"Why Can't Rutgers Ever Win?"

[RUBigFrank]

http://www.si.com/vault/2003/08/25/...-things-are-turning-around-many-others-on-cam

Sports Illustrated published this article in August of 2003 - this was the basic media perception of us then.

Interestingly we went 5 and 7 beat Syracuse that year and had success in seasons there after.

So as they say the darkest hour is before the dawn.

 

[sct1111]

Unfortunately the perception is that we are still and always were this team. Most don't know of our annual bowl games or our 8-5 season two years ago, they only hear of the negative.

 

[brgRC90]

Rutgers has long had two head winds: 1. an administration that wanted to compete at the highest levels without bothering to find anywhere near the money needed to actually do it and 2. a history of being more or less a Div 1AA program that until recently had the best local recruits taken away by out-of-state programs. In the 2000s the program finally surmounted--to some degree--these two hurdles but moving to the Big Ten has brought both problems back into the forefront given the greatly increased level of competition and the utterly ridiculous decision, a reflection of 1. above, to hire Kyle Flood, who was not even a good enough coach for the AAC, where he got crushed by the competition.

 

[RU848789]

Unfortunately the perception is that we are still and always were this team. Most don't know of our annual bowl games or our 8-5 season two years ago, they only hear of the negative.

Completely disagree. Have had multiple people asking me, "What happened to you guys?" They know of the success under Schiano.

 

[BoroKnight]

The part that is toughest for me is this false notion that we have sucked for 100 years or whatever. Hardly. We've had several very successful stretches when we played away from the bright lights (before the I-A/I-AA split), then were mediocre for two coaching tenures (Anderson and Graber both about seven games under .500 over six years) before hitting rock-bottom. The Shea years and the first two Schiano years was really the only god-awful, why-are-we-playing-football era, and for whatever reason it labeled us forever, making any dip remotely close to such putrid performances flip a switch in people's minds. And even the "success" of the Schiano years wasn't anything special for a school with a rich tradition, but for Rutgers, which hadn't been good aside from random seasons since going "big time," it was a big deal.

We rose from the dead before. We shall do so again. I hope it's with Ash, but regardless, we will not dwell in the basement forever.

 

[sct1111]

Completely disagree. Have had multiple people asking me, "What happened to you guys?" They know of the success under Schiano.

I've only gotten comments like 'why are they in the Big Ten' and 'they don't belong in that conference'.

 

[ScarletKnightRider]

Unfortunately the perception is that we are still and always were this team. Most don't know of our annual bowl games or our 8-5 season two years ago, they only hear of the negative.

^^^^ freaking. THIS.

All ive been getting this week is that we are a disgrace and should be kicked out of the Big Ten for being so horrible and overmatched of a program. I respond with saying we were 8-5 and beat Michigan 2 yrs ago, our first year in the conference... and they stare at me like I have two heads. The "Rutgers is hopeless" narrative is way more appealing and easy for the masses to digest, regardless of how false it may be. And it is being beat into everyone's heads ad nauseum.

It's all good though. As long as we're the hot topic, im not even that mad. Popularity can ALWAYS work out in your favor in the long run if you play your cards right and you follow the rules. Even if we're "famous" for something like this.

 

[AreYouNUTS]

Unfortunately the perception is that we are still and always were this team. Most don't know of our annual bowl games or our 8-5 season two years ago, they only hear of the negative.

Disagree. Living in Hoboken (on-and-off) since '97, and being a fairly sociable person, I've met plenty of people from a lot of schools. Most of them used to laugh, non-stop, the Shea and early Schiano years, but that changed - in a big way - starting in 2005. They couldn't believe the crowds we started drawing, at home, on the road, and at bowls, and when some of them came to home games they were shocked at the atmosphere. Guys who went to WVU, PSU, 'Cuse, BC, ND - a lot of anti-RU NJ types - all changed their tune. Guys who are real college football fans, not just front-runners, to be factual. Anyway, I talk to these guys all the time, and are friends with a group of guys who went to LSU/TAMU/USC/Texas - who follow and gamble on college football religiously - both sets of friends are well aware of what happened here under Flood, and what's happening this year, but I have yet to get a single discouraging word or "well, looks like your glory days are over" type comment. The ONLY people who have been negative, in the least, are fellow Rutgers alumni and fans I know. Most of them - and I'm being 100% honest here - are guys who simply refused to believe what was going on, the last 4 years, while I was telling them, and are choosing to blame it on it being impossible to recruit NJ and Ash's choice of sticking with the power spread. So...of course...I have to show them all the recruiting info, et al, to prove to them that RU CAN recruit NJ, with the right guy, the right approach, and the right plan. Anyway...yeah, some of the other guys have busted chops the last couple of weeks...but in a very different way than they did 12+ years ago. FWIW.

Also, pre-2005, it took a lot to wear RU gear around town on game days, let alone after a loss as such. Nowadays? There's RU gear everywhere, all the time, even I was surprised on Sunday when I was at my office on Washington St. the # of people I saw walk by with our colors on headed, well, wherever. The revival under Schiano, and move to the B1G, did wonders for Rutgers Athletics, and IMHO do even more over the next 10 years.

