesterday.

Unfortunately, Ryan wasn't suited up and wearing number 13 when the need came for a quarterback to throw something other than an interception during a key drive.

In regard to Friday's posting, I just want to say that no part of last night's loss to Cincinnati can be blamed on the crowd. I didn't have a decibel meter, but I can't believe that the crowd wasn't at least as loud as the crowd at the Louisville game last November. There wasn't a person there who didn't realize the importance of every game this month.

The quote of the day, and a challenge to everyone at the Stadium tomorrow night

Here's the quote from ESPN.com today:

"We went up there two years ago, and it was not a very good environment," said Bearcats senior safety Haruki Nakamura, recalling a 44-9 loss. "They're pretty brutal fans. Their student section is very proud of their program -- very loud, very hostile. I mean, it's one of those atmospheres we were yearning for at the University of Cincinnati."

A happy crowd on 15 September 2007.

"Pretty brutal." "Very proud." "Very loud." "Very hostile." Isn't this exactly the way we want every visiting player to feel about their visits to R house? Is there any reason we shouldn't cultivate the famous (or infamous) attitude demonstrated by the fans at a professional football field a little ways south of New Brunswick in Philadelphia? A lot is written in the national press about Rutgers being a satellite of New York City, but everybody who has ever gone to school on the banks of the Raritan knows that there's also a whiff of Philly cheese steak in the air in Central New Jersey. A number of us finished high school in South Jersey and rooted for the Eagles before we went to the school we sometimes called "Rutgers North" to differentiate it from its satellite campus in Camden.

The last time the Bearcats were in Rutgers Stadium in 2005, the atmosphere seemed fairly good-natured to me (& certainly not as brutal, loud, and hostile as it can sometimes become). It wasn't quite sold out. And there was only one student section in one corner of the Stadium. Now it's always sold out. And there is a second student bleacher section behind the goal line at what was the "open" end of the field until last November.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. And Go Knights!

Neither a Bear nor a Cat, or A few facts about this Saturday's opponent

A Bearcat, also known as a Binturong (Arctictis binturong) from the order Carnivora and family Viverrida, is neither (as we said in the title) a bear nor a cat. There are no viverrids living in the Americas, but they resemble wolverines and badgers (although no bearcats are playing in the Big Ten).

Two fun facts from the Binghamton Zoo website: "... scent glands are located in such a position that as the animal moves through the trees, the gland drags on branches, leaving a trail of scent behind (the odor is said to be similar to that of popcorn). " & "Females' genitals are similar in appearance to the males."

Why did the University of Cincinnati pick this Asian racoon as its mascot? Was every other carnivore taken? (Actually, there's a good reason involving a player named Leonard "Teddy" Baehr in the UC Traditions section of this page from Buckeyeplanet.com where it is also pointed out the University of Cincinnati has the fifth oldest football program in the top division of college football, after only Rutgers, Michigan, Navy, and Minnesota).

The most important streak coming into tomorrow night's game is the Bearcats' eight-game winning streak, which began at Nippert Stadium last November 18 when they beat our 9-0 Knights by a score of 30-11. That game, not the close overtime loss to West Virginia on December 2, was the game that lost the Big East title for Rutgers in 2006. Who's the newly-ranked overconfident undefeated visitor this year?

If the Scarlet Knights aren't ready for the Bearcats tomorrow, then they'll never be ready for anybody in 2007. They certainly won't be ready for the next two ranked visitors coming to Piscataway in October.

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.

Some comic relief from a Syracuse blog

Check out the illustrated minutes of the latest secret Octonion meeting posted at "Troy Nunes is an Absolute Magician", in which a mascot in scarlet armor provides the hearty liquid refeshments for a thirsty mascot in a coonskin cap.

October 2007 could be THE most important month in the Scarlet Knights' long history

With four conference games in October, three of them at home against the other three ranked teams in the conference (and the fourth game, the first road game of the year, against an Orange team that rose to the occasion against Louisville two weeks ago), this is the month that will determine the Knights' placement in the Big East and in the national polls. Four wins in October will almost guarantee at least a share of the Big East title and a return to the top ten. It will prove to the football world (for at least four weeks) that last Saturday's loss to Maryland was a fluke and not a confirmation that Rutgers belongs in the middle to lower tiers of D1 football and that 2006 was an aberration that needs correction.

• A win against #20/24 Cincinnati next week would move the Knights back up into the teens.


• A win against Syracuse on the 13th probably wouldn't do anything positive to their standing (but a loss to Syracuse would knock them out of the top 25).


• A win against #6/9 South Florida at home on the 18th on Thursday-night TV would move the Knights back up into the top ten.


• A win against #13/12 West Virginia would put them into all the BCS bowl discussions and solidify their place in the middle of the top ten.


• Losing any of these games would probably drop them out of the top 25. Losing any two of them would drop them out of the top 25 for the season.

I don't want to put too much pressure on the Scarlet Knights, but, considering the stakes, can you think of a month in this team's long history that has been more pivotal?