Hi everyone,
Like I said in my title, first time poster but long time fan of RU athletics, graduated in 96', Masters in 98' and still make it up to Piscataway for at least one game a year (I'm in North Carolina now).
I'm gonna give it my best shot to try to defend Kyle Flood from all these people who are jumping up and down about losing a recruit. First of all, when I was at Rutgers I had the privlidge (sarcasm) of having head coaches Doug Graber and Terry Shea provide what was an excuse to get drunk with your buddies on Saturdays... No one cared one way or another whether we won or not, because Rutgers Football wasn't relavant, NO ONE cared one way or another about rutgers football. Years past and we got Greg Schiano, obviously I can't say enough about the job he did putting rutgers on the map, the upgraded stadium, and ultimately an invitation to the Big 10. We can't blame Schiano for going after an NFL dream even though he wasn't successful, but Kyle Flood has come in and lived up to expectations.
I don't care what recruits we get, don't get, etc. What I care about is what I see on the field and what I saw last year was an 8-5 football team (which no one including yours truely thought would happen) in their first year in the Big 10 including beating MICHIGAN!!! Are you kidding me Michigan?! I don't care that they were on a down year, refs helped them, etc. I get the feeling that a lot of the posters on here are younger and by younger I mean under 30 years old, which is awesome that we have such a great young fanbase, but for those of us "Pre-Schiano" crew members what Rutgers football has turned into is nothing short of a miracle. To give you an idea, when I was at Rutgers we went 0-11 one year and I will NEVER to this day forget losing 49-7 to TEMPLE and you mean to tell me that we just BEAT the program that had Charles Woodson, Brian Griese, Jeff Backus, Steve Hutchinson, Jay Feeley, Tai Streets, etc. KYLE FLOOD BEAT MICHIGAN!!!!!!! I was as happy watching that game as any I can ever remeber. I'll even say the same about Penn State, yea it sucked we lost but we were there! we were competitive! this is Penn State we're talking about! (for those not in the know, Penn State for years and years was a perenial beat down, the onlyway to bare going to the games at Giants stadium was to get hammered beforehand).
I say all this so hopefully some of you can grasp the task at hand for Kyle Flood. My job has allowed me to travel around the country and see a lot of different college campus's and I can tell you that the facilities at Rutgers are no where close to those at our fellow Big 10 schools and other big time programs throughout the country. Rutgers also has never won anything as far as conferance titles, national titles or anything like that. You guys can't possibly think that Kyle Flood is on an even playing field with his competition for top Jersey talent. It's not even close. There's a reason why kids leave Jersey to play at other schools, simply put, they have more to offer as far as their football programs.
I get the whole Jersey loyalty thing and to an extent, its true, but let me ask you this, if you were starting a career and had an opportunity to work for your choice of Goldman Sachs or manage the local supermarket, only kicker is you would have to move out of state for Goldman Sachs, which one would you pick? Both you can make enough to live on and have a happy life but of the two, which one would you pick? That's what it's like for these high profile kids from Jersey when comparing Rutgers to the national, big time schools and facilities. Stop blaming Kyle Flood for not being able to convince kids to play in front of 50k people without a good practice facility and no track record of ever winning a conference title in our programs history when he has to compete against the Tennesee's of the world... Have any of you seen Tennessee's football facility? It's rediculous, nicer than pro teams facilities and these are the kind of programs we are competing against when a kid is considering PSU, Michigan, Ohio State, etc.... IT'S NOT FAIR TO FLOOD...
Here's the reality, when Schiano came in, he took the program to the next level, he made us relavant but in order to take the program even further, we need to upgrade our facilities, we need to spend more on recruiting and we need more donations, until we have those things, Rutgers will not take the next step no matter who the coach is, I mean that sincerely, everyone wants to blame Kyle Flood but the truth is, Nick Saban would have a difficult time recruiting here, it's not the coach, it's the facilities and the lack of tradition/luster. We are improving on the tradition/luster department but that takes time, we are not improving with facilities though and until we do Guarantano, Gary, Walker, and all these other high profile Jersey kids will continue to look elsewear.
