Welcome the Owls to the Beat Visitor Sidebar

I know that I've been very remiss in cleaning up my sidebar links, doing little more than relegating a multitude of West Virginia football blogs to the dustbin of Big East history last season (should I delete our friends from Syracuse now, or wait until the end of the season?).

I know there must still be links that are outdated or blogs that are moribund (but, as Beat Visitor has shown you in the past, rumors of blog death can sometimes be greatly exaggerated). I'm putting off that major overhaul, but there was one glaring omission that needed to be rectified immediately. So, as we enter Owl Week (known as #ChopTemple week on Twitter), I have added Temple Football Forever to the list of Big East links to your right (unless, of course, you're reading this on a mobile device). I've also added the Philadelphia Inquirer Temple blog.

Welcome.

The Initial BCS Standings Were Just Announced

Just announced on ESPN a few minutes ago, the undefeated Rutgers Scarlet Knights are the highest-ranked Big East team in the initial BCS rankings at number 15, higher than their AP (19) and USA Today (17) rankings announced earlier today.

Kudos for Khaseem Greene's Role in Yesterday's Syracuse Win

Here's a photo of Khaseem Greene being awarded his helmet sticker on ESPN for his 14-tackle, 1.5-sack, 3-forced fumble, and 1-interception performance yesterday in Piscataway.

In addition to the gaudy statistics of yesterday's Syracuse game, what I find most amazing about watching Khaseem Greene on the field is the strength and textbook form of his tackles. Runners do NOT move or fall forward once they are in his grasp.

In addition to his helmet sticker from Lou Holtz et al., he is also the Walter Camp Defensive Player of the Week, and there will be more well-deserved Conference honors to come.

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Update 10/15: Khaseem Greene has been named the mid-season "Defensive Player of the Year" in the Big East by CBSSports.com (with Coach honors going to Kyle Flood and "Best Game" honors going to Rutgers-Arkansas).

Another 10/15 Update: It's not a surprise, but it's now official that Khaseem Greene has also been named Defensive Player of the Week by the Big East and in ESPN.com's Big East Blog.

One More 10/15 Update: Athlon Sports has also picked Greene as Big East "Defensive Player of the Year" at the halfway point (with Coach Flood again receiving coaching honors, R.J. Dill being named "Newcomer of the Year," and Gary Nova the "Midseason Surprise").

A 10/16 Update: The weekly Chuck Bednarik Award from the Maxwell Football Club for the defensive player of the week has also been handed to Khaseem.

Another 10/16 Update: Khaseem has been named the Bronko Nagurski National Defensive Player of the Week by the Football Writers Association of America.

"Beat Visitor" was in R House today

At the 23-15 victory over Syracuse at Rutgers Stadium this afternoon, I noticed the sign in the following picture.
All I had was my iPhone camera, so you can't read the letters in the square white box above the large block R in the corner near the student section, but it reads "BEAT VISITOR":

The extra point being attempted in this photo was not successful.

It wasn't me holding up the Beat Visitor sign (though more than one person on Twitter asked if it was). If it was you, let me know in the comments below, or at @BeatVisitor.

Six and Oh feels great, as does beating Syracuse in this last of many meetings since 1914.  I had so much fun at R House this afternoon, that I'm watching the game again on SNY Encore now.

Go Knights!

"It Just Got Real..." The Scarlet Knight Life: Syracuse Week Video

What's most amazing to me about this video of the Scarlet Knight mascot in the Brower Commons enforcing his own Syracuse-week regulations -- even against Tim Pernetti -- is that the Commons looks the same here as it did in the seventies when I was eating there on a regular basis:

It's nature's way of telling you...

When I find the Scarlet and the Orange lining up against each other in my backyard, I know that it's finally really college football season!

Near Woodstock, New York, October 9, 2012

See you Saturday in Piscataway.  I just checked ScarletKnights.com and some tickets are still available to see the 5-0 Scarlet Knights take on their rivals from Syracuse.

