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News and links roundup for 7/12

By On the Banks
  • There's no word yet on how Aspire's ticket sales are going for Rutgers, but RU alum Eric Prisbell has the story out of Maryland (another new Aspire client.) The whole piece is worth reading as a basis of comparison to our situation. That's not stopping the Terps from exploring creative revenue scenarios, like moving home games to Baltimore and Landover. The tactic should be a fiscal boon for them, but might hurt their competitiveness when West Virginia, Virginia Tech, etc... fans snap up all the available tickets.
  • Anyone else automatically attribute any leaks out of West Virginia on Big East-ESPN negotiations to the desk of Oliver Luck?
    The new deal, sources say, would have increased dollar signs in the three years left on the deal, then added nine more years at $1 billion.

    The eight Big East football schools (nine starting in 2012-13 when TCU moves in) were said to get $11 million annually in such an extension, with the basketball members about half of that figure. The conference thinkers backed away, however.

    As one recently said, "We have the best college basketball on the planet. We're coming out of the worst football season (in the Big East's 20-year football history), so that's not a position of strength. We would have still been getting about $2 million less (for football schools) than the ACC (per school). We'd still have been sixth of six (BCS leagues) in TV revenue."
  • Facts that are not surprising: last year's UConn team was the worst BCS team ever, and the Rutgers team was one of the most egregious snubs of the BCS era. Notre Dame really, really did not deserve the chance to get clobbered by LSU that year.
  • Jets linebacker Bart Scott will donate the proceeds from his new clothing line to Eric LeGrand. LeGrand is making the rounds, and  is quite talkative these days about his medical progress and living arrangements.
  • Could the New Meadowlands Stadium finally obtain corporate sponsorship?
  • There's a top freshman basketball recruit in Piscataway with designs on staying home you say? When reading that article, did anyone else visualize Mike Rice's eyes bugging out like a Tex Avery cartoon?
  • This article explaining what a profoundly bad idea it is to go to law school also has some very sobering statistics on the long odds facing any NCAA athlete wishing to compete professionally.
    As you go down the ranks, the odds only decrease. NFL players from non-BCS conferences were usually top-tier starters in college, while top-50 law schools typically send only 10-25% of each class to "Big Law". And just as there are always a few DII and DIII players in the draft each year, students from tier 2 and tier 3 law schools occasionally beat out graduates of elite schools for jobs. But "small school" success stories are the best of the best — collegiate All-Americans, the top 1% of their class in law review.
    That's pretty much exactly why recruit should choose a program like Rutgers over a traditional football factory south of the Mason-Dixon line. Everything is stacked against even productive starters in college.
  • Brian Leonard is training at Rutgers, and wouldn't mind re-signing with the Bengals if they're willing to offer a long-term deal. Damaso Munoz is gearing to suit up for Edmonton in the CFL. Kevin Haslam volunteered at a football camp in Mahwah.
  • Hey, what's former Rutgers assistant Joe Susan up to at Bucknell?
  • Player development assistant Marc Bacote is leaving Rutgers for Old Dominion.
  • Is Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany a giant hypocrite?

    • Adopt a national start date in March or April and move the season deeper into summer.

    • Devalue the RPI, which favors Sun Belt schools.

    • Ditch the current method of national seeding and return to regional qualification for the College World Series.

    Absolutely, considering he wants to change the rules to benefit the Big Ten in baseball while at the same time waxing about secession in football and basketball. The latter two are naked power grabs that no one will go for. The first is good (Rutgers fans have debated similar proposals), but will probably lose credibility thanks to Delany's support.
  • New Brunswick is blocking a bar owner from opening an establishment called Buck Foston's. Now only is that name insufficiently clever, but every Yankee fan knows that even contemplating acknowledging the Red Sox as equals is a cardinal sin.
  • Rutgers will set its 2011-2012 tuition later in the week.
  • While Rutgers awaits news on a possible UMDNJ merger, the medical school received a respectable bond rating recently. That's a double-edged sword for Rutgers. University Hospital in Newark is weighing down UMDNJ's fiscal books, which is ample ammunition for New Brunswick-centric partisans that want to stop diverting their funds to subsidize other hospitals, and instead rejoin Rutgers (if only for all of the countless immediate benefits from resource pooling.) Newark being such a relative albatross compared to the carrot of New Brunswick is all the more incentive however for UMDNJ's administrators to deny RWJ-NB's overwhelming sentiment towards re-unification.
  • Fairway is coming to Passaic County. Boo! Too far north.