Another Departure from Rutgers Stadium: Good Luck Tero!

I never actually knew that the horse below the Scarlet Knight had a name, but before the fourth quarter today, they announced that Lord Espartero IV ("Tero") was retiring after more than ten years. He received a wreath and a great hand from the crowd.
To return to the point of the last post, Tero has been around long enough to remember seven straight losing seasons before the 2005 turnaround. If he has to leave, it's nice to see him leaving as a winner.

The Scarlet Knights have their third winning season in a row

The seniors line up for the opening coin toss earlier today.

With the 20-16 win against the Pittsburgh Panthers at the Stadium today, the Knights are now assured of their third winning season in a row, ending this season (counting the inevitable bowl appearance) somewhere between 7-6 and 9-4. Those young men standing together and watching the coin toss in the picture up above are the only current Scarlet Knights who can remember what it was like to end the season with a losing record. They are the only current Scarlet Knights who can remember what it was like to know that there would be no games played after the last regular season game. The only current Knights who remember how much worse a 4-7 record feels than a 7-4 record.

I mention this because I have heard from a number of people in the New York area (including some who were behind me in the stands today) who are disappointed in this year's version of the Knights. If they had any sense of history, they would realize how important it is that the Knights have just beaten the Panthers for the third time in a row -- this is a team that owned a 19-3 record against the Knights when these seniors were freshmen. These seniors helped double the number of wins the Knights hold in this long series in just three years. There are now high-school football recruits who think of Rutgers as a dominant team in the Big East, but there was a time not too long ago when no one would think to seriously mention the name of Rutgers in comparison to Pitt and Syracuse.

The Knights deserve praise for this turnaround. These seniors were a big part of it, and they'll be missed.

Saturday is Senior Day at Rutgers Stadium, but will a certain Junior be playing his last home game as well?

Ray Rice vs. Norfolk State, 15 Sept. 2007 (click to enlarge)

Tara Sullivan entitles her column in The Record today "RU's Rice Should Go to NFL."

. . . Rice owes Rutgers nothing. He's not going to get any bigger or faster by playing one more season, but he surely will get a lot more tackled. And with one recent NFL Players Association report putting the average career of an NFL running back at 2.3 years (the lowest among all position groups and well below the 3.2 overall average), why wouldn't Rice want to start out as fresh and healthy as possible?
As one NFL executive put it recently, "Rice should go before Schiano gets him killed."

All that being said, and knowing that I would have personally had a great deal of trouble delaying a multi-million-dollar payday to spend another year On The Banks, I'd love to see Ray Rice follow Brian Leonard's example and come back to Rutgers for his senior season. He could be in the first class to go to four straight bowl games, he could raise the sword to direct the band in the Alma Mater on his Senior Day like Brian did last November versus Syracuse, and he could take another run at the Heisman trophy and the few remaining all-time Big East rushing records. But if he doesn't ... if he does do the logical thing for a talented man of limited financial means and start his professional career a year early, we can't blame him. We met a man from New Rochelle at last Friday's Army game who was sure that Ray will begin earning a big paycheck as soon as possible just because of the neighborhood he's from (and from which he wants to help his family escape). In any decision Ray makes, he is balancing noble motives against noble motives.

Whether he comes back for the 2008 season at Rutgers Stadium or not, we should cheer heartily every time number 27 touches the ball on Saturday against Pittsburgh. Cheer as if it may be the last time that we're privileged to see the sight on Rutgers' home field.

All that being said, Don't Go Ray.

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VOTE FOR RAY FOR THE DOAK WALKER BY CLICKING HERE.

Vote for Ray for the Heisman Here.

Rutgers vs. Pittsburgh (the 2005 version) was a turning point

Click Here for a great recap by Aditi Kinkhabwala of the last meeting between the Panthers and the Scarlet Knights at R House on Friday, September 30, 2005.

The win marked the first time Rutgers (3-1, 1-0) won its league opener in 11 years. It was the first time the Scarlet Knights took out Pitt (1-4, 0-1) in seven years, the first time they've won three games in a row in 13 years and the first time they refused to allow the old trappings of Rutgers football to wholly trap them.

For those of us who were there that night, it certainly seemed, along with the Michigan State game the year before, like a turning point for our Knights. And as with the Michigan State game the year before, we saw the lucky banner unfurled in the stands:

The biggest fan-made sign across from Pitt's bench read "Beat Visitor" . . .

Her article also reminds us how many young players who are still on the team made important contributions in that pivotal victory. Tiquan Underwood played quarterback for a number of snaps, switching places with Ryan Hart at the last minute (Ryan took Tiquan's place at wide receiver) and running a Jabu Lovelace-type shotgun offense that caught the Pitt defense (and many of us in the stands) totally off guard. Glen Lee made a memorable fumble-inducing hit on an early kickoff. Jeremy Ito kicked three field goals. "Mike Teel of Oakland" moved the team from the RU 9 to the Pitt 46 on one series. And, it isn't mentioned in her article but a kid named Ray Rice carried 15 times for 114 yards, his first hundred-yard game of many.

Today's Brain Teaser

Complete This Sequence:

W - W - W - L - L - W - W - L - L - W - ?? - ??

This Saturday is the last chance in 2007 to Beat a Visitor at Rutgers Stadium

Of course, when we say "beat a visitor" we are referring to the metaphorical beating that takes place on the scoreboard.

