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VERY REVEALING and positive article about Rutgers (while actually being about Notre Dame)

MikeRU1766

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Mar 7, 2015
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So the article is about Notre Dame and how the head coach has come out and explained that the entire team beside 2 kids are always at-risk academically. Here is the link to the article.... http://www.foxsports.com/college-fo...all-of-my-football-players-are-at-risk-061115

This article highlights exactly why players/recruits/parents/coaches/guardians/etc. MUST, MUST, MUST strongly factor in a teams past performance pertaining to its players success in the classroom. (Which happens to be one of Rutgers greatest strengths!!! I have been preaching about this success to everyone in person and on this message board and yet people didn't seem to care much if at all despite how critically important it is to our teams success and also to our overall university "karma" and "goodwill." Rutgers is doing right by its players/families by committing the effort and resources to make sure its athletes do well in the classroom. This makes sure that those players who don't play football professionally will STILL succeed in the corporate world. The University and Flood are proving to the world and the recruits just the kind of place Rutgers is and the type of people we are here. Also, the CONTINUED success with athletes in the classroom at Rutgers proves that there is a STRONG SYSTEM / PROCESS in place to help them thrive and that a new recruit will be able to plug into that system just as the previous players have done and do well.

Classroom success leads to better play on the field as well because the players can focus solely on the practice/game and NOT on which government would benefit the lower class citizens of the Roman Empire the most.

Oh and for the record, according to the Center for World University Rankings, Rutgers is the 33rd ranked institution to attend/graduate from while Notre Dame is also ranked a very respectable 64th in the world. So obviously Rutgers is doing an excellent job making sure players of ALL education levels and ability are still able to perform at a high level because of the INCREDIBLE support system we have in place.

A personal story I can give is I remember when Anthony Davis was attending Rutgers and I saw he was in one of my classes along with my buddy who was on the lacrosse team. I was very surprised because this course was a prerequisite for the Business School (back when you couldn't get accepted straight out of HS) so this course was by no means an "easy" class. So I asked my lacrosse buddy how he and Anthony Davis were going to be able to pull of this class. And he gave me the ENTIRE RUN DOWN on the incredible academic support system that Rutgers surrounds its athletes with. The whole run down is way too long for this already too long post, but the general gist of what he said was that the support staff took a BIG PICTURE approach and ALSO dealt with the small stuff.

For example, one of the most important things that the athletes designated support person does is help them design their schedule to accommodate their sports schedules. This is key because an optimally designed class schedule can make a semester full of "hard" classes and make it feel easy. There are like 10 other things the support staff do as well to make sure all the athletes succeed, but I will save those for a different post/thread to minimize the length of this post.

So the point is clear. Rutgers has a SIGNIFICANT ADVANTAGE over all other universities and teams because we were one of the first to recognize the importance of investing time, money, and effort into the athlete's academic support staff. Something like this is not cheap and cannot just be created overnight which is why despite being one of the top universities in the world, we are still graduating our athletes and football players at one of the highest rates in the country while other schools are consistently struggling with its football players academics and leaving its players high and dry because they aren't graduating and therefore were essentially just playing football for free for the university.

Flood and the coaches should be SCREAMING this from the rooftop that if you come to Rutgers and you are ready to work...... then you basically have guaranteed yourself that you will either end up in the NFL or you will end up with a diploma and the accompanying success in the corporate/business world that a Rutgers diploma brings!
 
Mike, I agree with everything you have written.

There is just one edit that needs to be made. Flood and the coaches have been screaming this reality to recruits and their families. The people who need to be understanding this reality and supporting it are the alumni who value any and all of our programs, both athletic and academic. The type of support you describe is not "only" available for student athletes ( http://www.scarletknights.com/academics/ ). It is also available for the everyday student as well through the campus-based Learning Centers ( https://rlc.rutgers.edu ), the Learning Communities ( https://rulc.rutgers.edu ), and Universitywide Academic Affairs ( https://undergraduate.rutgers.edu/for-students/student-resources/campus-deans ) as well.

