Bill Connelly from SB Nation does pretty good work, and here is his early season preview of Rutgers.

It's about what you'd expect, but relatively well-written for this kind of thing.

Click the link, it has the transcript of a very interesting interview on this subject.

Update: out of San Diego, some early projections have the new Big East contract paying all-sports teams $11 million per year. Take that, Brett McMurphy.

New Jersey Senate President Stephen Sweeney, who holds nothing resembling a college or university degree, now has it in mind that the state of New Jersey should circumvent and gut the Rutgers Act of 1956.

This is no less than an open declaration of warfare by Sweeney and his puppet master George Norcross against Rutgers, and therefore, Rutgers should respond in kind. The most disgusting part? Middlesex County legislator Joe Vitale, who should be screaming at the top of his lungs defending Rutgers, is supposedly abetting Sweeney and Norcross in their dirty dealings.

As that Ledger article points out, patronage-minded politicians in Newark and Camden are treating this merger proposal as an opportunity to loot the state university of its prestige and treasure, and this cannot be allowed. Both are still stuck in the moronic, simplistic view of this issue as a zero sum game of local politics, rather than the correct view of an opportunity to strengthen the state university of New Jersey while enhancing the state's life sciences industry.

Rutgers should not stand for it, New Jersey voters should not stand for it, and New Jersey economic heavyweights such as Johnson & Johnson and Merck should not stand for it either. We stand at the precipice of an opportunity to do an enormous, practically unbound level of good for the state economy by returning the illegally, immorally stolen Robert Wood Johnson School of Medicine to its rightful owner in Rutgers University. Yet, all these clowns care about is greasing their palms and looking out for number one.

It's downright pathetic. There is little wonder why New Jersey's higher education is suffering. With politicians like these, how could it not? That's why New Jerseyans need to stand against this horrific attempt to broach the sacred Rutgers Act of 1956, and demand that Governor Christie stand up to George Norcross, do what's right, and only move forward with the New Brunswick portions of the merger while tabling every other proposal.

Update: let's be clear on this - Newark's politicians are just as craven, reprehensible, and opportunistic as Camden's. I guess it's a point of pride that we don't stand for that kind of garbage in Central Jersey, but this is just absurd. This isn't about regional parochialism. It's about the general welfare of the entire state. Someone has to step up and be an advocate for all of New Jersey against these thieves and criminals.

Frankly, Gov. Christie is abdicating his role and responsibility if he does not take a stand against these demands.

Update2: some more on Newark's excessive, outrageous demands.

Quick: when you think of a short-but-powerfully built running back, which names immediately come to mind? On the plus side, there's Ray Rice of course, along with Ray Graham and Joe Morris if you go back a little. Of course, there was also the last "next Ray Rice" in De'Antwan Williams, who many still insist had all the physical tools to succeed.

On paper, Ayres is cut from a similar mode. Think about it like this. Rutgers has a slasher in Jawan Jamison, a workhorse in Savon Huggins, and a sparkplug in Desmon Peoples. If roster balance is the key, you'd think next year they'd go for a bruising back that can run between the tackles, no? Then again, it seemed like for a while in the late aughts, Rutgers just kept signing scatback after scatback.

Brett McMurphy from CBS Sports has a track record of being consistently wrong about pretty much everything Big East - whether it's parroting the talking points of disgraced commissioner John Marinatto, or repeating ludicrous lies that Boise State was poised to stay in the Mountain West.

McMurphy's latest disaster of an article speculates that the Big East next media deal will be flat. Even though it was already below market value in 2005 once the Big East proved that it wasn't total crap after the first ACC raid. Yes, the Big East lost a ton in basketball - it doesn't matter at all for television revenue, considering the conference is a lot better in football. This article might as well be a press release from ESPN.

No, one can never predict who will leave the conference. If the lineup stays the same though, McMurphy will once again to be proven an unquestioning mouthpiece with no willingness at all to vet his biased sources.

First Springfield, and now Madison. Rutgers is suddenly finding football players in areas where it used to only find accounting students. Goodwin only had offers from Big East programs UConn and Temple, so like Anthony Cioffi, he is a bit of an under the radar player (no surprise given his high school.) Still, Rutgers was willing to take him at this point with supposedly higher-ranked players still on the board. The staff has to have seen something that they liked.

Given that Goodwin is a high school RB, his ultimate position is probably still up in the air for now.

It figures - this site has been citing these USA Today reports longer than anyone, and when the full 2011 data finally came out, things have been so hectic that I haven't really had time to look at them in depth until now.

On one hand, it's really good that these numbers are out there as opposed to the fiction that most athletic departments make money. However, that last part cannot be stressed enough. Football drives the bus. When you look at sport-specific breakdowns, as Bloomberg provided last year, the spending problem at schools like Rutgers clearly isn't football. It's everything else.

Rutgers certainly fares very poorly in these rankings, and the reasons are clear. The Big East's television contract is atrocious, which is why Tim Pernetti has no choice but to take direct control of Big East television negotiations. Rutgers also clearly is in the hole of having to make up for lost time in football. Not only do other programs already have decades of fan support to fall back on, but they also likely subsidized facility upgrades during boom years when no one was really looking, while Rutgers is still forced to play catchup for the early-90s expansion that was never completed as originally projected.

