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Message: [QUOTE="Jerseynole8, post: 1831662, member: 5898"] When I said "it's not as bad as it used to be" I'm speaking in terms of Rutgers being a "suitcase college" not about how nice/dumpy the city of New Brunswick is. Why has even being average been such a struggle? Up until the entrance into the Big Ten there were faculty, major donors/boosters and others who longed for the days of Rutgers being a 1-AA playing Lehigh, Princeton and Lafayette. When you don't have alignment within the university in how you are going to approach/invest in athletics, how can you expect to have sustained success in that arena? Because of this division, RU did not start seriously investing in athletics like a P5 school until the new millennium. Since then, I'd say football has been average. Nothing special, but nothing like the Terry Shea days which sadly I saw first hand as a student and which RU football also seems to be perceived by historically. Basketball was respectable but unremarkable during my years on The Banks, kind of how the football program is now. I personally don't care about basketball (despite having been a very good HS player myself) but I agree it's really hard to be this bad in basketball. It's easy to suck in football...a lot goes into a program becoming and staying competitive at the D1 level. But being this kind of embarrassment in hoops, especially at an eastern school who has a Final Four appearance in it's history, is mind boggling. I think in addition to lack of alignment, Rutgers has suffered from poor leadership. Bob Mulchahy had the political ties but no previous experience working in a university or an athletic department. Pernetti as AD was a complete joke. Hermann was qualified and would probably do fine taking over at a rural school that already has a strong athletic department in place but she was not for RU and this media market. Hobbs did OK with SHU basketball even as an interim AD at a small private school so I will give him the benefit of the doubt on the Pikiell hire. He definitely has the political ties within the state in addition to experience being an administrator in higher education and he also has the B1G as his platform so I'm interested to see what impact he will make. You can say "Rutgers will never be even a Michigan State", that's your opinion and I respect it. I also heard 16 years ago from naysayers that RU will never be competitive in football or put a lot of notable players into the NFL but they were proven wrong. I also heard that the Big Ten would "never invite Rutgers" in the first place and again, those people were proven wrong. I know the mindset of the NJ private/parochial/elite types very well and I understand why they are tired of reading/hearing about Rutgers athletics. And I know first hand how RU is perceived down at Florida State, LSU, etc. But "never" is a very, very long time. [/QUOTE]

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