football 
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Wed Nov 02, 2011 at 02:47:00 PM EDT
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If you or one of your children are going to college, you know how much the cost of a college degree has increased over the decades. Students and their families are forced to go into significant debt even as the job market for college graduates shrinks. Students from lower income families are especially disadvantaged because loans are harder to come by. Unless the student is fortunate to have garnered a full scholarship, you are also paying a hidden tax – the cost of college athletics. It’s time to change the tuition funding playbook. (there's more) 
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Mon Oct 31, 2011 at 08:11:21 PM EDT
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Rutgers thinks it is too good for the Big East:
Rutgers would likely jump at the first good offer from a major conference with automatic bowl championship eligibility, Rutgers sources said.
Were today's college students alive the last time Rutgers won a conference championship in football?
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Sat Oct 02, 2010 at 01:20:24 PM EDT
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Going to the game today?
Ed Potosnak, proud Rutgers alum and Democratic challenger in NJ-7 against Leonard Lance, will be performing the National Anthem and the Alma Mater today before Rutgers Homecoming Football Game against Tulane University. He'll be singing with the Rutgers University Glee Club and alumni. Once upon a time, Potosnak was President of that Glee Club, which was founded in 1872, and is the oldest student-run organization at Rutgers. He was a 1996 undergrad, and a 1999 Graduate School of Education grad. Here's what Potosnak said today:
Singing on the field at homecoming is a time honored tradition for the Glee Club and its alumni. Cheering the Scarlet Knights on Saturdays was one of the highlights of my time at Rutgers as an undergraduate and graduate student. I can't wait to get back to the Banks of the Old Raritan this Saturday. Let's go RU! Code red!
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Thu Feb 26, 2009 at 01:26:09 PM EST
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Blue Jersey users seemed to universally regret the loss of tennis, swimming and other "minor" sports as Rutgers pursued pigskin glory. So I was interested to see that Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan Jr. hasn't forgotten as he welcomes the new Athletic Director:
"I ask that he makes the restoration of the six varsity sports that were cut in summer 2006 a top priority.
"Men's heavyweight crew, lightweight crew, fencing, swimming, diving and tennis and women's fencing may not have received the same spotlight as football.
"But members of these teams were scholar-athletes in the truest sense who performed for the love of competition and achieved some of the highest grade point averages and graduations rates of any group of students at Rutgers.
If you were in charge at Rutgers, would you put your resources into trying to compete with the Florida's, U.S.C.'s, and Oklahoma's of the college football world when even Notre Dame can't manage it, or would you support smaller, less famous sports?
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Sun Jul 27, 2008 at 02:07:58 AM EDT
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The Star-Ledger has an important piece on the disastrous Rutgers football stadium expansion. In short, the $30 million that was first going to come from the state, then from private donations, is not going to be found:
According to state and university officials, the fundraising drive encountered obstacles that were not quite so obvious when Corzine and Lesniak first announced the stadium campaign this past winter. They cited a series of unexpected hurdles, among them a national recession that hurt all types of fund-raising, and the whirlwind presidential election that has swallowed up hundreds of millions in donations that might otherwise have gone to universities or athletics. At the same time, restrictions imposed by Corzine's ethics advisers out of concern for the propriety of a governor asking for cash further complicated the effort.
I'm sorry, but since donations to Presidential candidates are limited to $2,300 ($4,600 with General), I don't buy this story. Furthermore, here are the total New Jersey political donations in Presidential years:
2000: $60,341,819
2004: $58,165,634
2008: $45,018,637 (so far)
So we can see that blaming this fiasco on Obama and Clinton is just spin.
The bottom line is that Rutgers finally has a decent college football program, and that is nice, but this stadium expansion is just too much. We now face the prospects of serious damage to the academic program. Some states -- yes, I'm thinking of the South -- have a kind of right-wing socialism where sports entertainment is provided by state funds and corrupt rich patrons. But New Jerseyans have three professional football teams to follow, even if they are named after cities just over the border, and so funding this stadium further is irresponsible.