Like I said in my title, first time poster but long time fan of RU athletics, graduated in 96', Masters in 98' and still make it up to Piscataway for at least one game a year (I'm in North Carolina now).
I'm gonna give it my best shot to try to defend Kyle Flood from all these people who are jumping up and down about losing a recruit. First of all, when I was at Rutgers I had the privlidge (sarcasm) of having head coaches Doug Graber and Terry Shea provide what was an excuse to get drunk with your buddies on Saturdays... No one cared one way or another whether we won or not, because Rutgers Football wasn't relavant, NO ONE cared one way or another about rutgers football. Years past and we got Greg Schiano, obviously I can't say enough about the job he did putting rutgers on the map, the upgraded stadium, and ultimately an invitation to the Big 10. We can't blame Schiano for going after an NFL dream even though he wasn't successful, but Kyle Flood has come in and lived up to expectations.
I don't care what recruits we get, don't get, etc. What I care about is what I see on the field and what I saw last year was an 8-5 football team (which no one including yours truely thought would happen) in their first year in the Big 10 including beating MICHIGAN!!! Are you kidding me Michigan?! I don't care that they were on a down year, refs helped them, etc. I get the feeling that a lot of the posters on here are younger and by younger I mean under 30 years old, which is awesome that we have such a great young fanbase, but for those of us "Pre-Schiano" crew members what Rutgers football has turned into is nothing short of a miracle. To give you an idea, when I was at Rutgers we went 0-11 one year and I will NEVER to this day forget losing 49-7 to TEMPLE and you mean to tell me that we just BEAT the program that had Charles Woodson, Brian Griese, Jeff Backus, Steve Hutchinson, Jay Feeley, Tai Streets, etc. KYLE FLOOD BEAT MICHIGAN!!!!!!! I was as happy watching that game as any I can ever remeber. I'll even say the same about Penn State, yea it sucked we lost but we were there! we were competitive! this is Penn State we're talking about! (for those not in the know, Penn State for years and years was a perenial beat down, the onlyway to bare going to the games at Giants stadium was to get hammered beforehand).
I say all this so hopefully some of you can grasp the task at hand for Kyle Flood. My job has allowed me to travel around the country and see a lot of different college campus's and I can tell you that the facilities at Rutgers are no where close to those at our fellow Big 10 schools and other big time programs throughout the country. Rutgers also has never won anything as far as conferance titles, national titles or anything like that. You guys can't possibly think that Kyle Flood is on an even playing field with his competition for top Jersey talent. It's not even close. There's a reason why kids leave Jersey to play at other schools, simply put, they have more to offer as far as their football programs.
I get the whole Jersey loyalty thing and to an extent, its true, but let me ask you this, if you were starting a career and had an opportunity to work for your choice of Goldman Sachs or manage the local supermarket, only kicker is you would have to move out of state for Goldman Sachs, which one would you pick? Both you can make enough to live on and have a happy life but of the two, which one would you pick? That's what it's like for these high profile kids from Jersey when comparing Rutgers to the national, big time schools and facilities. Stop blaming Kyle Flood for not being able to convince kids to play in front of 50k people without a good practice facility and no track record of ever winning a conference title in our programs history when he has to compete against the Tennesee's of the world... Have any of you seen Tennessee's football facility? It's rediculous, nicer than pro teams facilities and these are the kind of programs we are competing against when a kid is considering PSU, Michigan, Ohio State, etc.... IT'S NOT FAIR TO FLOOD...
Here's the reality, when Schiano came in, he took the program to the next level, he made us relavant but in order to take the program even further, we need to upgrade our facilities, we need to spend more on recruiting and we need more donations, until we have those things, Rutgers will not take the next step no matter who the coach is, I mean that sincerely, everyone wants to blame Kyle Flood but the truth is, Nick Saban would have a difficult time recruiting here, it's not the coach, it's the facilities and the lack of tradition/luster. We are improving on the tradition/luster department but that takes time, we are not improving with facilities though and until we do Guarantano, Gary, Walker, and all these other high profile Jersey kids will continue to look elsewear.