I found a great story about our wonderful neighbors down the Pike in Philly who take the phrase a tad more literally.

This is from an undated interview from The Pittsburgh Standard between Ramesh C. Reddy and the person in the Pitt Panther costume (shhh, don't tell your kids the Panther's not a real wild predatory feline!!):

Ramesh: Cool! What has been a memory you would like to forget as a Pitt Panther?
Panther: Memory I would like to forget? (Hmm) Every year I go to Temple and I always go up into the crowd because I am from Lancaster and have a lot of family and friends that go to that game. The crowd there is really intense; they are mean people, really mean to the mascot. I went up in the stands to see some family and would go around and make my rounds. There must have been a group of 12 kids that just beat me up.
Ramesh: Awe
Panther: Yeah, I guess that would be probably the memory I would like to forget. This year was not that bad but the year before I got beat up pretty bad.
Ramesh: Awe man! Did your uniform come off?
Panther: Yeah, my head blew off
Ramesh: Awe, that is not good!
Panther: I guess Temple would be the only time it happened. I just lay down and took it.
Ramesh: Awe
Panther: I covered my face and curled up. That’s about all I could do.
Ramesh: Did anyone come and rescue you?
Panther: Eventually! It took time but eventually some Pitt fans saw what was happening, ran down and helped me out.

I think I can speak for my fellow fans at Rutgers Stadium when I pledge that we will keep our hands off the person wearing the plush feline head this weekend. The people wearing gold helmets, however, are on their own.

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.

It's Anniversary Week at Rutgers

1766 - - This Saturday, November 10th, will mark the 241st anniversary of William Franklin's granting a charter for Queen's College, named in honor of Charlotte, George III's Queen Consort (who also gave her name to Charlottesville, Virginia, and Charlotte, North Carolina). William Franklin was not only the Provincial Governor of New Jersey, but also the illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin. The name change honoring Henry Rutgers came in 1825.

1869-- Yesterday, November 6th, marked the 138th anniversary of the first intercollegiate football game held on the College Avenue campus in New Brunswick. There will be thousands and thousands of college football victories in the years to come, but only one school - - our school -- can lay claim to the first intercollegiate football victory. The fact that it came over those snobs down the road in Princeton (yes, they were snooty even then), makes this date even sweeter.

2006-- This Friday, November 9th, marks the first anniversary of the football team's explosion onto the national stage with the emotional come-from-behind Thursday night defeat of #3 Louisville at Rutgers Stadium. Let's all celebrate this year up at West Point.

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)

With Three Minutes Left, I'm Glad I Can't See it on TV

Mike Teel has just thrown his traditional game- ending interception with 3 minutes left according to the internet gamecasts I have on my screen, so we'll be lucky if it's "only" a 38-19 loss tonight.

I don't know what to say, maybe the Huskies really are a good team, having beaten Louisville, USF, and the Knights in successive weeks. If they do represent the Big East in a BCS bowl, I hope they do us proud (so why do I have this sneaky feeling that they're going to lose to Syracuse on November 17).

It's official, the game's over with no change in score. Teel ended up passing for 343 yards, but the important stat is the Zero TDs/One Pick statistic. The team seemed to be moving the bars on the GameCast and the GameTracker well until they got within striking distance of an end zone.

At The Half in Storrs

At the Half, all I have is stats

Passing Yards
RU 179 UConn 77
Rushing Yards
RU 128 UConn 73
Total Yards
RU 307 UConn 150
Time of Possession
RU 20:41 UConn 9:19
Score
UConn 25 RU 16

Those 9 points scored by UConn on Special Teams, 2 on a blocked punt safety on the first possession of the game, and 7 on a kickoff return, are the difference as halftime comes to an end.
It looks like the Knights just have to move the ball like they moved it in the first half (though they need to stop settling for field goals once they drive into the red zone).

Reason #16 for the Knights to Beat the Huskies Tonight

REASON #16: They are in our spot!
The Scarlet Knights started the year at number 16 in both the AP poll of August 18 and the the Coaches Poll of August 3. They also spent a week at 15, 13, 11, 10, 21, and 25 this fall, but now some usurping puppies from Storrs, Connecticut, have come from nowhere to take our number 16 in week 10 of the AP poll (and 20 in the Coaches, and 13 in the BCS[!]), so we're coming up there tonight to take it back.

REASON #15: The man in green to your left.
I have a feeling that if Mike Teel gets into any trouble with overthrowing the ball tonight up in the Nutmeg State, then this might be the night that the football world (or at least that miniscule part of it that receives ESPNU) will get its first real glimpse of Jabu Lovelace in something more extended than a one- or two-play appearance or in a mopping up role in a blowout (though that would be nice too). I still can't help thinking that, given the chance, the backfield of Lovelace and Rice could look very similar to the backfield of White and Slaton.

As annoying as it is to see the Huskies leaping up the rankings and holding tenaciously to the Big East lead as we enter November, it is great to see the Scarlet Knights in the thick of the national football picture, with a chance to play a nationally-ranked team for the third week in a row. If our team can end this stretch winning two of those three games (and then keep it up against Army, Pittsburgh, and Louisville), we'll be playing someone more impressive than Kansas State at a location more impressive than the Texas Bowl at the end of the year.