New BlogPoll, Pryor Restraint & "AC Speech," Booing, and a Bold Prediction for the Howard game!

• The updated BlogPoll (of which my contribution constitutes 0.99009% [or 1 of 101 votes] again this week) has been posted at CBSSports.com. Cincinnati is at #22 according to this sample of the college football blogiverse.


• Click Here to see the reason that teams should consider installing some content-based version of Auto-Tune for their players during post-game press conferences. In the same way that singers who wouldn't know a B flat if it bit them on their asses can sing note-perfect on their multi-platinum Disney albums with the help of software, maybe some computer algorithm prodigy could come up with the code that would change Terrelle Pryor's "Not everybody's the perfect person in the world. I mean everyone kills people, murders people, steals from you, steals from me, whatever. I think that people need a second chance, and I've always looked up to Mike Vick, and I always will." into an athletically-correct (or AC) postgame boilerplate, "We're taking this season one day at a time. As long as my teammates and I continue to give 110 percent, we'll keep on winning ball games." Note that AC speech does not require statistical correctness; as a matter of fact, a mere "100%" is always athletically incorrect when speaking of effort.


• Speaking of sticking strictly to AC speech, Brian Bennett tackled the issue of booing in Big East stadiums last weekend in his Big East Blog on ESPN.com today. He writes at one point that "In the past, I've heard from fans who said they were just booing the coaching staff, not the players. But that's like carpet bombing a city and saying you're only trying to take out one evil guy." I don't think there's any doubt that the boos I heard in my section at Rutgers Stadium last Monday were aimed squarely at the well-paid coaching staff. Certainly most of the negative comments I heard were aimed at the men in the khaki slacks and not at the student athletes. No one ever criticizes the "Jabu package" and its drive-killing timing without praising Jabu Lovelace himself. I don't think it takes an abnormal amount of critical acumen to know when it's the coaches who are being reprimanded by the fans.


• A HOWARD UNIVERSITY VICTORY IS ASSURED ON SATURDAY! I know that I've called Beat Visitor dot com a prediction-free zone in the past, but this prediction is such a no brainer that I have to make it in bold type. Howard University will obliterate Rutgers University in the Battle of the Marching Bands on Saturday. The Marching Scarlet Knights ("The Pride of New Jersey") put some dance moves into their halftime tribute to Michael Jackson on Monday, but I predict that Thriller is going to be no match whatsoever for whatever the Showtime band has in store for us. The last time the amazing Howard band was in Rutgers Stadium, we watched them stretching on the sideline for 10 minutes before taking the field. Remember to take your drink & restroom break before or after halftime on Saturday, but not during it.

The Quote of the Day about Rutgers Football and the good news from yesterday's game

"Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant." -- Horace

Imagine for a second that yesterday's game between the Scarlet Knights and the Bearcats had still been lost by Rutgers, but in an entirely different way. Imagine that the final score, rather than being 47-15, had been a more respectable 21-17 and that Dom Natale, though not playing a perfect game, had not capped his first half with a third interception. Imagine that he had played just well enough to keep himself in the game and to keep the talents of Tom Savage lying dormant on the sideline with his headphones and clipboard rather than on the field with a helmet and football. Yesterday's adversity (and in the long run a loss is a loss whether it's by four points or forty) then would not have given us a clear solution to our quarterback question. We would still be pondering the Tom Savage / Dom Natale conundrum today rather than knowing that we have our quarterback for the next four years. Next Saturday he'll have his first start, the Scarlet Knights will have their first victory, and 2009's football team will finally start to gel (just one game too late).

Beat Visitor's Week 2 BlogPoll Is Up

The week one games are finally over with Miami's defeat of Florida State in Tallahassee a few minutes ago. I had Florida State at #18 in my preseason poll, but they are now gone, and Miami has entered my poll.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Florida
2	Southern Cal
3	Texas
4	Alabama	2
5	Penn State
6	Mississippi	2
7	Oklahoma State	3
8	California	3
9	Ohio State	2
10	LSU	1
11	Boise State	6
12	Georgia Tech	3
13	Brigham Young
14	Georgia	2
15	Oklahoma	11
16	Virginia Tech	3
17	Cincinnati	6
18	Nebraska	1
19	North Carolina	2
20	TCU
21	Texas Tech	1
22	Utah	2
23	Miami (Florida)
24	Iowa	8
25	Notre Dame
Last week's ballot

Dropped Out: Oregon (#14), Florida State (#18), West Virginia (#25).

