Good lord. Did you just use the WNBA as a reason for low fan support for Rutgers football? It's like people in Cali always making excuses for half filled stadiums and talking about the beach and mountains. Yeah, not even 60,000 people that aren't at the beach or mountains 6 Saturdays in the fall.
The excuses are unreal. You know why we have unmatched fan support? Because we don't make lame ass excuses and we make it a priority to attend games. Everyone is busy. Some just have different levels of priority.
You are absolutely correct in saying Liberty fans have no impact on RU football. Probably none of the 10 -12 k people who go see the Liberty play are skipping RU to go, and they are almost never in completion at the same time anyway. I was just mentioning pro sports teams currently playing. Could have thrown in hockey ( Devils, Flyers, Rangers and Islanders) or NBA (Knicks, Nets and 76’s) and Redbulls soccer but didn’t because they are not currently playing.
As an aside, I did take my granddaughter in to see the Liberty this summer. Tickets, tolls and parking wasn’t cheap.
I assume for many this weekend Mets/Phillies and Yankees playoff games will trump college football for viewers.
Anyway, aside from competition with other sports college football culture in NJ is very different than Nebraska (and I’m an expert on N since in 1960 I was there for an hour or so driving thru the NE corner to go from IA to SD (actually my dad was doing the driving). Even though Rutgers was charted about 100 years before Nebraska and played in the first college game about the same time as Nebraska got its charter, Rutgers was a small private college until the mid 1940’s - NJ did not have a state University. It was the states land grant college. Through legislative acts in the mid 40’s and 50’s it became the state U.
Rutgers was still overshadowed athletically by Princeton which is only 1/2 hour away. While Nebraska was playing big time football, RU was participating I something called the Little Three (RU, Lafayette and Lehigh), playing and losing more often than not to Princeton every year and playing schools like Columbia, Colgate et Al. Not games to attract National or even local tv. They were playing in a small stadium built in the 30’s as a WPA project. No reason for any NJ folks not affiliated with RU to care.
Prior to going “bigger” time RU had a couple of chances to go to bowls when they had undefeated teams once in the 60’s when President wasn’t interested and in 76 when they declined to go because they felt they deserved a better bid.
If you’ve not been bored to death and made it this far, one point about BTN , tv viewers and RU invite to B1G, not only does RU bring in NYC/NJ fans to the network it also ads lots of alums from other schools who live in the area. Lots of MI, PSU, MSU, MD etc fans live and work here (got to admit I don’t know of many Nebraska fans tho). NJ has long exported students to out of state schools including a few football players to you folks.
Two more asides: it will prob ly take about 10 years total attendance for RU volleyball to equal your one game record attendance and the few RU fans I know who ever ever been to NE games consider Cornhuskers fans to be nicest in the league.
Anyway, thanks for getting this far, I will now shut up and drop the subject, here’s hoping that I am happier with today’s results than you are
rutgers.rivals.com
