Yea that was impressive. In college basketball dude can oftentimes carry a program, but with two of the best players in the county they still weren’t a winning squad. It does make me wonder how their recruiting could be and results so bad.
Historically Rutgers has been good at women’s soccer too, with a couple final four runs and a few Olympic gold medalist alumna. But yeah…outside of those mentioned and maybe field hockey, it’s pretty grim
My analysis is specific to their sports and nothing to do with their academics, which are strong in many areas and majors.
Small state school in an area with very minimal football talent outside of a few private catholic high schools and nobody cares about college sports in the northeast. Pro leagues dominate there.
Rutgers is also stuck in a conference where they are destined to finish bottom third every year and dont have the rich alumni base nor donor money to support NIL. Sure they may have 1 year every 6-8 where they have a few upsets and maybe go 8-4 but thats likely their ceiling if they schedule easy OOO games.
A 5 star recruit out of Parasmus or Bergen/Don Bosco isnt going to Rutgers...like ever.
Its unfortunate but Rutgers gets more money being bottom of the big 10 then they would being middle of the pack in say the ACC.
Source: Born in LA, spent half childhood there and half in brooklyn/northern jersey, played jersey high school football
Well said. NJ still has good football talent and is the 11th most populous state. The major issue as you noted is that none of them want to go to Rutgers. Historically, PSU, Notre Dame, Nebraska, BC and certain other Big 10 schools recruited NJ hard, and that’s still the case.
I from Eastern PA and played colllege football and knew a few guys that played at Rutgers (25 years ago). Back then Rutgers beat out basically no FBS schools for players except Temple. The typical recruit that chose Rutgers picked them over FCS offers and Temple, and it’s only improved marginally since then.
Is this something to do with the multiple campuses? Admittedly I am pretty ignorant to Rutgers as a whole so I am asking this earnestly. From what I can tell their athletics are all at the New Brunswick campus and wikipedia says they've got nearly 44k students. What am I missing?
My bad I meant small as in small impact within the region, not small as in student pop size. Bad choice of wording on my part.
It just doesnt have the sports history, tradition, or culture there for anyone to truly ever want to go there. Their best basketball season was a 1976 final four appearance and their best football season was 2006 with Ray Rice where they went 11-2 and beat Kansas state in the Texas bowl or something.
Even local boys dont want to stay at home and if theyre local and catholic and penn state doesnt get them then boston college or notre dame will.
1.0k
u/SiphenPrax Rutgers Scarlet Knights Sep 04 '26
After 22 months, UMass has won a football game.
LOfuckingL Rutgers. What an absolute fucking disaster of a home opener.
Reminds me when my stupid Jets gave the fucking Cleveland Browns their first win in almost 21 months.