Quote:
Originally Posted by miked
I think you underestimate just how bad they were. I mean, we're talking losses to 1AA teams, just overall embarrassment. I mean when I was there, we'd show up drunk in the 2nd quarter and leave by halftime. You could sit so close you could have conversations with the players (I remember an exchange we had with Warren Sapp). You go to games today, it's wall to wall people tailgating, piling in to see kickoff, and for the most part staying around. Ray Rice was 20 stories high in Times Square. They just had Britt go in the first, 6 players taken in the draft, and have 1 sure fire (though his combines sucked balls) and 1 possible other 1st round pick.
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I remember them as being horrible in the late 90s but just kind of bad in the early 90s.
But assuming your point, if the Rutgers football program was an embarassment until the last 4 years, is that really a great risk for the Big 10? I mean, they'd really stand out in that conference if it didn't work out.
And while people tailgating, staying around, having players taken in the draft, ect, is progress - it's only progress to the level that almost every other 1-A football program, particularly the other Big 10 candidates, have reached decades ago. And those schools have the history where that support is there, even when the team is bad. Will that be true with Rutgers? We have no idea.
NYC is like Boston, they're pro towns, who will get mildly interested in college sports when the teams are good. UMass was all over the Boston media when they were good, but now, it's like they don't exist. Even Boston College is pretty irrelevant in the local sports landscape when they're not a serious contender. (and I really think the upgrade to the ACC, while good for them financially, hurt their local popularity, since there's no connection to those ACC schools). NYC is a basketball town, but even St. Johns isn't that big a deal except when they're a championship contender, which hasn't been the case in two decades.
Maybe it would work out. There's obviously other, behind-the-scene considerations as well.