In between the coachspeak coming out of Tampa, USF DC Wally Burnham did give his honest assessment of RU's passing game:
"No doubt, he is hot as a firecracker," Burnham said. "He's done a great job. They don't do a whole lot of different routes. They do a lot of formations, but they run the same stuff. Every time it's the same reads, and every once in a while he throws it to (receiver Kenny) Britt as far as you can throw it. They've changed a bunch from what they were last year, when it was Ray Rice, Ray Rice."
Damaso Munoz will start in place of Manny Abreu at SLB on Saturday.
Hackensack high borrowed the on-campus bubble yesterday. I have to wonder what was going through Malcolm Bush's head during practice.
Jerry Carino is reporting that Corey Chandler will be back in action against Marist tonight at the RAC. I also thought it was interesting that the Shoe is bringing on former RU FB target Jason Simmons as a walk-on.
Are the Knights ready to run tonight at the RAC? It's a doubleheader, as the women square off with St. Joe's at 5.
Syracuse's Mikhail Marinovich (brother of Todd) has found one way to pass the time during the season.
I saw this rather off-putting link at Pitt Blather yesterday, wherein ESPN put out a casting call for one of their college basketball promos, with a script reinforcing various stereotypes. I shudder thinking about what they would have come up with for Rutgers, but won't it be great when RU basketball is in a position to be made fun of for the right reasons?
Speaking of sins of omission (as opposed to direct shots), a couple posters on Rivals are upset that ESPN's Gregg Easterbrook didn't give RU a shoutout in his recent column in which he wondered whether any of the success of the New York Giants can be attributed to attending schools with good academic backgrounds. This does sting a little, because RU alum and starting NYG Center is widely-regarded as one of the savviest players in the league. Rutgers DOES have a good academic background (and still has a good reputation in academic circles), even if its prestige has been lowered by poor decisions, loose admissions standards, and a general lack of financial resources. As an Easterbrook column said four years ago:
"There's a clear benefit to the top fifty or so colleges," she says. "Connections made at the top schools matter. It's not so much that you meet the son of a wealthy banker and his father offers you a job, but that you meet specialists and experts who are on campus for conferences and speeches. The conference networking scene is much better at the elite universities." Hoxby estimates that about three quarters of the educational benefit a student receives is determined by his or her effort and abilities, and should be more or less the same at any good college. The remaining quarter, she thinks, is determined by the status of the school—higher-status schools have more resources and better networking opportunities, and surround top students with other top students.
"Today there are large numbers of colleges with good faculty, so faculty probably isn't the explanation for the advantage at the top," Hoxby says. "Probably there is not much difference between the quality of the faculty at Princeton and at Rutgers. But there's a lot of difference between the students at those places, and some of every person's education comes from interaction with other students."
As a fellow of the Brookings Institution and accomplished writer, Easterbrook should be well aware at this point of the dangers of making spotty overgeneralizations (yeah, that was a cheap shot, sue me).
To be honest, I didn't get worked up really by any of these, but I will never pass on an opportunity to get on my soap box and demand better from Rutgers. It's easy to do that from the school administration. If RU fans don't like that the school isn't prestigious enough, or if they don't think the football team is good enough: I say, put your money where your mouth is and open your wallet.