 "Photo: John Pena / Senior Staff Photographer")
This is why you don’t leave football games early.
A missed field goal by Pittsburgh with just over two minutes remaining gave the Rutgers football team a chance to tie the game.
Too bad half the fans that even bothered to show up to Rutgers Stadium Friday night in the first place didn’t get to see what could have been true freshman quarterback Tom Savage’s defining moment as a Scarlet Knight.
“We didn’t play perfect, and [Pittsburgh] found some holes,” Rutgers head coach Greg Schiano said. “But this team fought to the very end.”
How’s this for a change: There was a very important football game on a Friday night in Piscataway. It was blistering cold, there was a steady rain and the Yankees and Phillies both happened to be playing playoff games on the same day.
Here’s the funny part.
The students showed up. The rest of the fans didn’t.
For once.
The official count of 50,296 tickets sold had to be inaccurate. The actual attendance was probably more in the 35,000-range. For a game that marked a return to Big East play for a 4-1 team at home on a Friday night, it just doesn’t make sense.
The students were their usual awful selves, with more than half not showing up until midway through the first quarter and a good amount, though less than usual, leaving shortly after halftime. I guess the fraternity parties opened their doors shortly after 11 p.m.
They continued to stay quiet when they should be on their feet and scream when they shouldn’t be, even starting an RU chant when the Knights were on offense.
They were mid-cheer when Savage threw the first interception of his college career!
But they were there. The “old guard,” as they liked to be known as, was not. Rows upon rows of empty benches littered the stadium despite tickets being nearly sold out for weeks for a primetime ESPN showdown that made RU look pathetic on national television.
It’s got to the point where people just don’t care anymore, and it’s disgusting since it’s just three seasons removed from the euphoric 2006 campaign.
It appears there has to be two stipulations for RU fans to show up to games: Good weather and a red-hot team. One iota of mist and the yellow ponchos and off-color umbrellas come out, and if the temperature drops below 60 degrees … well, we’re looking at an attendance figure that Terry Shea would be proud of fielding.
I walked through the student section in the second half against Florida International. One student was yelled at by a mother sitting with her two young children in the new south end zone because he yelled an expletive when RU was on defense.
Seriously.
First of all, the kid is supposed to yell when the Scarlet Knights are on defense — that’s how football works. Secondly, if you don’t like the language going on at the game, don’t take your young children or don’t sit in the student section. You shouldn’t be there to begin with.
It has got to the point where students and paying ticket holders alike have forgotten why RU is a successful football program in the first place. After the first quarter, where the “Knights in the NFL” montage comes on, there are only four players that get audible cheers anymore: Brian Leonard, Kenny Britt, Ray Rice and Shaun O’Hara, which is just because he plays on the New York Giants.
Courtney Greene? Eric Foster? Tiquan Underwood? Mike Teel? Jeremy Zuttah? All the above were on the 2006 team that won the Texas Bowl, the 2007 team that won the International Bowl and three were on last year’s team that won its third postseason game in a row.
All got a polite golf clap at best.
How soon we forget.
I’ve written one of these columns for three seasons in a row, and it never changes. People continually fail to show up and show inexcusable support. My thought is still the same as it was in 2007.
RU fans are among the worst in the country.
— Matthew Stein accepts comments and criticisms at steinma@eden.rutgers.edu
16 comments
The administration deliberately delayed a public forum on the stadium until after the plan was approved. But when the forum was held the line of students, crew, swimming, fencing and other cancelled sports team members speaking against the new stadium was out of the door for over 2 hours.
Men's Football is not an inclusive use of so much money, a project which went way over budget. Meanwhile great retiring professors are not replaced, students lacking housing are bussed from hotels, and the libraries are starved.
Schiano should be ashamed, McCormick should be replaced and this University should prioritize its STUDENTS and not a few dozen atheletes of just one sport when the budget is lacking.
You made a serious logical error in saying that Stein confuses his points. He actually doesn't. Trying to relate how parents shouldn't bring their kids to the student section isn't related to people (the ones that cheer) leaving the game early. Your arguement is invalid.
If the Stein wrote about positive encouragement, you and people like you, would make an argument based on questioning his journalistic integrity and whether he is an agent of the athletics department.