Rutgers is amazingly popular

[Caliknight]

The amount of coverage that Rutgers gets for things which wouldn't register a blip on the media scale at other schools is astounding.

If the administration and "fan base" could get of its own way, it is pretty obvious what would happen if we started winning big. The amount of press coverage would be unheard of.

Sadly, its works in reverse when toes continue to be stubbed. One can dream.

 

[FastMJ]

Not sure how much positive attention we would get. Seems to only work in reverse.

 

[Roy_Faulker]

Guess the Empire State Building was light in red before RU/Louisville to warn of a red tide then...

 

[fg7321]

I counted 11 Links on the Yahoo Sports home page

 

[dazl]

I counted 11 Links on the Yahoo Sports home page

... without looking, I would guess that 10 of those links are from the Sh*tLedger, sh*tOnNJ.com, and/or AdvanceSh*tThrowingMedia.

 

[ruhudsonfan]

Whether you guys want to recognize it or not, it's news when the county prosecutor shows up at your practice and carts a van's worth of your players away.

It doesn't matter how many people get locked up at Alabama this year. When they come to pick handfuls of them at a time, lets talk.

This absolutely would be news in any P5 conference market.

Emailing a prof about a grade? Manufactured scandal.

5 players arrested for assault, rioting, conspiracy to riot? An alum of the program picked up for Home Invasion/Aggravated Burglary? I keep repeating myself. These are 2nd degree charges in NJ. Even on a plea, this is prison time stuff we're talking about. This isn't throwing water balloons off the roof of the Hale Center or stealing some crab legs. Those are "boys will be boys" by product of competing at this level.

 

[loki_dog]

Can someone put some details behind the rioting charge?

 

[RUInsanity]

Whether you guys want to recognize it or not, it's news when the county prosecutor shows up at your practice and carts a van's worth of your players away.

It doesn't matter how many people get locked up at Alabama this year. When they come to pick handfuls of them at a time, lets talk.

This absolutely would be news in any P5 conference market.

Emailing a prof about a grade? Manufactured scandal.

5 players arrested for assault, rioting, conspiracy to riot? An alum of the program picked up for Home Invasion/Aggravated Burglary? I keep repeating myself. These are 2nd degree charges in NJ. Even on a plea, this is prison time stuff we're talking about. This isn't throwing water balloons off the roof of the Hale Center or stealing some crab legs. Those are "boys will be boys" by product of competing at this level.

I agree to the extent that the Police/Prosecutor force that showed up at practice to haul the players away in front of a media contingent (that was larger than ordinary because of the manufactured email scandal) will definitely cause front page/national type news.

But I think the question remains - if this was not Rutgers would this have been handled the same way and be as big of a headline type news. Consider that the arrests were made in an extremely public way knowingly in front of the media on the verge of the start of a new football season, the arrests were lumped together for two separate cases knowingly creating more media juice to the situation, the arrests were made almost 5 months after the two separate incidents happened.

Not sure what happens at other P5 Schools - but it does not seem to happen to this degree of initial Prosecutor and Media attention unless it is something like the Duke Lacrosse Rape case. Unlike that case, the attention on this will obviously die down - but the initial attempts are there by the Prosecutors office to create a large circus. At larger schools with more money & political clout - this would have likely been handled in much more of a back office type way.

A comment you made elsewhere is very appropriate/applicable. There are Political Forces at RU who want Flood gone and likely did so even before these arrests. Some of these same people likely also want JH gone. There are also Political Forces who want to make RU look as bad as possible as they want more control of the coffers and things like the Big Ten money that will come in. NJ is perhaps one of the most divisive communities in the country when it comes to it's State University. RU also has one of the most divisive fanbases in terms of interests around Coaches, Administration and Facilities. RU is within the NY media geography with hordes of reporters looking for content on slow news days. All this comes into play with exacerbating the media circus that is RU.