Student Body Right » Rutgers

Early opinion on Week 9

CommishRob — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 18:38:42 +0000

As the last Saturday in October approaches, a couple of “experts” are already making their picks for this weekend’s games:

Dan Shanoff, formerly of ESPN.com’s Page 2 and now a weekly College Football contributor at Deadspin likes Ohio State over Penn State, Oregon over USC, Cal over ASU, Florida over Georgia at the Cocktail Party, WVU over Rutgers, and Virginia Tech to continue the curse of being #2 by beating BC on Thursday (Something bad needs to happen to Boston sports soon).
SI.com’s Cory McCartney throws out his take with BC surviving its trip to Blacksburg, Ohio State staying undefeated, Florida continuing to own Georgia, and—in the Pac-10′s big games—SC to upset Oregon and Cal to upset ASU.

Since the multi-color (credited to Jim Rome) keeps paying this guy to make lines (which he steals from LVSC) I will let people see what he has on the big games of the weekend.

VT -3.5
Oregon -2.5
ASU -3.5
Florida -9.5
Ohio St -3.5

Week 8 on TV

CommishRob — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 21:52:45 +0000

As always, big thanks to Awful Announcing for this week’s announcer schedule for college football.

Highlights:

Thursday night: South Florida at Rutgers (ESPN: Fowler/Flutie/James). South Florida’s last test on the road.
Saturday (Noon Eastern): Nothing worth watching.
Saturday (3:30pm Eastern): Florida at Kentucky (CBS: Lundquist/Danielson, Gameday in Lexington) and SC at ND—2 years ago a clash of Top 10 teams, this year NBC (Hammond/Haden) might get better ratings from the test pattern.
Saturday Night: Auburn at LSU on ESPN (Patrick/Blackledge and please stop the bit where Todd eats) along with Michigan at Illinois on ABC with the Brent Musburger Drinking Game and the Kirk Herbstreit bus story from Lexington, KY to Champaign, IL.

ESPN Championship Series update (through October 27th)

CommishRob — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 16:13:27 +0000

The ESPN Championship Series continues with the weekend of October 27th. Penn State travels to Columbus and West Virginia goes to Rutgers. While the Nittany Lions are Kirk Herbstreit’s preseason favorite, apparently they are not Lou and Mark’s; they like the Buckeyes this week.

The honeymoon is over for America’s 2006 darling, as both Mark and Lou like the StevePat SlatonWhite multi-headed monster to win at Rutgers. So, through the games of October 27th, here is the Top 10:

USC (8-0)
LSU (8-0)
Wisconsin (9-0)
Oklahoma (8-0)
Michigan (9-0)
Louisville (9-0)
Florida (7-1) lost at LSU on October 6th
Texas (8-1) lost to OU on October 6th
West Virginia (7-1) Lost to Louisville
Ohio State (8-1)

SI.com’s Top 20 Games of 2007

CommishRob — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 00:38:54 +0000

Here is their version; here is our version:

#16- Tennessee at California September 1st
#18- Florida St at Clemson September 3rd
#4-   Virginia Tech at LSU September 8th
#14- TCU at Texas September 8th
#19- Miami at Oklahoma September 8th
#20- Notre Dame at Penn State September 8th
#8-   USC at Nebraska September 15th
#9-   Tennessee at Florida September 15th
#1-   Florida at LSU October 6th
#3-   Texas vs. Oklahoma (Cotton Bowl) October 6th
#10- Nebraska at Texas October 27th
#11- West Virginia at Rutgers October 27th
#13- LSU at Alabama November 3rd
#5-   Louisville at West Virginia November 8th
#6-   USC at California November 10th
#7-   Michigan at Wisconsin November 10th
#12- Florida St at Virginia Tech November 10th
#2-   Ohio State at Michigan November 17th
#15- Boise St at Hawaii November 23rd
#17- UCLA at USC December 1st

And here’s a list that tells you which weekends might require a second TV next to the big screen:

4 Games on September 8th

4 Games Weekend of November 8th-10th (Big East Thursday night special)

2 Games September 15th

2 Games October 6th (1 &3)

2 Games October 27th

If USC isn’t 11-0, then the SC/UCLA is meaningless outside of LA—as are any of the games after October 6th really, unless all of these teams are as good as the pre-season hype.

A new tiebreaker: academics

gpen — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 02:54:35 +0000

Although SBR is scrupulously apolitical, we realize that sometimes you have to dig deep to find fresh college football arguments. Thus, a piece from Political Affairs Magazine, wherein the author suggests that maybe we should add another element to the national title game decision:

Let me make a modest proposal to the NCAA powers that be. Why not take into account the academic quality of a university in determining who plays for the national championship?

This would clearly put Rutgers above Arkansas and other SEC teams. Rutgers, which has some of the best academic “programs” in the liberal arts, sciences, and public policy professional schools, could more than hold its own as a center of scholarship and teaching against one-loss schools like USC and Notre Dame. That should more than compensate for their harder overall football schedule. Also, two teams from the same conference Michigan and Ohio State, really shouldn’t play in a national championship game and Rutgers as a university more than hold its own against Ohio State. (As the holder of a Masters degree and PhD from the University of Michigan, I would hesitate to make that statement about the great public university that sports fans know as the Wolverines).

By the way, the article is entitled “College Football, Scholar-Athletes, and the Dialectics of the NCAA National Championship.” If you can tell us what “Dialectics of the NCAA National Championship” means, we’ll give you a cookie.

Jersey columnist gives Corso a new nickname

CommishRob — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 21:30:40 +0000

Fans of the State University of New Jersey (Rutgers, for those not paying attention to Rece Davis each week) and area media are upset that Lee Corso dismisses Rutgers as a national title contender. I know that they are a long shot to go 12-0, but Newark Star-Ledger columnist Tom Luicci calls Corso “The Clown Prince of College Football” after that comment.