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Message: [QUOTE="Townie72, post: 2262399, member: 780"] Ahhhh, Rutgers. It's always about "How great it's gonna be!" Or "Those were the olden days an we are going to change". Or "Now that we are in the B1G things are going to be different." Having gone to college I know that "No one wants to go there" is an ovestatement. But so, should you. And to pick at the fact that I haven't sufficiently qualified it doesn't help. We both know that the Rutgers relationship with the people of the Garden State is different from all of the other B1G schools and many other large state schools. Rutgers to New Jerseyans is not what OSU is to Ohioan or even what Illinois is to the great unwashed masses of people in The Land of Lincoln. Some of that is because of history. When it was just Rutgers College, it was tiny compared to these other state schools. We both know that the most powerful people in NJ aren't connected to Rutgers. At the Inner harbor in Baltimore once, a very smart guy asked me to turn around and look at all the big buildings. "See those buildings?" he said, "If you want to know who supports (runs?) the Maryland Athletic Department just look at the offices on the top floors of those buildings". I am an old guy. But I doubt things have changed that much. When I went to Princeton High School everyone I knew who went to Rutgers either was indifferent to what I would call "a real college experience" or it was their family could afford (Frequently it was both). They were frequently back in their home towns on weekend, not because they missed home so much, but rather there just wasn't anything to do in New Brunswick. So, for athletes, who are price-indifferent because of scholarships, RU would seem to be a strange choice. (Unless they were from Florida and they were fed a complete pack of lies about National Championships and the accessibility of New York City which none of them could afford to go to even if they had time to do it.) But instead of arguing with me, you really ought to be trying to solve the great Rutgers Riddle. I just read that Rutgers Athletics programs ranked #164 out of 165 teams in front of only Washington State. Given the size of the school and its location, it seems almost impossible that they could be so uniformly bad for so long. There have to be fundamental reasons underlying this absolutely woeful long-term performance. So instead of arguing with SU guys, who have little concern and no respect for the school, you ought to be trying to figure the answer to what the fundamental, structural problems are. And it's not a single coaching hire. And it's not a single AD. And it isn't some politician in Trenton that seems to be unsympathetic. And its not a sports columnist being negative. Even all this put together doesn't get at it. Why the fan base of the 164th worst sports program would have an opinion about any other schools athletic program is beyond surprising. Rutger's great sin in the eyes of SU fans was their attempt to suggest there was some sort of parity in our programs and histories by trying to say we were a "Rival". That's the real source of what's behind this long thread. Now, unbelievably, the RU fan base seems to have decided that Penn State is their "Rival". Talk about "over reach". Rutgers isn't going to be considered a Penn State rival because of the significant "Stature Gap" between the schools. But I ssupect that RU fans will attempt to gin up some sort of hatred by being as obnoxious as possible. Which to a New Jerseyans ought to be as easy as blocking a few traffic lanes to get the desired result. Rutgers is in the B1G because of the number of cable subscribers in NJ. And the fact that there are a lot of BIG alums in the NY Metro area. It wasn't because of the RU athletic program, it was in spite of it. [/QUOTE]

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