Perfect Football Weather

The forecast for this Saturday in Piscataway is (according to Weather.com) sunny and 56 degrees with 0% chance of precipitation.  If that isn't the perfect weather to watch a football game on an October afternoon, I don't know what is.

So why are there still some tickets available at ScarletKnights.com for the game between the 5-0 Rutgers Scarlet Knights (19/20) and the Syracuse Orange?

If I can drive down early from Exit 19 on the NY Thruway and my son can come down from Exit 25 (a location more Orange than Scarlet) to root for the Knights, then no RU fan in the State of New Jersey has any excuse to not be in a seat at R House by noon on Saturday for the match between these two schools competing for Big Apple bragging rights.

(And the students should remember to set their alarm clocks to wake up before 2 in the afternoon.)

Rutgers and Kansas State in the news.

There's an article in the Washington Post this morning, "Long way from dark days, Kansas State and Rutgers surge into position for memorable seasons," about the Scarlet Knights and the Wildcats, their 4-0 starts, and their current national rankings.

The writer of the article dares to look ahead in a way that this writer dares not:

"Rutgers’ next five games line up like this: home against UConn, home against Syracuse, at Temple, home against Kent State and home against Army. It doesn’t take much of a leap of faith to project the Scarlet Knights getting to 9-0, and bringing back memories of 2006 when they went 11-2 and stunningly slipped into the national championship conversation for about a week.
"Can Rutgers and Kansas State stay undefeated heading into November? It won’t take a miracle."

When I see the names of these two schools in one sentence, I think back instead of forward. I think of my first trip to Texas with my son, my first bowl game, and the Scarlet Knights' 37-10 win in the 2006 Texas Bowl. This 46-yard TD run by Ray Rice was only one of many highlights:

Tweet Number 1766

Some people look at big round numbers as significant, but I just noticed that my latest tweet as @BeatVisitor was tweet number 1766! There's no number of any more significance for those of us who spent any time On the Banks, or for a blog and Twitter account dedicated to the team that plays in The Birthplace of College Football.

Tweet number 1766 of @BeatVisitor

If I had realized that I was up to tweet 1766, maybe I would have written it about something more uplifting that drunken Arkansas fans.

"Rutgers Drunk"

The title of this blog post doesn't refer to your intermittent correspondent's time in that noisy college town on the banks of the Raritan River when the drinking age was 18; it refers instead to a euphemism for a state of extreme intoxication referred to in an Arkansas Razorbacks' blog that I stumbled upon this morning.

The writer in Arkansas Expats talks about names for different types of inebriation and their anecdotal origins. There's "Grandma Drunk" (something about taking someone's Grandma to a sports bar) and "Kentucky Drunk" (following a 2007 Arkansas football loss to that basketball powerhouse that caused the writer's brother-in-law to go on a legendary bender), and now there's this suggestion:

"...And following the debacle I witnessed Saturday night inside Razorback Stadium, "Rutgers drunk" should be a deserving candidate as well.

"The only problem is that right now there isn't enough booze in the world to numb the anxiety, angst, or apoplectic rage that comes with a preseason Top Ten team posting a 1-3 record in its first four games, including losses to members of he Sun Belt and the Big East. Whiskey worked wonders for helping us temporarily forget watching Andre Woodson march a basketball school up and down our football field, but it falls way short of medicating properly a loss to freaking Rutgers."

Here's hoping that the liquor stores and bars in and around Storrs, Connecticut also need to do some serious restocking of their shelves on the week after Rutgers' next game on October 6.

2012 Home Opener

I'm watching my first Rutgers game of the year today (on SNY, not in Piscataway) and I'm tweeting as @BeatVisitor.

Rutgers Needs to Protest Penn State's Punishment!

Today, the NCAA did not go far enough. They vacated all of Penn States victories back to 1998, thereby leaving all of the Nittany Lions' victories over the Scarlet Knights intact, including this shameful final 1995 performance at the Meadowlands in which Joe Paterno ran up the score in the final seconds to cover the spread for his gambling buddies.
Be sure to watch the video for the pleasure of watching Saint Joe Pa get cursed out by Doug Graber at midfield, with some inappropriate language making it through the network filters.