The other big movers in addition to the Sunshine State rivals are Boise State (+6 to #11) and their victim Oregon (from #14 to unranked), Brigham Young (from unranked to #13) and their victim Oklahoma (down 11 to #15), Cincinnati (+6 to #17 after embarrassing my Scarlet Knights earlier this evening), which has shown itself to be the Big East team most deserving of a place on this list, and Iowa (down 8 to #24), which is lucky not to have lost to NIU on Saturday.

It's late and I'm still shocked at the way I watched Dom Natale and the Rutgers defense fall apart today. Let me know if you feel that any of that confusion has found its way into my BlogPoll selections. I'm open to adjustments between now and time it has to be finalized on Wednesday morning. If I don't know my own team at all, what can I possibly know about any of these others?

The Quarterback Poll in the Sidebar Closed Just in Time

This sidebar poll was placed on BeatVisitor dot com for the last couple of weeks. When it first started, Dom Natale jumped out to an early 13-1 lead when the following question was asked of Beat Visitor's visitors: Who Will Be the Rutgers QB for the LAST Game of the 2009 Season?
The feeling when the question was first posted was that Tom Savage definitely wouldn't start in 2009, and he might even be redshirted this year and see his first action in 2010. As word from training camp continued to be very positive, and as D.C. Jefferson was moved from quarterback to tight end, the votes shifted quickly and when the poll closed at 4pm this afternoon --- kickoff time -- Tom Savage led the four other QBs with 53% of the votes. If the polls had been opened during or after today's game, he would have had 100% of Rutgers fans' votes. His play was the one bright spot of the day (and as I said in one of my few tweets from the Stadium, at least the weather was perfect).
Any suggestions for the next poll question?

Some Questions Settled Earlier Today. One New Question Unanswered.

A beautiful view of the expanded Rutgers Stadium on 7 September 2009
(beautiful except for the halftime score, that is)

I'm not going to write too much tonight, or put together a video before bedtime (or ever?) of today's 47-15 loss to the Cincinnati Bearcats in R House, but there were some questions settled today in Piscataway.

1. Freshman Tom Savage is the starting quarterback for the Scarlet Knights for the rest of 2009 (and he should have been the starting quarterback in the first half as well as the second today).
2. Mohamed Sanu is another true freshman who will be thrilling Rutgers fans with his receptions and runs for the next four years.
3. One Big East team deserves to be placed firmly in all the top 25 lists (hint: it's not the Scarlet Knights)

But some questions remain unanswered, chief among them being:

1. Where was the f***ing defense?

Summer's Gone and the Time is Right for Dancing on our Seats

The best day of the year. Summer officially ends. The New Yorkers with their Benzes and Beemers and Bentleys (none of whom know how to drive) will be gone from my beach town when I get home tonight, with my shredded vocal cords and bleeding ears, after watching my Scarlet Knights at Rutgers Stadium.
If I'm home in time I may post my BlogPoll contribution tonight after today's Rutgers/Cincinnati and Florida State/Miami games. If not tonight, it will go up early tomorrow morning.
I'll definitely post some photos and videos from the game later this week.
I'll also be doing a little tweeting from the game if I can get a connection, but not if it gets in the way of screaming and yelling and banging on the aluminum benches.
Have fun today, whether you're in the Stadium with the noise and the cannon smoke, or just screaming with joy in a bar or living room! It's time for me to get ready to hit Route 18.

With a day to go until football begins . . .

Some of you may not know what to do today, though you may be tempted to head to the parking lots on the north bank of the Raritan River 24 hours early with tents and grills and footballs and coolers full of adult beverages. Sorry, you have to wait a little longer, but you can click these links to more fully immerse yourself in the world of the Scarlet Knights until kickoff tomorrow at four.