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Sat Nov 24, 2007 at 12:19:16 AM EST
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It really is a shame that Rutgers football was not as good as New Jersey hoped. If ever there was a year that a program like Rutgers could reach the National Championship game, it was this year. The SEC, Big Ten, and Pac-10 all collapsed or knocked each other off.
What do you say?
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Fri Oct 19, 2007 at 02:55:27 PM EDT
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Two pieces of news today:
- Senator Mel Martines (R-FL) resigned today from the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee.
- Senator Mel Martines (R-FL) posted a Rutgers pennant on his office door after losing a bet on last night's Rutgers/South Florida football game to Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ and Rutgers Law '79) .
Maybe the RNC decided that was just one loss too many for the embattled party, and Martinez had to go.
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Thu Aug 30, 2007 at 09:24:03 AM EDT
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( - promoted by Juan Melli)
From the diaries -- Juan
Let the "Scarlet Fever" begin. Ugh. So Rutgers football opens its season today against the esteemed Buffalo University. It's wall-to-wall coverage on Nj.com, including a piece in the package called "Ten things you didn't know about Buffalo." Seeing that I had an interesting little tidbit of my own about Buffalo, I thought I'd check out the article and see if we both included it.
Guess what?
We didn't.
After discussing the team's lack of winning in reason #1, reason #5 is where it gets interesting for me.
"5. They don't back down. Instead of scheduling other bottom-of-the-barrel teams to increase their win total, the Bulls faced Auburn and Wisconsin last season and will play Rutgers and Penn State this year."
You know why?
Because they get paid cash money to play good teams and lose. It's a fact that Nj.com and all its affiliated papers would seemingly like to forget (maybe because they make $crill off of selling lame-ass Rutgers "magical season" books) -- Rutgers originally paid Buffalo $225,000 to play them last year. Buffalo backed out, largely because they run such racket on this shit that they had too many other big-walleted suitors. But they agreed to play this year, for only $25,000 more. So this game -- and likely win -- will cost those beloved Scarlet Knights $250,000.
Ah, ain't victory sweet. I'm sure some of those laid off profs and adjuncts without health insurance hangin' around the county clinic for meds think so.
Cross-posted at JonWhiten dot com
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Sun Apr 15, 2007 at 07:32:55 AM EDT
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Folks who read here in the fall probably know that I am a huge Rutgers football team, and defend the University's decision to pour more money and resources into the program. I found it unfortunate that other programs had to be cut, but I thought that the long term benefits to the state's colleges would be great.
And then seeing the women's basketball team rise to such unexpected heights, and with such amazing class after the Imus mess, made me even more proud.
But now I am reading that even when donors pledged to fund them Rutgers will not revisit it's decision to cut six lower-profile sports programs.
The Rutgers University Board of Governors says the decision to cut six intercollegiate sports at the end of the school year is final, even though donors are pledging millions of dollars to fund them.
Students, family members and donors who oppose the decision to cut the six sports - men's heavyweight crew, men's lightweight crew, men's fencing, men's swimming and diving, men's tennis and women's fencing - voiced their disapproval at the board's meeting Friday. . .
The teams' supporters say they've raised about $3 million in pledges to save the sports.
In a letter read at the meeting, Bruce Nicholas of Greenwich, Conn., said he would give $1 million to save the crew team.
"I intend to do even more," wrote Nicholas, who has already donated $1 million to crew.
President McComick explained that they cannot support the programs on donations every year, so will not try.
What a load of crap. They raise endowments all the time. If you have a guy who has the money to give $2 or more million to a sport, then he has the connections to raise more.
I really don't care much about any of these sports, though I used to be a diver, but the decision here is ridiculous. If they can spend millions more on football, they can accept millions in donations for other sports.
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Sun Jan 21, 2007 at 08:13:47 AM EST
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Apparently there are thousands more visits and applications than average at Rutgers and significantly more donations coming in to the athletic department as a result of the Rutgers Football Program's success.
Rutgers University's storybook football season touched off a national case of Scarlet fever, and new applications and dollars are rolling in.
Applications for admission at the university are up 5 percent over last year and rising, campus visits and Web site hits exploded during the fall, and football season-ticket sales and donations to athletic programs are at record highs.
Contributions to athletics -- not just football -- for the year to date are up $800,000 to $2.7 million, and they expect to raise significantly more than last year's record $5.9 million.
That's good and all, but better is that Rutgers appears to be seeing more interest in their academics as well as their football.
"Football builds excitement and interest, but if the academic programs aren't there, the students just won't come," [vice president of enrollment Courtney] McAnuff said. ...
"As soon as they opened the door, the families practically ran across the gym to my table," [30 year recruiter Jan] Rower said of a trip to Coral Reef High School outside Miami in November. "It was fun. Students would talk about the football team to open up a conversation, but the questions quickly turned to academics."
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Sun Nov 19, 2006 at 09:00:49 AM EST
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This year's erstwhile undedeated football record comes on the heels of Rutgers U eliminating their tennis and swim/dive programs.
Without getting into the whole debate about which programs deserve to stay or go (and how much the coaches deserve....or not) I can say this much: tennis and swim programs tend to attract good student/athletes who graduate.
Not sure what kind of talent pool RU expects to pick from after their latest athletic reshufflings. But nixing sports like tennis and swimming sure rule out a lot of bright, athletic New Jersey highschool seniors who would prefer to pay in-state tuition as they head off to college.
There is no doubt that this year's gridiron success has been thrilling to watch, but we should be mindful of what RU is giving up in its relentless persuit of football glory and dollars.
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Sat Nov 18, 2006 at 04:33:36 PM EST
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Rutgers is undefeated and -- it's true -- in the national title hunt, the Giants and Jets are having good years ...
and Juan Melli's very own Princeton Tigers won a share the Ivy League championship today after Yale beat Harvard 34-13. Consider this an open thread for the Ohio State-Michigan and Rutgers-Cincinnati game tonight at 7:45 p.m. [update in itals]
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Thu Nov 16, 2006 at 08:57:14 AM EST
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So, according to this story in the Star-Ledger today, "Rutgers' success on the gridiron has generated awareness of New Jersey's state university across the country." Beyond the initial "Duh" after reading the sentence, you most likely say to yourself, as a proud New Jerseyan, "...and that can't be bad," or something to that effect. Indeed, that's the way the two newspapers that ran stories on the new survey by Opinion Research Corporation frame it. The S-L headline: "A game raises Rutgers' national profile." And in the Asbury Park Press: "A lot more people know Rutgers' name." The headlines are so banal, it's hard to think about what's really going on here. I mean, who could disagree with new puppies?
But the most interesting part of the survey findings seems to work against the hypothesis presented by Athletic Director Robert Mulcahy and other Rutgers officials. They argue that the success of the football team, and the subsequent national recognition, will bring not only cash to the university, but a higher standard of academic learning. It is a hallucinatory pipe dream Mulcahy seems to be having quite a lot lately, in which the main actor, Jane Six-Pack in Anytown, America watches Rutgers on TV, maybe in a bowl game, and maybe she sees one of those ridiculous ads some schools run whilst their football team is playing, and she thinks, "I bet that Rutgers has some kick-ass philosophers/scientists/etc. -- maybe my gifted son/daughter should think about applying!"
So what does the survey say? Find out after the jump.
Cross-posted from City Belt.
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Wed Oct 18, 2006 at 07:00:45 PM EDT
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As a Rutgers University alumnus, I guess I should be thrilled that the Scarlet Knights football team is actually winning games after umpteen years of serving as a ready source of laugh lines for The Sopranos. Time to get my raccoon-skin coat out of storage, break out some pennants and yell boolah boolah fom the stands alongside Mister Magoo — right?
Wrong. The university may finally be winning on the football field, but it’s still punting its responsiblities to its students. A season of gold-plated pigskin doesn’t make up for the tens of millions of dollars squandered in the pursuit of gridiron glory. The fact that some glandular cases get to do the funky chicken in the endzone doesn’t make up for the funding cuts, the tuition hikes, the sloughing off of teaching duties onto grad students, and all the other symptoms of McDonaldization that have followed in the train of the university’s quest to become a big-time player in college sports.
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