Looking at our Alma Mater through fresh (Fresno) eyes

Click here if you want to read a fresh appreciation of Rutgers and the State of New Jersey from Matt James of the Fresno Bee. Here's a representative quote:

"The first thing you notice about the Rutgers campus is that it's roughly the size of Greenland.
The name sounds like a small private college with a dozen ivy-covered buildings and tasteful school uniforms, but that would be far from the actual situation.
Rutgers has an ecological preserve in the middle of campus where they could have filmed "Last of the Mohicans." You could head to Accounting 208 and not be seen for a month. The preserve, alone, could hold the entire Fresno State campus.
Rutgers has a bus system that has at least 10 different lines. The city of Clovis has only five.
[...]New Jersey really is the Garden State. Could have sworn that was an ironic state nickname, you know, like calling Hawaii the Glacier State.
It really is beautiful, trees as thick as an opening-week frat party. The river that carves through campus is called the Raritan, which leads to the Rutgers alma mater: "On the Banks of the Old Raritan.""

When I've had relatives visit from Southern California and Nevada, they've always been amazed by this green state of ours, especially driving down the Parkway south of the Raritan. Let's hope the Bulldog players are still a little bit amazed and disoriented by the size and beauty of our school at 4pm tomorrow afternoon.

Get your game notes for TOMORROW'S opener by clicking here. You can also download the The Greg Schiano Radio Show or Inside Rutgers Football for your computer or iPod by clicking here.

Click on the following links to get interesting position-by-position comparisons of the Bulldogs and the Scarlet Knights on Fresno State's Bark Board for the QB, the RB/WR, and the OL/TE positions.

But tomorrow all the reading and anticipation will come to an end. I can't wait to see you there. Coat your vocal cords with a little bit of honey so that you can scream as loudly as possible! Let them be as impressed by our volume and spirit as they are by the beauty and size of our campus.

Book Your Air Travel Now, because if Sports Illustrated says it, it must be so!

According to the SI Bowl Projections posted yesterday, we will need to be in St. Petersburg, Florida to face the University of Central Florida Golden Knights on December 20th. Because it will be almost a home game for the gilded ones, we'll need to get a large and noisy contingent in Scarlet heading south (where we can also visit all those expatriate New Jersey parents and grandparents).

Even though this news comes from that most reputable of sports and swimsuit authorities, maybe you shouldn't start pricing and reserving Christmas-week flights from Newark, Philadelphia, JFK, and Atlantic City just yet. After all, their College Football Preview prediction from last August didn't quite come to fruition. Who needed a trip to Pasadena when we could go to Toronto anyway?

[FIVE DAYS, FIVE HOURS, ONE MINUTE & 29 SECONDS TO KICKOFF!!]

re: Ray Rice's professional progress

From page three of Don Banks' "Inside the NFL" at SI.com dated this morning:

"The more I see of Baltimore rookie running back Ray Rice, and the more Willis McGahee continues to have health-related question marks surrounding his surgically repaired left knee, the more I'd be inclined to snap up Rice if I were one of those Fantasy Football playing types (which I'm not).

"Ravens rookie head coach John Harbaugh loves the kid, but for now has to stick with the company line that McGahee is his starter. But no matter what the semantics, Baltimore is going to use the rookie from Rutgers early and often. And the onus is on McGahee to re-prove that he can be counted on to get on the field and produce.

"Rice touched the ball 11 times at home against the Vikings on Saturday and produced 94 yards, including a 42-yard burst the first time his number was called before the hometown fans. But that was only the start of the love affair. It's going to get better, Baltimore."

Baltimore may learn to love Ray as much as they love Michael Phelps (and as much as Ray is loved in New Brunswick, New Jersey).

S.N.O.R.T., or the Block R of Rutgers joins "the elite of the elite"

Rocky Top Talk today lists "The 29 Most Boring Football Logos" and the Block R of Rutgers takes pride of place in the first five that are mentioned.

"Madonna, Prince, Sting, Bono. Bozo. Only the most notorious are known by a single name. The elite of the elite, though, are known by the most extreme of abbreviations: a single letter. [...] Rutgers is sort of crashing the party. Fortunately for them, though, Rhode Island is the only state that begins with the letter 'R,' and it's common knowledge that it lacks the acreage for a standard football field, so while the red block 'R' may induce blank stares in college football fans, at least they won’t confuse it with another team."

Which is what we've said all along, the Scarlet Knights have never had a more distinctive, simple, and memorable (if maybe a little boring) helmet identifier. And it is the logo that will be identified with their rise into the higher competitive tiers of the college football universe.

Our first opponents, the Fresno State Bulldogs, were mentioned in yesterday's "LOL, Your Logo is SOOO Scary" for their muscled cartoon canine that is quite a bit less simple:

"Popeye’s dog had some potential as well, but the execution . . . oy. I think it’s the sweatshirt with the block 'F' on it. It does not stand for 'fear.' "

At least the Fresno State Bulldog is scarier than the panting fuzzy white sled dog of UConn.

Knights, Utes and Tide as the sleepers of 2008? Go Red Teams!

Click here to see what Stewart Mandel has to say in his most recent Mailbag on SI.com about the 3 teams with the best chance of going from unranked in the preseason to ranked in the top 15 at the end of the 2008 season (remind any Scarlet Knights fans of 2006?) and the 3 teams with the best chance of starting in the top 15 and ending the season unranked (a feeling that should be familiar to 2007 fans of the Louisville Cardinals).
For those who don't like to click, the potential sleepers are 1) Rutgers, 2) Utah, and 3) Alabama.
The sinkers are 1) West Virginia, 2) Texas Tech, and 3) Wisconsin.
I hope that Stewart's Mailbag is made of material that's strong enough to handle the weight of mail that it's going to be receiving from Mountaineer country this week (and for the rest of the season).

