In an effort to familiarize the larger world with Rutgers booster culture, we will begin linking to images of typical fans. Such as:
* This guy
* Let us look at these
* And them
* Three Ring Himself in fine form.
* The First Fan.
* Not a fan but, obviously, a towering intellect and a collegiate role model.
* Another MacArthur fellow in disguise.
Booster pride of course bubbles that the Rutgers home crowd is ranked one of the five “nastiest” in the nation, per ESPN Magazine.
Maybe that ranking is richly deserved. Ask the Naval Academy.
* RU fans celebrating after a win.
Have a favorite image or video of Rutgers boosters being boosters? Send it to us and we’ll post it here.
August 14, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Honestly this is childish… what are you trying to prove here?
August 14, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Seriously? What is the point of this? Immaturity at its finest.
August 14, 2008 at 10:15 pm
I don’t think it’s a great idea to post pictures of the fans. There are boors associated with every sporting activity.
Even Schiano: the man is doing his job. We can argue about whether he is worth his salary (or, more generally, whether Rutgers ought to be paying $2M for any coach) but unless you have a specific example of bad behavior, I would suggest leaving him alone. Don’t descend to the level of those whom you criticize.
The real problem is this bunch:
http://ruweb.rutgers.edu/governance/board/bog.html
where the majority appear to have lost sight of what a university should be and where it should be directing its priorities.
August 14, 2008 at 10:39 pm
You know… I think it’s a funny post. Everybody’s telling us that football is just the best thing to happen to Rutgers ever, and all it is really is just an excuse for people to get drunk and have a party. Hey, well then why pay so much for the coach? Busch totally closes down on football days b/c of parking and stuff – but some of us would just rather have our classes. Why not just admit football’s about people getting drunk and loud instead of going on about how it brings pride to Rutgers and is so imprtant to the school and so on?
August 14, 2008 at 11:50 pm
RU1000:
Petty stuff like this justifies your opponents’ disdain for your organization. I don’t favor Big-Time athletics for Rutgers at all, but this is adolescent.
Will the time ever come that you(RU-1000) can get some actual clout in the state govt?
Can you channel most of your energies in getting influential alumni(while they’re still alive) to help overhaul BOG and BOT?
Use caution when taking this approach. It makes you look less like concerened individuals ane more like a bunch of trivial ankle-biters.
PS
Please get serious about this; our school is at stake.
August 15, 2008 at 12:29 am
I have some sympathy with your point, RC02, but the overwhelming majority of posts on this board are serious, well-researched, and in-depth. I’ve gone from posting occasional comments to writing occasional posts; if you’re this concerned, why not put these thoughts down as a guest post? The more proactive people, the better.
August 15, 2008 at 1:46 am
Duly noted, Grumpy Alum.
August 15, 2008 at 11:39 am
Navy already dropped two games with RU and now we have to tie a $3/4 million dollar dog bone around our neck to get perennial power Kent State to come in and play us. Keep pandering and condoning to thug mentality brought here from Miami.It’s what Rutgers is now what most observe Rutgers to be in all conversations;whether academically,athletically,criminally or as an institution relative to others.
August 15, 2008 at 3:28 pm
So when do Gandolfini,Codey,The Corz,the BOG’ers and friends of the Gotti insiders all get their Club Buddabing seats embossed at the ribbon cutting,while the rest of the suckers 4 ruckers have to pony up their priority points? That was all this ever was about in the end.
August 15, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Christie, you’re an idiot, no reasonable person views Rutgers as a thug program, it’s actually widely known (outside of blind Rutgers haters like yourself) to be an exceptionally clean, academically sound, thug free program. Get a freaking clue.
August 15, 2008 at 6:13 pm
If the program is clean and academically sound, why did Rutgers Magazine recently publish correspondence relating to a player given permission to remain in the football program after it was discovered that he had an SAT score of 750 and a bogus high school degree? The scam of pretending that many of the kids playing college football today are primarily interested in an education makes most programs look anything but “clean”. Ray Rice took a scholarship off a real student for three years: he certainly didn’t care enough about his Rutgers education to hang around for his degree. This is why even at Rutgers, football players are given special “athletes only” courses. In short, Rutgers is as dirty as all the rest.
August 15, 2008 at 10:02 pm
No thugs? Guess Davon Clark,Al Peterson,Anthony Miller,Justin Francis and all the others were just part of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir or the”Brunswick Blur” while at Rutgers?
Now toss in a few from wrestling and womens basketball and you have a true Hall of Fame that the F Navy crowd would be Jersey Proud of. Guns or Knives Butch,Guns or Knives? “It’s Time” should be repackaged as It’s a Crime! More in tune with went on over the last eight years.
