the rix mix

That ugly noise out of Piscataway NJ today was the sound of the Rutgers football season being smashed to bits by West Virginia, 31 to 3. At this time last year, Rutgers was undefeated. UConn beat South Florida today, emphatically demonstrating that WVU's loss to USF was an upset. So Rutgers falls out of the Top 25, which they will not see again this season. They started the season ranked 16th, got as high as 10, & then couldn't prove they were that good. I didn't set the bar so high, they did. I almost feel sorry for WVU: But for one loss to an over-rated team, they might be #1 now. Rutgers remains "bowl eligible," but frankly, who the hell cares if they play in PapaJohns.com or Meinke Car Care or even get their asses whupped by a PAC Ten or ACC also-ran on national TV? It turned out that WVU was the one school of no-doubt-about-it quality Rutgers had on the schedule, which we sorta knew anyway given that the Scarlet Knights had lost 12 straight to the Mountaineers including a thriller last year that actually won them respect. Bad day on the Old Raritan. You wanna give your love to a team, watch big-hearted losers like Louisiana-Lafayette or Marshall on SportsNet, or suffer with a fallen giant like Notre Dame.

(What pissed me off: After the game, a Rutgers player - not Ray Rice or Mike Teel, who know how to carry the weight of expectations - said, "That wasn't us out there." The kind of delusional statement makes a coach wanna slap him upside his head.)

(I had a terrible pick 'em week. Not that I spend more than 10 minutes making my selections. But I correctly chose Hawaii to score the most points in a game, & got the winner's score right in the Oregon/USC & Arizona St./Cal games, but had the wrong teams winning. )

Labels: Rutgers, sports