 

[ScarletCrimson]

didn't think we would hit another valley so soon :)

 

[Jersey Boys]

Also, pre-2005, it took a lot to wear RU gear around town on game days, let alone after a loss as such. Nowadays? There's RU gear everywhere, all the time, even I was surprised on Sunday when I was at my office on Washington St. the # of people I saw walk by with our colors on headed, well, wherever. The revival under Schiano, and move to the B1G, did wonders for Rutgers Athletics, and IMHO do even more over the next 10 years.

Very true Nuts. When we were in school in the early 90's, people rarely wore our colors around campus and often times saw idiots in Miami or PSU garb. We had no identity. If anything, Schiano changed that. Now the Block R is a staple.

 

[76Scarlet]

The part that is toughest for me is this false notion that we have sucked for 100 years or whatever. Hardly. We've had several very successful stretches when we played away from the bright lights (before the I-A/I-AA split), then were mediocre for two coaching tenures (Anderson and Graber both about seven games under .500 over six years) before hitting rock-bottom. The Shea years and the first two Schiano years was really the only god-awful, why-are-we-playing-football era, and for whatever reason it labeled us forever, making any dip remotely close to such putrid performances flip a switch in people's minds. And even the "success" of the Schiano years wasn't anything special for a school with a rich tradition, but for Rutgers, which hadn't been good aside from random seasons since going "big time," it was a big deal.

We rose from the dead before. We shall do so again. I hope it's with Ash, but regardless, we will not dwell in the basement forever.

Yeah, it's all about perception. People forget that we were not really a Div. 1A team until the 80s whereas a lot of teams like Pitt, Syracuse, WVU, Boston College had been playing at a higher level long before that. So their foundations were already well established while we were still playing teams like Bucknell, Lafayette, Colgate, etc. with an occasional Syracuse or Pitt game. Like you suggested, people also easily forget our recent successes.

Still this is not to say it was not lousy planning on our part when we set our sites higher. I remember Frank Burns making the complaint back in the 80s that, "it was only our schedule that was big time" because he knew even then that the administration was not making the proper investment for a winning program. I think this issue really hit us in the face when the first "Big East" was launched and we could not handle the better teams of that conference (Miami, VTech, WVU, Pitt, etc.). I am hoping the present 'powers that be" have learned from mistakes of the past.

 

[e5fdny]

Rutgers has long had two head winds: 1. an administration that wanted to compete at the highest levels without bothering to find anywhere near the money needed to actually do it and 2. a history of being more or less a Div 1AA program that until recently had the best local recruits taken away by out-of-state programs. In the 2000s the program finally surmounted--to some degree--these two hurdles but moving to the Big Ten has brought both problems back into the forefront given the greatly increased level of competition.

Yeah, it's all about perception. People forget that we were not really a Div. 1A team until the 80s whereas a lot of teams like Pitt, Syracuse, WVU, Boston College had been playing at a higher level long before that. So their foundations were already well established while we were still playing teams like Bucknell, Lafayette, Colgate, etc. with an occasional Syracuse or Pitt game. Like you suggested, people also easily forget our recent successes.

Still this is not to say it was not lousy planning on our part when we set our sites higher. I remember Frank Burns making the complaint back in the 80s that, "it was only our schedule that was big time" because he knew even then that the administration was not making the proper investment for a winning program. I think this issue really hit us in the face when the first "Big East" was launched and we could not handle the better teams of that conference (Miami, VTech, WVU, Pitt, etc.). * I am hoping the present 'powers that be" have learned from mistakes of the past.

It basically what's in these two posts above and the some of the blame goes the players thru the years who when the opportunity presented itself did not come thru.

* Some of the same types of initial mistakes were made...."We're in the _____ (insert either Big East or B1G here) now, the rest will take care of itself."

Hopefully we'll see less and less of those and better moves going forward.

 

[BoogieKnight]

Our Big Ten entry was lousy planning too. Should have hired an Ash/Tom Herman type before the 2014 season. (And rumor is if Julie had her way we would have). We basically sacrificed our first 4 years in the conference. People can wack off to 7-5 and a Quick Lane Bowl win all they want but realize we were 7-4 in our first season in the Big East too. That didn't exactly accurately project what was to happen over the next decade. We want sustained and continued success in the conference. Going 7-5, getting our dicks kicked in by 1/3 of our schedule, beating a lousy Michigan team and winning a third tier bowl game in 2014 clearly did not build enough cache to avoid the scruitiny of the terrible past season and a half. It was fools gold and dug us in a deeper hole personnel wise that will take us 2-3 more years to climb out of.

 

[rurichdog]

In person, college football fans are fairly cordial. Stick a bunch of them together in a visitors' section and mob mentality takes over & the become angry arrogant jerks. Put them behind a computer where they can posts anonymous comments, and they get even worse. With social media and internet news taking over our lives, we see much more of the latter than the former.

 

[RU31trap]

I actually remember reading that article. Very interesting that just two years later we went 7-5 and had one terrific game in the Insight Bowl against Arizona State. A game where T. Moses, B. Leonard, Ryan Hart and that DE whose name I can't remember played their hearts out.