It is these services that are available to everyone enrolled at the University that are to be touted by our fans, alumni, donors, and Friends to prospective athletes as well as the everyday kid who just wants to get a degree. Why? Because that "kid" who has no interest in sports is still a peer of the 5* recruit when they are sitting in high school courses. That family of the kids who have been accepted to RU for Engineering or History are still going to be in touch with their neighbors whose kid is pondering offers from 50+ schools at which to play a sport.

For all the marketing and schmoozing that goes on between coaches and prospective signees, it is essential for alumni and interested parties to get this information out into the public domain so it becomes common knowledge that everyone in State is aware of and - more importantly - proud of because of the quality alumni that graduate and pursue careers in every field.
 
Thank you "mkollar" for directing my attention to an incredibly significant portion of my original post. You are 100% correct that Rutgers has a great academic support staff available to ALL students, not just student athletes (granted the athletic academic support staff deal with a lesser amount of pupils than say a general academic support staff, but that should be no surprise.)

I personally was able to schedule time with a dean and sit down in his office for 20 minutes as a Soph and plan out my schedule as best as we could since you never know how the class registration will turn out because it is first come first serve online so sometimes you get all the classes and the times you wants and sometimes you have to compromise and take your class at a less-optimal time to you. But anyway thanks to the Dean's help I was able to make one of my most difficult semesters much more manageable. And this is also what happens with the athletes from what I hear as well.

So yeah "mkollar" makes an important point that Rutgers is the type of university that has the perfect mix of forcing you to grow up and take responsibility for your own actions while at the same time also having enough support for you so that if you need it... there is backup to help support you in case you are not 100% capable yet of handling the full responsibility load that college puts on your shoulders.

This is probably why Rutgers grads are becoming more and more known for being excellent and hungry employees/business owners because our school toughened us up and made us MUCH more responsible and self motivated people than when we walked in the door as high school grads.

Also, apparently the NFL is taking notice too of Rutgers grads and how they graduate hungry, prepared, and ready to work hard and succeed Rutgers players are as well.
 
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This is an excellent thread. I think the key to the success at Rutgers is that the academic support staff report up to the academic chancellor, not to the athletic department.

Our academic support people are top notch AND they are incentivized solely with the students' academic success.
 
This is an excellent thread. I think the key to the success at Rutgers is that the academic support staff report up to the academic chancellor, not to the athletic department.

Our academic support people are top notch AND are incentivized solely with the students' academic success.
 
So the article is about Notre Dame and how the head coach has come out and explained that the entire team beside 2 kids are always at-risk academically. Here is the link to the article.... http://www.foxsports.com/college-fo...all-of-my-football-players-are-at-risk-061115

This article highlights exactly why players/recruits/parents/coaches/guardians/etc. MUST, MUST, MUST strongly factor in a teams past performance pertaining to its players success in the classroom. (Which happens to be one of Rutgers greatest strengths!!! I have been preaching about this success to everyone in person and on this message board and yet people didn't seem to care much if at all despite how critically important it is to our teams success and also to our overall university "karma" and "goodwill." Rutgers is doing right by its players/families by committing the effort and resources to make sure its athletes do well in the classroom. This makes sure that those players who don't play football professionally will STILL succeed in the corporate world. The University and Flood are proving to the world and the recruits just the kind of place Rutgers is and the type of people we are here. Also, the CONTINUED success with athletes in the classroom at Rutgers proves that there is a STRONG SYSTEM / PROCESS in place to help them thrive and that a new recruit will be able to plug into that system just as the previous players have done and do well.

Classroom success leads to better play on the field as well because the players can focus solely on the practice/game and NOT on which government would benefit the lower class citizens of the Roman Empire the most.

Oh and for the record, according to the Center for World University Rankings, Rutgers is the 33rd ranked institution to attend/graduate from while Notre Dame is also ranked a very respectable 64th in the world. So obviously Rutgers is doing an excellent job making sure players of ALL education levels and ability are still able to perform at a high level because of the INCREDIBLE support system we have in place.

