A New Ballgame
November 28, 2006 03:44 PM | General
November 28, 2006
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – There was a time not too long ago when playing Rutgers was considered something to look forward to on the schedule. Got a couple of key guys a little banged up? Rest them. Looking for a little bump in your stats? Bring on the Knights. Well, not anymore. Head coach Greg Schiano has certainly taken care of that.
 |
||
| How many can remember an uncovered Chris Henry catching an 83-yard touchdown right before the end of the half in a 34-19 victory over Rutgers in 2003?
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks |
The No. 13-rated Scarlet Knights come into Morgantown this Saturday with a 10-1 record, having ownership of the nation’s No. 3-rated defense. No one – not even Louisville – has been able to consistently move the football on the RU defense for an entire game. Rutgers has been ranked in the Top 25 now for 10 straight weeks – the longest stretch in school history.
“I think we’ve put Rutgers football back on the map,” Schiano said earlier this week. “There have been enough good things that have happened in the last 18 months to get people excited about what’s going on.
“This is an opportunity to win a league championship, which is pretty special – a chance to go to a BCS bowl game,” Schiano said. “The fact that we have that opportunity is important to the development of our program and I think if we can find a way to be successful Saturday than that opportunity is even bigger for us.”
West Virginia (9-2, 4-2) is in the unusual position of taking on the role of spoiler this Saturday against Rutgers. The Scarlet Knights still control their own destiny to a BCS game with a victory over the Mountaineers.
In past years, it was simply a matter of Rutgers playing out another losing season. Thirteen times since the two teams began playing regularly in 1980 Rutgers has come into the West Virginia game with a losing record. Eighteen times the Knights have done so following a loss the week before.
The crowds have been sparse for most of the games, too. The largest crowd to observe a WVU-Rutgers game was 61,336 (63,000 capacity) in 1989 to see the Mountaineers hang on for a 21-20 victory when Rutgers kicker Doug Geisler’s game-winning field goal took a right turn at the goal post at the end of the game. The West Virginia Mountaineer had 'accidentally' fired off his gun just as Geisler’s foot hit the ball.
The largest crowd to view a West Virginia-Rutgers game in Piscataway was 35,079 two years ago when the Mountaineers pulled out a 35-30 triumph. Most of the West Virginia games at Rutgers have averaged between 15 and 20,000 with a low of 11,117 for a 28-3 rain soaker at the Meadowlands in 1990.
Only five times since the new stadium has been open in Morgantown has more than 50,000 showed up to watch West Virginia play Rutgers.
But that won’t be the case this weekend. The Rutgers game has been a sellout for more than two months now and an expected large student turnout should push attendance above 60,000. It’s the first time since the two schools began playing back in 1922 that the game has national implications. It is also the first time since WTBS was doing college football games back in 1984 that the West Virginia-Rutgers game will be nationally televised. That’s a far cry from 1989 when the two schools first joined the Big East football conference and were later morphed into the basketball league in 1995.
And it’s light years from Schiano’s first game against the Mountaineers in 2001 when his team lost 80-7.
“Do you remember how mad you guys were at me afterwards?” Schiano asked the reporters gathered at his Monday afternoon press conference. “We were sitting out in that weight room and I actually said ‘national championship’ again and you guys just about threw your pens at me. I’ve been involved in some lopsided games, on both sides of them -- more of them here on the other side -- but that one was as absurd as any.
“I’m surprised we didn’t get hurt running out of the locker room that day, things were just not going our way.”
“Every single ball bounced our way,” added West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez. “The ball popped up in the air and our guy would get it. I can remember after the game saying, ‘Gosh, I wish some of those lucky bounces would have been spread out over the season instead of it all happening in one game.’
“That was just a blip and we’ve had some success on them since that time but the last several years they have been very tough, competitive games and we know that their program has gotten better,” Rodriguez said.
Rutgers has come so far so quickly that it now has a legitimate national player of the year candidate in sophomore running back Ray Rice, who ranks fourth nationally in rushing averaging 135.9 yards per game.
The school had to insert extra seating in the end zone for the Louisville game on Nov. 9 and there is now talk of one day doubling the size of Rutgers Stadium.
Rodriguez touched on the development of both programs.
“I think we’ve grown nationally from the standpoint of winning our non-conference games. That’s a sign of your program getting better nationally,” Rodriguez said. “I also think that the staffs for the most part at both schools have been stable. The fan bases have grown, the national publicity and the national TV games have grown and I think that is a sign that each program has gotten better.”
Both schools will be showcased Saturday night before a sellout crowd at Milan Puskar Stadium under the bright lights of a national television audience in prime time.
That 2000 WVU-Rutgers game when 16,791 showed up to watch West Virginia pull out a 31-24 double-overtime win over the Scarlet Knights in Piscataway that also happened to be the 200th of Coach Don Nehlen’s career? It's now a distant memory.