Visitor Number One is Generating High Hopes on the West Coast

This article in yesterday's Merced Sun-Star asks, "Is Fresno State football BCS bound?" in its title and states "Six months from now, when the college football season is nearing an end, Fresno State could find itself playing for a national championship," in its lead sentence.

Is this attitude of our WAC opponents a confidence that will lead them to victory over our Scarlet Knights? Or is it a hubris presaging defeat?

It seems clear now (despite the current hometown responses to the sidebar poll) that a consensus is developing, and that only one of the two teams meeting on Labor Day in Piscataway will be ranked in the AP's preseason top 25. It won't be the Scarlet Knights. It's interesting to see that some fans of the Bulldogs are already riding their expected toehold in the bottom of the rankings to a trip to the absolute top. It's funny, but some of us wearing Scarlet can well remember that feeling about a team that entered the fall of 2007 with a preseason ranking of 16 and climbed as high as 10. I like Rutgers' chances more this year if they have to play their way into the rankings with convincing wins against Fresno State and North Carolina on September 1st and 11th. That will be a much better start than last year's coasting through Buffalo and Norfolk State that did nothing at all to prepare the Knights for the real competition of the Big East (and Maryland).

With Only 52 Days Until Life Begins Again at R House, use this tool to spread the news

Get this widget!

If you want to place this on your own page to spread the good news around the "internets", just click here to get the code. I'll try to create countdown clocks for all of this season's games.

OK. We're all Manchester United fans now (and not just because they're another red team)

There are photos of football (the kind that doesn't have helmets) superstar Wayne Rooney all over the internet wearing not one, but two, different Block R Rutgers caps.

Check it out here, here, and here.

And check out these Manchester United song and chant lyrics here. Here's a sample:

"If you want to go to heaven when you die; you must keep the Red Flag flying high; Get yourself a red bonnet; and put 'F*** the Scousers' on it; If you want to go to heaven when you die"

Or, in place of "F*** the Scousers", you can just put a Block R on your red bonnet.

Rutgers Enters the Top Ten (for its 2009 recruiting class)

Click here to read about how Rutgers' nineteen verbal commitments have earned them a number nine ranking from Tom Luginbill on ESPN.com today. The others on the list are Texas, USC, Ohio State, LSU, Georgia, Clemson, Oklahoma, Florida State, and Tennessee, which certainly sounds more like a list of the usual suspects.

"It is amazing what winning and national television exposure can do for a program and now all the fruits of Rutgers' labor are starting to pay dividends as it enters into our top 10 for the first time ever. Its class is extremely strong on defense with speed and playmakers, and the most important piece of the puzzle might be its quarterback of the future Tom Savage (Philadelphia/Cardinal O'Hara)."

Vote for the "Face of Rutgers Football" at ESPN.com

ESPN has chosen the "1869 Photo[sic]" of the Rutgers-Princeton game as "ESPN.com's Face" of the Rutgers football program. You can help choose "SportsNation's Pick" for that honor by clicking here. You can choose the "photo" or Ray Rice or Greg Schiano or Brian Leonard. What, no Paul Robeson? No representation at all from the 20th Century??
There were no cameras that could freeze sports action in 1869 of course, so "the photo" is actually a cropped and decolorized reproduction of the Arnold Friberg painting that was commissioned by Chevrolet for the 100th anniversary of the game in 1969. You can see it, and a little bit of its history, here and here.
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[ESPN's inexact use of the written language continues on their Rutgers Team Page, where their ad for the ESPN Shop still (after at least a month) shouts: "RUTIGERS FANS, GEAR UP NOW!".
They also have a problem with their possessive case on the Comments page with the heading "Rutger's Face of the Program"; Rutger Who? Rutger Hauer?]

Another Day, Another List of 2009 Recruits : Welcome Duron, Robert, and Malcolm!

And again, another Scout.com four-star player (a fifth, if you're counting) has decided that Rutgers Stadium is the place to play his college games. Click here for more details from The Star-Ledger's website about today's newest list of verbal commitments for 2009, especially about the one received from Duron Harmon.

Harmon, a 6-2, 192-pounder from Wyoming, Del., has been timed in 4.52 for the 40. He is a two-way star at Caesar Rodney High School, rushing for 701 yards and 12 touchdowns as a running back while playing safety on defense.
Iowa, Maryland, Pittsburgh, Stanford, Temple, Connecticut and Virginia were on Harmon's list of potential college choices before he declared for Rutgers.

Welcome to Rutgers Duron Harmon, Robert Joseph, and Malcolm Bush!

A Fourth Four-Star Recruit for RU's 2009 Class: Welcome Aaron Hayward

Click to read "Rutgers Lands South Jersey Star" from today's New York Post about the verbal commitment of rising senior Aaron Hayward of Penns Grove High School.

The Carneys Point native was tabbed the country's 15th-ranked running back by scout.com, rushing for 1,363 yards and 17 touchdowns as a junior. But he could well end up as a wide receiver, or even in the secondary, after he had 48 tackles, three interceptions and forced two fumbles last season.

Four of RU's 12 verbals for the fall of '09 are now from four-star-rated players. Aaron joins future classmates quarterback Tom Savage , running back Desmond Scott, and center Mark Brazinski, in adding stars to the strong foundation built by Greg Schiano and the current Scarlet Knights.

Welcome to Rutgers Aaron!!