A personal story I can give is I remember when Anthony Davis was attending Rutgers and I saw he was in one of my classes along with my buddy who was on the lacrosse team. I was very surprised because this course was a prerequisite for the Business School (back when you couldn't get accepted straight out of HS) so this course was by no means an "easy" class. So I asked my lacrosse buddy how he and Anthony Davis were going to be able to pull of this class. And he gave me the ENTIRE RUN DOWN on the incredible academic support system that Rutgers surrounds its athletes with. The whole run down is way too long for this already too long post, but the general gist of what he said was that the support staff took a BIG PICTURE approach and ALSO dealt with the small stuff.

For example, one of the most important things that the athletes designated support person does is help them design their schedule to accommodate their sports schedules. This is key because an optimally designed class schedule can make a semester full of "hard" classes and make it feel easy. There are like 10 other things the support staff do as well to make sure all the athletes succeed, but I will save those for a different post/thread to minimize the length of this post.

So the point is clear. Rutgers has a SIGNIFICANT ADVANTAGE over all other universities and teams because we were one of the first to recognize the importance of investing time, money, and effort into the athlete's academic support staff. Something like this is not cheap and cannot just be created overnight which is why despite being one of the top universities in the world, we are still graduating our athletes and football players at one of the highest rates in the country while other schools are consistently struggling with its football players academics and leaving its players high and dry because they aren't graduating and therefore were essentially just playing football for free for the university.

Flood and the coaches should be SCREAMING this from the rooftop that if you come to Rutgers and you are ready to work...... then you basically have guaranteed yourself that you will either end up in the NFL or you will end up with a diploma and the accompanying success in the corporate/business world that a Rutgers diploma brings!
Yes good post however this is an area that is overlooked or under rated by many recruits looking to the NFL
 
Yes good post however this is an area that is overlooked or under rated by many recruits looking to the NFL

Unfortunately, RUbacker has made a noteworthy comment. How many times have we heard top athletes saying stuff like the playoff championship game-winning QB from Ohio State who tweeted..

"Why should we have to go to class if we came here to play FOOTBALL, we ain't come to play SCHOOL classes are POINTLESS"

Cardale Jones expressed that thought. How many more simply think it and want to go to football factories who will not challenge them academically.

Providing the help disadvantaged students need to survive and even succeed is great. But until the UNCs of the world are punished so severely that the practice of ignoring academic requirements is ended, then the top athletes who are disinterested students will continue to ignore programs like Rutgers who choose to invest in doing the right thing.

And I should add.. I don't want those players with disdain for academics. I'm happy to root for Rutgers players who are going to class and doing college coursework.
 
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“Why should we have to go to class if we came here to play FOOTBALL, we ain’t come to play SCHOOL, classes are POINTLESS ”

As the above poster noted, if it's not a priority for the player, it's hard to get them motivated. Some of these kids don't want to be pushed academically and they think football is their life and school is just a silly requirement thrust upon them.
 
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there will be the typical macho guys who will come on here and actually say RU should cheat to win games--and then you will hear from those who say we wear rose colored glasses--ignore them
 
This will also be a reason why Rutgers will struggle with some of the national recruits. They tend to be so super involved with the athletic aspects that sometimes the academics aren't what they should be. Parents and coaches will say the right words but won't always put the required effort that's needed. This is especially true with the disadvantaged kids who's views on how to succeed are often limited to the field.
 
There are way too many parents who only care about athletic success. If parents don't care about education, why should the kid? Unfortunately, these individuals have no understanding of the daunting odds of anyone making a living playing games. My guess is that they are the same people who really believe they have a good chance of winning the lottery. Maybe basic statistics should be a mandatory subject in the first grade.
Now that I have that off my chest, kudos to the RU people who are doing all they can to make sure our athletes have a good chance at life after sports.
 
This will also be a reason why Rutgers will struggle with some of the national recruits. They tend to be so super involved with the athletic aspects that sometimes the academics aren't what they should be. Parents and coaches will say the right words but won't always put the required effort that's needed. This is especially true with the disadvantaged kids who's views on how to succeed are often limited to the field.

