Rutgers, The State University

     I have loyalty to a number of New York-based professional teams in the four major sports. I have New York Jets season tickets--this is my 40th season. I had New York Rangers season tickets for 11 years. Additionally, I have had partial shares of New Jersey Devils tickets. My main pro team remains the New York Yankees. On a lesser scale, I watch with interest, the New York Mets. The New York Knicks and the now Brooklyn Nets only provide momentary allegiance. And the New York Giants I do not root against unless they play the Jets.

     Outside of my loyalty to my undergraduate school, Franklin and Marshall College where I played some varsity baseball and compiled football statistics in the late 1960's and early 1970's, my greatest alliance is with the teams of Rutgers University.

     Growing up across the Raritan River from Rutgers' New Brunswick campus and situated adjacent to the Piscataway fields, it was a natural for a sports geek like me to drift to Rutgers sports. That persistence remains today, over 50 years after I saw my first RU lacrosse match versus Princeton and from my first RU hoops game at the College Avenue gym in 1965. It is is intoxicating and beguiling, sometimes playing out like a Greek tragedy. A psychologist might have a field day investigating what drives me to remain a Rutgers fan.

     I have seen the aforementioned lacrosse; softball; tennis; track; wrestling; swimming; crew; field hockey and golf. There aren't too many other sports which I have not attended.

     The bigger sports are where my heart lies--football; men's basketball and baseball. Within that grouping, there is not much of a pecking order. I enjoy baseball on the spring days when I can bring my own chair and lounge outside the outfield fences and watch some quality Division I athletes, some of who will play Major League Baseball.

     Football is integral to Rutgers. The first ever intercollegiate game was between the Scarlet Knights and the Princeton Tigers in 1869, an affair won by RU. Fortunately, I attended the first game big time power Army marched in at the then Rutgers Stadium. I used to ride my bike and then scale the fences while in high school to see Colgate, Lafayette, Lehigh, Columbia play the mostly genial hosts. I knew Head Coach John Bateman through his sons who went to Highland Park High School like me. My favorite HPHS footballer, Richie Policastro played @ RU, leading them to a victory at Rutgers Stadium over Princeton on the 100th anniversary of their first game, and before a national television audience which permitted me to view the game in Lancaster, PA. Throughout the 1970's and into the 1990's, I followed RU at a distance as they morphed from a Middle Atlantic Conference University Division school into playing some of the tougher teams in the nation--Alabama under legendary Paul " Bear" Bryant, who barely won at Giants Stadium against the Knights; Tennessee; Auburn; Florida; Penn State, Texas. There was the undefeated season in 1976 and a bowl game called the Garden State Bowl in Giants Stadium  in 1979 (a loss to Arizona State).

     Rutgers went though a litany of coaches after Frank Burns had achieved a modicum of success. As the competition level ramped up, so did the losses--big losses. West Virginia, Miami, Boston College all regularly trounced RU in the Big East Conference. More competitive games ensued at times with Pitt, Virginia Tech, Temple and the University of Connecticut. Until no nonsense Greg Schiano showed up on the Banks.

     Schiano recruited and developed talent. Many players went on to play in the National Football League. At times, the RU teams under Schiano were good. Sometimes not so much. He spearheaded the stadium expansion to its 52,000 seat capacity with lights for night games on TV. And he almost won the Big East and a trip to the Orange Bowl with his 2006 team but for a drop in the end zone of a perfect pass on a cold West Virginia night.  I was there to see Notre Dame come to Piscataway--Notre Dame, college football elite!! I too was there when RU upset no. 2 Louisville on a November night when the stands emptied onto the field before a national ESPN audience. And then he left for the NFL.

     RU is now in the Big Ten Conference. Where they regularly play the likes of powerhouses Penn State, Michigan, Michigan State and Ohio State. This is not the Big East of yore. Nor the the American Athletic Conference where Rutgers resided until joining the big boys. No more U Conn, Temple, South Florida.

     While New Jersey is a fertile base for recruiting, the football talent migrates away from Piscataway. Which leaves RU at a decided disadvantage. The scores reflect the dichotomy between the haves and have nots--RU was blown out by a subpar Michigan State squad in East Lansing on Saturday. They looked horrible.

     Pundits say that RU may not be competitive until full revenues kick in from the Big Ten in 2021. Until then, the struggles will abound. The recruiting should get better. Some of the games will become more competitive. The facilities will be enhanced. And I will go to High Point Solutions Stadium when invited and dutifully watch on television, hoping for those miracles that Greg Schiano (in a twist of fate, he is currently the defensive coordinator at Ohio State replacing the former coordinator, Chris Ash, now RU's head man). Simply because it is Rutgers, my state university, and my RU ties go back to my youth.


     Such fervor is good even if the football teams have not produced as I would have liked. Except to say that I get the most crazed when it comes to RU basketball. My ardor for the Knights extends back to the old College Avenue gym where I saw them play for the first time in 1966. I grew up in the realm of Bobby Lloyd and Jim Valvano--two of the greatest guards EVER to play for RU, who along with a talented bunch took the Knights to Madison Square Garden and a third place finish in the 1968 National Invitational Tournament after a tough loss to the Walt Frazier-led and eventual champion Southern Illinois Salukis. I trekked to New york to see them play; I emulated Lloyd's free throws and Valvano's tougher than nails defense. I was smitten with Scarlet Fever.

     Success was such at Rutgers under Tom Young, with a great team led by many future NBA players ending up in the Final Four in Philadelphia. A legendary team. Rutgers maintained a fairly high level of continuity into the early 1990's when in the Atlantic 10 Conference. But who could have predicted that the 1991 NCAA-qualifying team would be the last to represent Rutgers in the tournament?

     I have had a partial subscription for Rutgers basketball for a number of years. I like the environment at the Rutgers Athletic Center. The quality of the opponents from the Big East Conference included luminaries like Syracuse, Georgetown, Louisville, St. John's, UConn to name a few. RU had marginal success with the talent they could scrape together--almost all of the five star recruits avoided the RAC as their home floor. Coaches came and went; some with a little success, others clothed in scandalous conduct. Miraculous runs in the Big East tournament and three point bombs from Quincy Douby were all RU could really muster.

     Now in the Big Ten and yet with another new coach, RU has to play a different set of national powers--Ohio State, Wisconsin, Michigan State, Purdue and Maryland for openers. With the resounding win against a rebuilding Drexel five and a coach who had great success at Stony Brook, perhaps the Scarlet Knights are perched on the precipice of becoming players in the conference, winning more regularly versus the Penn States and Nebraskas while scoring some victories over the more proficient ones.

     Rutgers has joined the prestigious Big Ten Conference for the glory that it brings athletically and academically. RU has the academic thing down pat. Now it is time for the school to measure up against its sister schools--even before full revenue-sharing kicks in.

     Such is the dream of a man in his mid-60's who has endured more than enough athletic failure rooting for his New York Jets while doggedly sticking with his hometown college who has gone from the entertaining if not successful football games of the 1960's to the major conference football and basketball of the 2010's. The alumni want wins; so do I. We wish upon wish that the new basketball coach can survive and thrive. That better days must be out there after the possibility of a winless conference schedule in 2016. I painfully watched Michigan State pile on RU on Saturday. Sunday there was hope with the win over Drexel.

     Such is the life of the Rutgers fan I have always been. I hope someone is listening to me up high--not in the upper reaches of High Point Solutions Stadium nor the 300 level of the RAC--I am more than ready in my retirement for many more enjoyable days (and nights) with my Knights. Win a championship and I might even learn the entire alma mater...