• The Official Rutgers Preview and pdf Game Notes for the game
• The Official Cincinnati Bearcats Preview and Game Notes from GoBearcats.com
• Updates from Game Day at the Daily Targum
• Updates from Scarlet Scuttlebutt
• Updates from Bleed Scarlet
• Updates on Rutgers Football at NJ.com (Star-Ledger)
• Current Tweets mentioning Rutgers (if you're on Twitter, tweet it up!)
  
• Remember your cheers, rules, and wave instructions

And while we're all anxiously waiting to see whether Dom Natale, Tom Savage, or Jabu Lovelace will get that first snap tomorrow afternoon, one other Rutgers quarterback did not have to wait until Monday to get his season started, his chance to play, and to pass for 245 yards and score three touchdowns in an opening day victory. Chris Paul-Etienne, who saw a couple of years wearing scarlet, is now the starting quarterback for the University of Rhode Island. Here he is in a very short clip from the 2008 Scarlet-White game throwing a short pass to Shamar Graves:

Congratulations Chris! We'll always remember you as a Scarlet Knight, and may you lead URI to an undefeated season.

If you build it, they will come!

There will be more fans at R House on Monday than there were on 6 Nov 2006.

Again, not to beat dead horses, but it would be great to hear the lamentations and gnashing of teeth among the Stadium expansion naysayers in response to the facts that 1) the Rutgers Stadium expansion is going to be finished in time for the season opener, and now 2) the official announcement has been made that all 52,454 seats in the expanded Stadium are sold out for its christening in two days at the game between our Scarlet Knights and the Cincinnati Bearcats.
And I can't wait to celebrate by our mass cretinism by dancing the Cretin Hop! I have heard a rumor that you may be hearing it before the game starts. So get ready for your new Stadium chant:
". . . 1,2,3,4 cretins wanta hop some more . . . 4,5,6,7 all good cretins to heaven* . . ."
_______
*Heaven, a.k.a, Rutgers Stadium on a game day.

I hope for his sake that Tony Pike has eyes in the back of his head

I hope that the Cincinnati Bearcats quarterback finds himself trying to listen for footsteps over the deafening crowd noise next Monday. I hope he has this video from two years ago etched into his neurons. Joe Lefeged is bigger, stronger, faster, and more experienced as a starter than he was in this game against Syracuse when he won Big East defensive player of the week as a true freshman, and a substitute:


What more can we add, than another slightly modified quote from King Lear:

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the Lefeged
They kill us for their sport.

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

Get your own quotes:

"... I'll tickle your Bearcat ..." another slightly shaken Shakespearean quote

I'm sorry, but The Shakespeare Quote Generator is too addictive. Here's one for our friends from the University of Cincinnati.

Away, you scullion! You rampallion! You fustilarian!
I'll tickle your Bearcat!

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

Get your own quotes:

Two More Quotes of the Day for Rutgers Football

Here's a quote about Rutgers Stadium I pulled off ESPN.com from 2 October 2007, from a safety who is now playing for the Baltimore Ravens:

"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."

Despite Haruki Nakamura's impression of the 2005 game (which seemed good-natured to me), it always seemed like there was one loud end of Rutgers Stadium and one end where the opposition got a respite from the noise. That is all changed now.

Here's the companion quote of the day from Tim Pernetti in which he assured the press that the Stadium addition will be "fully operational" by next Monday's game (from Scarlet Scuttlebutt, 1 September 2009):

“And I think the folks toward the open-end of the stadium in the past may have felt a little distanced from the action, but the closed-in stadium makes everybody feel like they’re part of the action no matter where you sit.
“I think it’ll be special — anybody who’s holding a ticket right now is going to have a real special experience on opening day because it’s not often you can be part of history and something that’s new at the same time.”

It's funny that he puts it quite that way though, because I always feel (or, at least, have felt for the past four or five years) that Rutgers football is the perfect mix of a long historical tradition with something brand new. And once again, like every year at this time, I can't wait until I'm sitting on a hard aluminum bench waiting for the first kickoff of the year.

The Quote of the Day about Rutgers Football comes from The Bard (sort of)

This above all: to thine own Rutgers be true.

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

Get your own quotes: