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Go Rutgers!!
NFL?...Whats that?
In Jersey we have something better...it's called RUTGERS!
http://www.aggieathletics.com/d1logo...st/Rutgers.jpg
Last night was like watching the '69 Mets...even better.
Last night, Rutgers University, the birthplace of college football, beat #3 ranked Louisville 28-25 at home in an unbelievable game! Rutgers now leads the Big East and is 1 of only 4 undefeated teams in the country! I still can't believe it! If this is a dream...please don't wake me!
http://www.nj.com/sports/ledger/inde...860.xml&coll=1
Rutgers shocks Louisville
Friday, November 10, 2006
BY TOM LUICCI
Star-Ledger Staff
It's okay for Rutgers football fans to spend all day today pinching themselves. Hard as it may be for many of them to believe, this football season isn't a dream.
But it is becoming a dream season.
Sprinkle in a little destiny with lots of Ray Rice and a defense that rates among the nation's best, and what you get is what the biggest game in school history produced last night: Great theater and another Rutgers victory.
Given a second chance thanks to an offsides penalty against Louisville's William Gay, Jeremy Ito took full advantage by making a 28-yard field goal with 13 seconds left to lift 15th-ranked Rutgers to a 28-25 victory over the No. 3-ranked Cardinals before a record crowd of 44,111 at Rutgers Stadium.
It was the first game-winner of Ito's career and came after the junior initially misfired on a 33-yarder with 17 seconds left. Gay's offsides penalty gave Ito, Rutgers' career record-holder with 48 field goals, another chance to be a hero.
Rutgers extended its best start in 30 years to 9-0 and took control of the Big East race at 4-0.
"I was a little spooked on the penalty," Ito said of his first miss. "I saw the guy jump offsides and that distracted me."
The successful second try capped a rally in which the Knights came back from an early 25-7 deficit, setting off a celebration that saw the playing field engulfed by delirious Rutgers fans.
"The atmosphere out there ... you knew it would be (like that), you just didn't know when," Rutgers coach Greg Schiano said. "It was awesome."
"The students were tremendous with the (white Rutgers) towels," said quarterback Mike Teel, who finished 8-of-21 for 189 yards and did just enough with one TD pass. "The Louisville offense had to deal with them coming down on them all game."
Schiano said he wasn't sure right away that Ito had failed on his first attempt at the game-winner.
"I have the worst view on the field. I said 'Did we miss it?'" he said. "I knew (Gay was offsides). It was right in front of me. So I knew we'd get a second chance.
Rutgers was able to roar back from an 18-point deficit because its defense -- ranked in the top five nationally in six categories -- completely shut down a Louisville offense ranked No. 2 in the country. The high-octane Cardinals, who dropped to 8-1 overall and 3-1 in the Big East, managed just 53 yards and two first downs while being shut out in the second half.
Rutgers sacked quarterback Brian Brohm five times and held him to a season-low 163 yards passing. The Cards, averaging nearly 500 yards of offense per game, finished with 266.
"I thought we did a good job of adjusting (in the second half)," said Schiano. "We did some things pressure-wise in the second half (that) takes smart kids. It takes committed kids. It was good."
Rice, meanwhile, rushed for 131 yards and two touchdowns on 22 carries, with his 4-yard run and the ensuing 2-point conversion getting Rutgers within 25-22 late in the third quarter
Ito's 46-yard field goal pulled the Knights even at 25-25 with 10:13 to play.
"It's a tough loss for us," Louisville coach Bobby Petrino said. "I felt like we were in good shape at halftime and we came out in the second half and didn't move the ball offensively. We weren't able to generate anything."
The Cardinals had their way for most of the first half in racing to a 25-7 lead that included a 100-yard kickoff return by JaJuan Spillman. Rutgers, though, chipped away at that with an 18-yard touchdown run by Rice -- set up by a 67-yard pass from Teel to freshman Kenny Britt -- to get within 25-14 with 4:59 in the first half.
The second half belonged to the Knights.
"We stuck by our motto of 'chop, chop, chop,'" defensive tackle Eric Foster said. "Brohm is a hell of a quarterback, he can expose a defense, but coach Schiano did a great job helping us out the whole game."
Louisville is the highest-rated team Rutgers has ever beaten.
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Re: Go Rutgers!!
This is from the local paper...I had no idea that they even bathed the empire State Building in scarlet lights last night as a tribute.
This whole thing is overwhelming. I've been a long-suffering Rutgers fan and this is like a Hollywood movie about underdogs!
http://thnt.com/apps/pbcs.dll/articl...611100430/1001
History on the banks
Home News Tribune Online 11/10/06
By RICK MALWITZ
STAFF WRITER
rmalwitz@thnt.com
RUTGERS — The feel-good story of the college football season got far better than any Rutgers fan could have imagined, when the Scarlet Knights defeated Louisville 28-25 last night.
After falling behind by a 25-7 score, Rutgers rallied to defeat Louisville, who came here rated third in the nation and on a path to play for the national championship.
Instead 15th-ranked Rutgers, which has been playing football since it challenged Princeton in 1869 in the first college football game ever, can dream an impossible dream, and perhaps replace Louisville in the title game.
A 28-yard field goal by Jeremy Ito with 13 seconds remaining sent Rutgers to its ninth straight win of the season.
Following a kickoff and a lone play from scrimmage by Louisville that ended with a sack of quarterback Brian Brohm, a riotous celebration unfoled, the likes of which has never been seen here.
As the clock wound down to :00 it appeared as if a majority of the record crowd of 44,111 stormed the field, and they seemed prepared to stay all night.
And why not? At the birthplace of college football nothing like this has happened in 137 years. Rutgers could play another 137 years before experiencing a win such as this one.
Among the tens of thousands of fans who were in place in front of their tailgate parties were fans who hoped for nothing less than this improbable victory.
"People don't expect a moral victory," said Highland Park native Ray Meyers, a member of the Class of 1979 who flew from his home in Los Angeles Wednesday night for the sole purpose of attending the game.
"When you're 8-0 you want a victory," he said.
In addition to an unprecedented ticket demand, more than 300 media credentials were granted, and the telecast on ESPN was expected to draw in the neighborhood of 5 million viewers.
The game concluded shortly after 11 p.m. It is certain that viewership peaked — except for those who may have turned the set off when Louisville jumped to a 25-7 lead.
Allowing how nothing like this has happened in the 137-year history of Rutgers playing football, about 300 former players were given passes to rim the field.
In tribute to the Rutgers Scarlet Knights, the lights atop the Empire State Building were bathed in scarlet lights. The electronic signs on the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway had the message: "Go Rutgers."
"We did it for the four people left in the state who didn't realize Rutgers was playing Louisville," said Turnpike spokesman Joe Orlando.
The meeting last night was best appreciated by fans of Rutgers, for whom long-suffering has been an understatement.
As he has been doing for more than 20 years Jim Malkiewicz of Forked River was the first person to establish his tailgating position in the yellow lot — a position he has been known to claim as early as 5 a.m. for games that begin at noon.
A Sayreville native, Malkiewicz was a reserve on the 1976 Rutgers team that completed an 11-0 season with a regionally televised win over Colgate — when media coverage of college games could be described as quaint.
"This is a first for all of us. Holy Mackerel, pinch me," said Malkiewicz, who suggested the amount of people surrounding Rutgers Stadium five hours before last night's kickoff was typical of total attendance at games during that quaint era.
Bob O'Neil of Whitehouse Station, a tailgating partner of Malkiewicz's, said his job typically has him on the phone with clients across the nation.
"For the last month or so, whoever I call — L.A., Chicago — people say something to be about Rutgers. One person said, "Don't you realize you're America's team.' Everybody loves the underdog."
For certain, Rutgers earned its underdog label, with a string of football failures, losing by scores of 61-0, 50-0 and 80-7 in 2001, coach Greg Schiano's first season at Rutgers.
This year it has become part of the national-championship conversation, and its fans adopted scarlet long before it caught on at the Empire State Building.
Meyers, who owns a software business in California, said acquaintances there have spent the fall congratulating him on Rutgers' success. "It's almost an out-of-body experience," said Meyers, who joined a tailgate party that began yesterday at 11:30 a.m.
Bob Burzichelli, a 1981 graduate, and host of a massive tailgate gathering with 500 cheeseburgers and 500 hot dogs ready for the grill, explained how he works as an attorney in New York, and for the first time in memory Rutgers' gear is fashionable in Manhattan.
"I'm stunned by the reaction in New York," said Burzichelli, who is convinced "the roots are in place for this (success) to continue."
The earliest arrivals yesterday were students who began gathering outside the stadium at 7 a.m. They would wait outside the stadium until shortly after 5 p.m., when they made mad dashes to the front of the student section.
Joe Butewicz, a sophomore from South River, was up at 5 a.m., to allow him time to paint his face red and black, his chest red, and get dressed in his red cape and shorts.
His arrival was delayed while he attended a class in macroeconomics. "It was hard for the professor to teach, looking at me," said Butewicz.
Melissa Edwards, a senior from Shrewsbury, was up until 3 a.m. yesterday, decorating a sign, designed to be seen on ESPN, with the message: "Stick It To Em Like Rice On White." It was her tribute to All-America candidate running back Ray Rice.
One of the first students in line was Cory Ershow, a freshman from West Orange, who has been coming to Rutgers' football games since he was 3.
Ershow's father, his grandfather and his great-grandfather graduated from Rutgers. "I suffered through the drubbings," he said.
But, he said, he was at the stadium for the 2002 game when Rutgers led Miami through three quarters, and the 1992 Halloween game when Rutgers defeated Virginia Tech, 50-49.
By many accounts the person most responsible for the success is Schiano, who took a break in his workday yesterday to appear on WFAN-AM's "Mike and the Mad Dog" sports-talk show broadcast from outside the stadium.
Schiano drew the loudest applause after he was asked if he might be tempted to accept a high-profile coaching job elsewhere.
"This is the place I want to be," he said.
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Re: Go Rutgers!!
