#68 Rutgers

Piscataway, NJ

SHI Stadium

September 16, 2023

Rutgers 35 - Virginia Tech 16 (ESPN Recap)

Fri/Sat double-header of ACC @ Big Ten stadiums concluded with a trip up to Jersey for Rutgers and potentially a Killers concert (would be first ever CFB game and Killers concert double-header). Rented a car from BWI the night before and made the 3 hour drive up 95 and Jersey Turnpike to get to New Brunswick about 3 hours before kickoff. Per Jordan S.’s recommendation, had lunch at the RU Hungry on campus which has one of the most intimidating menus for a sandwich shop. Do you want three appetizers on a philly cheesesteak sub? How about a burger, three appetizers, and cheese sauce on a sandwich? How about instant death? Look at the Fat Delta U and Fat E. LeGrand #52? I was warned this would be a bad decision but one I had to make.

The layout of Rutgers campus wasn’t great for my lunch / hotel / pregame desires. While eating my four meals on a single hoagie, I did notice that there was a lively campus Greek life that looked really fun as a pregame option (if you are 17-22 years old). This was a solid 2-3 miles from the stadium which was one of many reasons, I did not explore further.

Dropped car at hotel and took a Lyft to the game. Rutgers went ALL OUT for the pregame festivities. I don’t know if this is an “every home game thing” or just a special occasion given the 3:30pm start, but they hosted an avenue called The Boardwalk which had food trucks interspersed with free authentic carnival games, a ferris wheel, and paid vendors doing giveaways. This was all surrounded by a massive field and parking lot of tailgating in three directions, which even without The Boardwalk, was a Top 10 tailgating scene I have seen. The problem here is that I really like Carney games and saw this as an opportunity to hone my skills: the water shooting into the mouth of a clown, and in particular, the roll the ball into the holes and move the horsies along the race track (one of my favorites). They also had football toss, mini golf, and a bunch of other things…though the NJ Lotto pop up shop giving up visors and t-shirts but selling scratch tickets and lottery entries had the longest line (more on this later). I had a win rate of ~33% on the carney games, and played enough to notice that track #3 and track #7 have hobbled horses that cannot possibly win. My favorite memory was on my 2nd game of roll-the-ball and first win. I was sitting at seat 11 out of 16. I rolled really well and knew I was going to win. The bell went off and #11 was flashing as the winner, but the 10-year old kid in seat #12 to my right screamed “I won!! I won I won!” and started dancing with happiness. He really sold it. The carney operators gave him my pink plush toy and said congrats. The 8-year old girl in Seat #10 looked at me, to which I said “hmm, I thought I won?” and she said “you did!” I gave away the plush toys I rightfully won to other kids. I almost brought my oldest son to this game and I think we would have ended up just playing games for 5 hours and not actually attend the game.

I eventually got my fix of carney games and walked around. People seemed nice. Lots of Hokie tailgates. Ended up meeting Thomas and Pat who adopted me for an hour. Watched some pretty quality cornhole while not getting a chance to play. They were nice Rutgers grads. The people in the stadium…I am not sure exactly what was going on in there.

Rutgers stadium concourse felt like you were on the Brooklyn bridge architecturally. It had so many different options for food and alcohol. I wish I had written them all down, but there was no open space, just food vendors for real meals. Signs everywhere make it clear “This is New Jersey!”

Apparently, Rutgers is the birthplace of college football in 1869, so thank you for that gift to the world. The people, at least in my section and the two sections on either side of 106, were not nice. I would summarize the majority of their fans as these two guys which I would describe as angry Jets fans. Player on Rutgers does something good: “he’s so good. I love him.” Same player does something bad two plays later. “He’s stinks! He’s a bum! You suck! Go ride the bench!” Ref calls a penalty on Va Tech “ah you suck Virginia Tech!. Calls a penalty on Rutgers “go F yourself ref! You suck! Get your eyes checked!” Rutgers starts to pull away in score “hey can we talk shit to these hicks from Virginia yet? I am ready to say ‘welcome to Jersey’ to them!”’ I am confused as to if they like their own players or not. Not all plays are completions or positive runs.

Oddly, my favorite player this year is Kyron Drones on Va Tech. I planned to come to this game back in June, but as of 5 days ago, had to be talked into going by Jordan rather than to Bama @ USF since Drones was QB2 for the first two weeks of the season. I’m glad I stuck to the original plan as Drones got his first start for VT. It wasn’t a winning start or a dazzling start (fumble on 2nd play and threw a 1H pick), but he looked great in some flashes and won me my 2H TTO 7.0 bet (the U39.5 lost).

There was a 13-yard punt out of bounds in the game by VT (from -37 to 50). Also ran into fellow hometown and Holy Grail Fantasy Baseball friend Tom M and his wife and daughter at the game which was unexpected.

I couldn’t learn the Rutgers chop the student section does, but it looked unique and cool. Today was a “Scarlett-out” where everyone wore Rutgers Red, which sort of blended in with VT Orange and my pink shirt.

Rutgers was up 21-3, scoring with 4 seconds before half on a CLEAR touchdown that was ruled out of bounds. I took a video of the replays before it was overturned just to show readers how bad of a call the initial call was.

The game got close in Q3 as Va Tech rattled off 13 unanswered to bring it to 21-16 and you could finally start to hear the many thousand VT fans start rooting on their squad, but two late Rutgers long runs sealed the deal and kept the Scarlet Knights undefeated.

The 50/50 number at the Rutgers game was north of $62k. In comparison, the Maryland home night game was $11k and last weekend when the entire state of Wyoming went to their game, only $24k. There is a lot of money in the tri-state area…

I didn’t drink all day and rallied to drive 45 mins to Asbury, NJ for the Hear.See.Now music festival. Parked on a random residential street. Walked to box office to find what I suspected: all sold out. Bought a scalped wrist band for $100 and walked in to see the best band in the world.

Long day but fun.

There was a lot of advertising for Rutgers MBA program in-stadium. One caught my eye and said “#1 MBA Program in the Northeast.” Just not sure what they are counting as “Northeast” in that ad because even if they intentionally are excluding New England, there are some NY business schools that are … pretty good. Maybe Northeast Jersey?

While I was at the concert at 9:31pm, I received an email from Rutgers Athletics asking if I forgot something and urging me to buy a parking pass for the game that started 6 hours ago and ended 2.5 hours ago. Sports marketing team should hire a MBA student from Rutgers. I hear it’s a good program.