This is a very true point that "vasocsg" makes.. And while this might be true in some cases, Rutgers can point to some success stories with players like Anthony Davis who came to Rutgers and were able to thrive athletically while at Rutgers while also doing the coursework. Top athletes do not have to dumb themselves down to become elite athletes.... you can do BOTH. Just ask Super Bowl Champs Devin McCourty, Duron Harmon, Tim Wright, and Logan Ryan!
 
“Why should we have to go to class if we came here to play FOOTBALL, we ain’t come to play SCHOOL, classes are POINTLESS ”

As the above poster noted, if it's not a priority for the player, it's hard to get them motivated. Some of these kids don't want to be pushed academically and they think football is their life and school is just a silly requirement thrust upon them.

I applaud the academic success of Rutger's football program. I know that Cardale Jones has become a poster child for kids who go to powerhouse football programs and care little for school. While there are those types out there, including at OSU, I do want to give Jones the credit and discredit he deserves for his tweet.

It was a stupid tweet, and therefore he is subject to the consequences.

On the other hand, his tweet was an example of his personality and sense of humor. If anyone has seen his tweets and social media since then, he likes to make comments that are intended as jokes and often sarcastic. And as usual when someone of some fame makes such comments, they are easily taken out of context.

By his own account he was getting good grades and was upset because he got a B on a paper (or test, I can't recall at the moment) but thought he deserved an A. He has never been an academic risk while at OSU, is taking Finance/Business Classes, has recently completed an internship with a financial advisor, and when given the opportunity to join the NFL Draft he decided to stay in school.

So while I agree that not all football players make school the priority, Cardale Jones despite the stupid tweet shouldn't be the example.
 
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I applaud the academic success of Rutger's football program. I know that Cardale Jones has become a poster child for kids who go to powerhouse football programs and care little for school. While there are those types out there, including at OSU, I do want to give Jones the credit and discredit he deserves for his tweet.

It was a stupid tweet, and therefore he is subject to the consequences.

On the other hand, his tweet was an example of his personality and sense of humor. If anyone has seen his tweets and social media since then, he likes to make comments that are intended as jokes and often sarcastic. And as usual when someone of some fame makes such comments, they are easily taken out of context.

By his own account he was getting good grades and was upset because he got a B on a paper (or test, I can't recall at the moment) but thought he deserved an A. He has never been an academic risk while at OSU, is taking Finance/Business Classes, has recently completed an internship with a financial advisor, and when given the opportunity to join the NFL Draft he decided to stay in school.

So while I agree that not all football players make school the priority, Cardale Jones despite the stupid tweet shouldn't be the example.

I think I've read somewhere that Jones might be graduating this year.
Do you know anything about that ?
I think sometimes tweets are taken to seriously and more put in them then what was intended
by the person sending it.
 
I applaud the academic success of Rutger's football program. I know that Cardale Jones has become a poster child for kids who go to powerhouse football programs and care little for school. While there are those types out there, including at OSU, I do want to give Jones the credit and discredit he deserves for his tweet.

It was a stupid tweet, and therefore he is subject to the consequences.

On the other hand, his tweet was an example of his personality and sense of humor. If anyone has seen his tweets and social media since then, he likes to make comments that are intended as jokes and often sarcastic. And as usual when someone of some fame makes such comments, they are easily taken out of context.

By his own account he was getting good grades and was upset because he got a B on a paper (or test, I can't recall at the moment) but thought he deserved an A. He has never been an academic risk while at OSU, is taking Finance/Business Classes, has recently completed an internship with a financial advisor, and when given the opportunity to join the NFL Draft he decided to stay in school.

So while I agree that not all football players make school the priority, Cardale Jones despite the stupid tweet shouldn't be the example.

Fair enough. But that's the danger of social media and why these kids need better guidance in that regard. Unfortunately many kids do feel this way.