August 16, 2008 at 3:30 am
Grumpy… what part of #3 in the nation in academic performance do you not understand?
Hasbro… you named four players out of hundreds that have gone through the program in the past eight years, congratulations. Many teams have more trouble than that in a single year.
August 16, 2008 at 7:03 pm
RU Supporter…we understand #3 in the nation in academic performance…as far as football players go. Unfortunately it’s not really a difficult peer group. When football teams have academic performances similar to the student body as a whole, and when there are no “athletes only” classes, we can have some assurances that athletes really are students too.
August 16, 2008 at 11:45 pm
So are you saying that Rice, Stanford and Navy, with whom we rank, are also giving gut courses to the players? Seriously, do you believe all football players are academically deficient? Interestingly, the football team has a higher score than, say, fencing.
August 17, 2008 at 12:37 pm
The stats below – taken from the NCAA site – give a far more meaningful picture of academic performance by RU football players. We’re even below the big east average in graduation rates. And that’s after these “students” are pushed throug dumbed-down, athletes-only courses with titles like “fundamentals of speaking and listening”.
2000-2001 – is the 6-year graduation rate for entrants in those years(reported in 2007)
4 year- is the average 6-year graduation rate for football players entering in the 4-year period 1998-2001.
GSR -is the phonied up NCAA “new paradigm”. Note that these graduation rates are almost always well in excess of the real (so-called “federal” ) rates.
2000-2001 4-year “GSR”
Rutgers 44 % 46% 55%
Fresno State 36 44 50
North Carolina 67 45 60
Navy NR NR 95
Morgan State 65 55 61
West Virginia 57 56 65
Cincinnati 85 71 67
Pittsburgh 39 48 63
Syracuse 59 64 71
South Florida 50 57 61
Army NR NR 87
Louisville 47 50 55
All Division I teams(Avg.) 55 56 67
August 17, 2008 at 12:47 pm
I might also add that if Rutgers hadn’t spent the last decade throwing its limited funds at football, we might be a little closer to Rice and Stanford in the only category that matters – the quality of education you can attain here. but because we’ve chosen a new stadium over classrooms and a $2 million coach over the 25-30 professors his obscene salary would fund, we’re heading further and further down the rankings, and with good reason.
August 17, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Another comment deleted… there’s a friggin surprise and a half.
August 18, 2008 at 5:46 am
I wish the primary author of this blog had the stones to post his or her picture. Similar to your pipe-dream wish of RU dropping out of the Big East, that will never happen.
August 18, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Come on Grumpy, you have to be smarter than that. Thoses stats are all pre-Schiano. It was not secret that Rutgers was terrible in all aspects before Schinao arrived. When, the stats come out for the Schiano years it will be much better.
August 18, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Hinson,
I’ll remain cyncial until we see definitive, documented proof that anything has changed. As I said above, a documented case of academic fraud amongst the current players, and a host of “athletes only” courses with titles like (and no, I am not making this up), “Fundamentals of Speaking and Listening” to my mind state quite clearly that the university administration recognizes that many of these football players are not at Rutgers for a quality education. In similar fashion, Michigan has been caught enrolling football players into a dumbed down, “general studies” program. This is certainly a logical consequence of the de-facto professionalization of college football, and it needs to be the subject of a substantive debate.
August 18, 2008 at 9:34 pm
I went to Rice as an undergraduate and am now studying for a Ph.D. at Rutgers. Rice does have D-1 football, at least for now, but it’s just as controversial there as it is here, if not more so. A few years ago Rice commissioned a study from the McKinsey consulting group on its sports program. McKinsey recommended dropping football based on poor performance, low student support, and the substantial subsidies it required. The board of trustees ignored the study they themselves requested, and thus we still have football (not that you’d know it by the number of students who attend games). Nobody I knew at Rice went there because of the football team, and to many of us it was an embarrasment. Everyone knew that “student-athletes”–especially the football players–weren’t real students, and we all dreaded getting one of them in our class.
Here’s the report: http://professor.rice.edu/images/professor/report.pdf
August 19, 2008 at 6:13 am
John – Thanks for the info on Rice. At least the Rice leadership had the wisdom to investigate the feasibility of getting off the Division IA merry go round. It’s also admirable that unlike Rutgers, the Rice administrators haven’t seen fit to make football their priority.
Interestingly, it seemed that instead of dropping football altogether Rice might have downsized to Div IAA or a lower classification, but the increased travel costs associated with finding comparable schools to play at that level made that option economically unacceptable. With the availability of smaller time football colleges in this part of the country, RU would have no such problems.
There was a time not too long ago when the RU community understood the negative financial and educational impact of big time football on universities as evidenced by the extensive research referenced in the Rice report. The material cited in that report should be mandatory reading for the BOG and all the boosters.