All Entries Tagged With: "Rutgers football"
Miami Receiver Verbals To Charlie Strong
Home is where the heart is.
Michaelee Harris, a talented Miami Northwestern High School wide receiver, once told a sportswriter that he had always been a University of Miami football fan.
“I would be kidding you if I didn’t say that the Hurricanes weren’t my top choice,” he said. “It would be a dream to play at home, with people I know, staying close to family.”
That was last spring, before anyone envisioned Charlie Strong leaving Gainesville and the University of Florida to accept the head coaching job at the University of Louisville.
Harris, a four-star recruit by major scouting services, has made a verbal commitment to play football at Louisville, choosing U of L over offers from Miami, Kansas State, Mississippi, Mississippi State, West Virginia and Rutgers.
Strong is obviously one incredible recruiter, making a convincing case for Harris to become a part of his new football family. Louisville fans are eager to make him feel right at home.
Big East Split Inevitable Over Football
No surprise the Big East is again in the unenviable position of having members targeted by other conferences. The Big East leadership has done nothing to resolve the major issues in football scheduling, forcing member schools to fend for themselves.
The inability to recognize that football is the key to securing the future probably stems from its founding as a basketball conference in 1979. The conference didn’t even include football competition until 1992 when Rutgers, Miami, Virginia Tech, West Virginia and Temple joined Boston College, Syracuse and Pittsburgh. UConn was in the process of moving up to Division 1A.
The biggest mistake was probably the rejection of Penn State in the early eighties when the conference picked Pittsburgh instead. Penn State football coach Joe Paterno would lobby hard for an eastern conference with many of the same members but he was rebuffed, ultimately joining the Big Ten.
Because of the Big East's inertia, there is no move the conference could make that would prevent any other BCS league from taking its lunch money.
While the lack of vision may have been a good thing for Louisville, making it possible to join the Big East, the failure to be proactive in resolving the football scheduling issues is not. The potential for football revenue (and losses) is much greater than for basketball. The revenue produced by the cellar-dwelling football teams in the Big Ten and the Southeastern Conference is comparable to the top Big East teams in both football and basketball.
Because of the Big East’s inertia, there is no move the conference could make that would prevent any other BCS league from taking its lunch money. It’s as if the university presidents, who really make the decisions, are unable to grasp the significance of the issue, or they are so helpless and inept that they prefer to wait until another conference forces them to do something.
As a result, a conference split between the basketball and football schools appears inevitable. However, the lineup of members of the new football conference may not faintly resemble the current one.
Louisville Football Needs Bigger Big East
By Paul Sykes
Watch your back.
The Big Ten Conference is officially looking to expand again, with the aim of increasing its ranks to 12 schools. The reasons are obvious: An annual conference football championship game and more green for its already bloated coffers.
Missouri, Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Rutgers are the schools most often mentioned as possibilities. Louisville has been included in the field by the Chicago Tribune. Even Cincinnati, with the most fickle fans in the nation, has been floated as a candidate.
Notre Dame is not in the picture this time, having consistently resisted conference overtures. The superiority complex doesn’t help either, nor does the fact that the football program is losing its luster. The Knute Rockne tradition can only get you so far when losing has become a habit.
'The best argument for Louisville would be basketball where U of L is consistently ranked as the most profitable program in the nation.'
Great for Louisville to be mentioned among the possible candidates. But the odds of it happening are remote. U of L has it good right now in the strongest basketball conference in the country. On the football side, Big East teams have demonstrated they can hold their own and they have the poll recognition to prove it.
Can you imagine the good old boys at land grant schools like Michigan and Ohio State acknowledging U of L or Cincinnati as equals and welcoming a municipal university into their ranks? Without getting into the academic debate, the best argument for Louisville would be basketball where U of L is consistently ranked as the most profitable program in the nation. The expansion of Papa John’s would be a definite plus.
Perhaps the best thing about the Big Ten’s action is that it may force the Big East to finally become proactive in expanding the number of conference football teams in the conference. The scheduling issues have been ignored too long and are a threat to financial stability.
Schools like East Carolina, Memphis and Central Florida are viable candidates because they take their football seriously. Their fan bases are not insignificant and they would strongly support BCS-level football.
Reasons To Get Out There
Ten reasons to attend the University of Louisville-Rutgers football game at 11 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving Day:
- Football weather, cold, damp, miserable.
- You already have tickets, or you can get them cheap.
- Check on progress of stadium expansion.
- University of Louisville, not Kragthorpe U.
- Game on national television, need fans in stands. Go ahead, wave to the cameras.
- New coach mulling over job, fan support a factor.
- Win a T-shirt at the Budweiser booth.
- Rutgers still in a daze, still puzzled about Syracuse loss, playing at 11 a.m.
- Final game for Trent Guy, Scott Long, Jon Dempsey, Chris Campa, Joe Tronzo.
- Save money avoiding Black Friday sales.
Bonus
- End of the Steve Kragthorpe era.
Rutgers Clicking
by Paul Sykes
Louisville football fans thinking, that by some miracle, Steve Kragthorpe’s kids could become bowl eligible by sweeping their final three games are served notice that Rutgers is rolling again.
Or was Rutgers’ 31-0 route of South Florida just more evidence that South Florida forgets how to play football once it crosses north of the Mason-Dixon line? Or it is, as UC head coach Brian Kelly insists, the overall parity in the Big East? Whatever the answer is, Rutgers will have plenty of motivation when it arrives in Louisville in two weeks.
Rutgers (7-2) grabbed the visitors by the horns and unceremoniously ground them into sausage. RU will likely be 9-2 when it hosts WVU in its final game on Dec. 5th. In their way? Syracuse and Louisville could probably combine their squads and still not beat Greg Schiano’s woodchoppers.
What’s puzzling about last night is that USF (6-3) entered game ranked No. 23 and has one of the most exciting quarterbacks in the game with B.J. Daniels. They have two future NFL defensive ends in George Selvie and Jean Paul Pierre.