This behavior is nothing new by any stretch. My late father attended Purdue on a football scholarship many moons ago. Unfortunately, he shredded his ankle so he only lasted 1 year. Luckily he attended a school where class mattered and ended up with a solid degree. Many years later he ran into an old football buddy who was something like a second team All American. My dad noticed he wasn't doing much with his life and asked him how things were going? He did last 4 years in school. His response? "Yea, but I got a degree in football"

This was the late 50's so it's nothing new.
 
Great article. A must read for parents and athletes. But I think we need to be realistic about the expectations of most (not all) gifted athletes. If you try to recruit a super athlete who lives in a very poor and violent neighborhood and your selling point is academics you're going to lose that kid 99.9% of the time. I may be wrong and many here on this website haver better insight than me on this issue but those kids are easily enticed with the opportunity to make millions. In the past we would all point our finger at the SEC, but most recently Florida State and Ohio State sold the same dream ($$$$$$) in order to win a championship.
 
Great article. A must read for parents and athletes. But I think we need to be realistic about the expectations of most (not all) gifted athletes. If you try to recruit a super athlete who lives in a very poor and violent neighborhood and your selling point is academics you're going to lose that kid 99.9% of the time. I may be wrong and many here on this website haver better insight than me on this issue but those kids are easily enticed with the opportunity to make millions. In the past we would all point our finger at the SEC, but most recently Florida State and Ohio State sold the same dream ($$$$$$) in order to win a championship.

I am not going to pretend I know the mindset of every 5-star recruit, BUT either WAY Rutgers offers BOTH OPTIONS! You can get the best of both worlds. You can make it to the NFL and win Super Bowls just like our graduates have done this past year (McCourty, Harmon, Wright, and Ryan with the Patriots) AND you can get a top degree that will help keep food on your plate and a roof over your families heads in case you blow out your knee and can't play football anymore.

You would be crazy as a recruit to limit yourself to only getting either a chance at the NFL or a great diploma WHEN YOU COULD GET BOTH!

But I do understand what you are saying about how some recruits and their parents see little value in the education aspect of college and view it solely as a springboard to the NFL. Of course, I do not know the % of players/parents like that, I have just read the occasional story here or there that shows that sort of mindset.
 
The Lengths that Florida and FSU go to conceal their athletes arrests:

http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_...nfluence-factors-somes-avoid-criminal-charges

Great article.

I think this tells you all you need to know:
• Some athletic programs have, in effect, a team lawyer who showed up at a crime scene or jail or police department -- sometimes even before an athlete requested legal counsel. The lawyers, sometimes called by athletic department officials, were often successful in giving athletes an edge in evading prosecution -- from minor offenses to major crimes.

These programs know what they're recruiting, and have basically set themselves up to spin and control the fallout when it occurs.
 
I applaud the academic success of Rutger's football program. I know that Cardale Jones has become a poster child for kids who go to powerhouse football programs and care little for school. While there are those types out there, including at OSU, I do want to give Jones the credit and discredit he deserves for his tweet.

It was a stupid tweet, and therefore he is subject to the consequences.

On the other hand, his tweet was an example of his personality and sense of humor. If anyone has seen his tweets and social media since then, he likes to make comments that are intended as jokes and often sarcastic. And as usual when someone of some fame makes such comments, they are easily taken out of context.

By his own account he was getting good grades and was upset because he got a B on a paper (or test, I can't recall at the moment) but thought he deserved an A. He has never been an academic risk while at OSU, is taking Finance/Business Classes, has recently completed an internship with a financial advisor, and when given the opportunity to join the NFL Draft he decided to stay in school.

So while I agree that not all football players make school the priority, Cardale Jones despite the stupid tweet shouldn't be the example.

Now.. I was the guy who first quoted Jones' tweet. And I did not know any of the above. I certainly hope the buckeye fan's post is true.. but if this were about some player at an SEC school or Florida State or even UNC, whose academic standing was rock solid before the recent discoveries... wouldn't every OSU fan believe the tweet was indicative of the player's attitude toward academics?
 
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