Below The Beltway

It didn’t look good for the Scarlet Knights early in the season, but they’ve come on strong over the past six weeks, and they’re headed to their fourth straight bowl game:
If quarterback Mike Teel was disappointed that his Rutgers football team is headed to a lower-tier bowl game, he didn’t show it.
“When you look at [...]

I haven’t written much about Rutgers football this season because, well, there’ hasn’t been much to write about. After three straight losses to start the season, it seemed pretty clear that the glory years of 2006 and 2007 were not to be this time around.
And, yet, quietly, the Scarlet Knights have been playing and winning [...]

With the economy in New Jersey slowing and the football team underperforming, its beginning to look like people are once again questioning the wisdom of trying to build a big-time football program at Rutgers:
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — Ask students like Usha Persaud about the Rutgers football team, and they do not talk about its weak [...]

This season is falling in to a depressingly familiar pattern for the Scarlet Knights:
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — From the banks of the Raritan River to the foot of the Allegheny Mountains, the gloom of unmet expectations has linked Rutgers and West Virginia as both teams struggle to find their footing.
For the Scarlet Knights, Saturday was an [...]

It may have been against a mis-matched opponent, but Rutgers’ first win of the season is nonetheless welcome:
PISCATAWAY, N.J. — Bad weather joined forces with a bad team to keep many fans away from Rutgers Stadium on Saturday. What they missed was their team finally providing a performance that restored some good vibes and lifted [...]

Things aren’t starting out well for the Scarlet Knights:
PISCATAWAY, N.J. — Mason Robinson squirted through the line of scrimmage, found an open spot and thrust up his hands to snag what was no more than a 5-yard pass from Mike Teel. But there was no such thing as an easy play for Rutgers on Thursday [...]

Not an auspicious beginning for the Scarlet Knights:
PISCATAWAY, N.J. — The area beyond one end zone at Rutgers Stadium has been cleared, with piles of dirt shoved to the side by a fleet of stout yellow bulldozers. Construction of a 14,000-seat addition to the stadium is well under way.
It appears, however, that after Rutgers’s season-opening [...]

The Scarlet Knights begin another season on Monday, and how it goes depends mostly on a guy named Mike Teel:
PISCATAWAY, N.J. — All Mike Teel really needed was a couple of weeks off. That would have been enough to give him time to recover from a broken right hand that he said was so swollen [...]

C. Vivian Stringer, the coach of the Rutgers’ women’s basketball team, has become only the third women’s coach with 800 career wins:
PISCATAWAY, N.J. (AP) — The 800-win club has a new member: C. Vivian Stringer.
Stringer joined Pat Summitt and Jody Conradt as the only women’s basketball coaches to win 800 games as No. 4 [...]

I can’t say that I’m surprised by today’s announcement that Rutgers’ Running Back Ray Rice is leaving the school and entering the NFL draft:
Ray Rice’s most productive game in a Rutgers uniform will apparently also be his last.
Three days after Rice ran for a school-record 280 yards in a 52-30 victory over Ball State in [...]