The revenue numbers show that Kirk Ciarrocca driving the offense into the ground badly hurt revenue, which is no surprise. Losing, especially losing so egregious, will tend to do that. That goes to show why the Dowlings of the world really are off their rocker. Like it or not, Rutgers has chosen to go down the path of big-time athletics, At this point, the facilities are fixed costs that will exist either way, even though tuition is a pretty big factor too. If you even want to entertain the fantasy that football is the problem rather than too many olympic sports, if football suddenly disappears tomorrow, then the athletic department is in far worse fiscal shape due to those fixed costs still being in place.

Did you really think Chris Christie would turn his back on the guy who has helped Christie pass bill after bill through a minority-Republican legislature?

The only question seemingly remaining is what name the combined institution will take. As always, this blog's position is contrary to the prevailing sentiment - kind of. What is happening to Rutgers-Camden is a tragedy, but considering the re-acquisition of the unjustly stolen UMDNJ-New Brunswick, the deal is still a considerable gain for Rutgers in New Brunswick.

HOWEVER, the merged institution MUST NOT be allowed to bear the Rutgers name under ANY circumstances if it is not fully bound to the Rutgers Board of Governors. Let's face it - the combined Rutgers-Camden/Rowan will be a clown college that will solely exist as a patronage mill for George Norcross. Students and academics will flee in droves as he pillages the university for all resources to prop up his failed and bankrupt medical school, driving the institution into the ground as Norcross has with the rest of his fiefdom in Camden. Given that certainty, the combined institution must not be allowed to sully the independent reputation and academic prestige of Rutgers University under any circumstances. Keeping a foreign entity as part of Rutgers will create a cancer; Rut-Row must be expunged before its sickness and precedent of politics taking precedence over academics can be allowed to spread and cause further damage and decay.

As expected, there was no resolution at QB/RB/TE, but the other spots have some movement.

WR: Brandon Coleman and Mark Harrison are your starters over Wright, Pratt, and Deering. Miles Shuler isn't on the depth chart at all. Can we please redshirt him?

OL: Johnson and Dill as bookend starters were expected, as was Bujari over Hendrikson at C. Alexander is starting RG, while LG looks like Lowery vs. Osei. Matt McBride and Devon Watkis round out the depth chart.

DE: Awww, no Issaka?

DT: Ken Kirksey isn't on the depth chart, but he did miss most of the spring. Currently - Ike Holmes is starting at NT, which means Scott Vallone goes back to his natural 3-technique position. Al Page or Marquise Wright could be the next noses, while Jamal Merrell moves inside to back up Vallone. You wonder if that sticks, or he goes back to DE when Kirksey is healthy. Either way, where does Darius Hamilton fit in in the fall?

LB: Kevin Snyder and Quentin Gause looking good were known commodities. Robert Joseph is the third LB apparently, or at least until Quanzilla gets here (assuming Quanzilla isn't a DE, which is far from a given.) Or maybe Longa?

DB: Waters holds off Warren at SS, with Mase Robinson coming back as the nickel CB. It's Glashen vs. Cooper for the dime back spot, and J.T. Tartacoff against Rashad Knight for backup FS. It'll be nice to see what Tejay Johnson can do in the fall if healthy.

The above story from Brett McMurphy is just pathetic in the way that the quoted sources are blatantly lying. The Big East would have been fine if everyone would have just gone along with Marinatto's below-market value ESPN deal? That's like saying everything would have been fine if everyone just kept kissing Providence's ass, which is exactly what history's greatest monster, Mike Tranghese, thinks we all should have kept doing.

It's 100% true that John Marinatto, inept and bumbling as he was, was merely intended to be a tool for the likes of Providence. How does that make him in anyway a sympathetic figure? He got exactly what he deserved, and so did the Big East for that matter! The guy was given a first and goal and was tackled for a safety.

The question becomes though, why did the basketball schools finally dismiss their puppet who so faithfully did their bidding? Maybe because the writing is on the wall, and they knew that a loser like Marinatto wasn't capable of negotiating with the likes of ESPN and NBC Sports. Still, just because they realized the error of that mistake three years too late doesn't mean that they will suddenly go for a man of vision like Tim Pernetti as the next commissioner. The problem with the Big East is the dead weight, and the likes of Providence won't like hearing that they are the problem holding the Big East back. They are not going to go from the single-least qualified person for the job in Marinatto to the single-most qualified candidate in Tim Pernetti. That's not their style, and the only reason that the possibility is even being contemplated today was because jettisoning the feeble Marinatto was so out of character to begin with.

No, the same idiots who got us in to this mess will never accept Pernetti as commissioner. With any luck though, he will be in charge of negotiating the next conference television deal, if not finding the next league commissioner. Of course, if they had only listened to him a year ago in expanding aggressively, dumping Marinatto, telling Villanova football to get lost, and taking a hard line with ESPN, then the Big East would be in a position of strength today rather than fighting for its life.

It's unfortunate that the Big East didn't do this a year ago when it might have actually done some good, but the ineffective and unqualified John Marinatto has finally been removed from his post. Now is the time for the Big East to purge any remnants of factions loyal to Marinatto/Tranghese/Gavitt. Marinatto should have never been hired in the first place over Kevin Weiberg or Nick Carparelli.

Right now, the Big East's non-football programs to need to sit down, shut up, and get the hell out of the way while real men of action like Rutgers athletic director Tim Pernetti take charge of ongoing television rights negotiations. That's why Marinatto had to go now. You can't have some cronyist nitwit signing off on a crappy deal that would consign Big East football programs to poverty. It's time to play hardball, and whether the non-football schools get lost in the shuffle should be the least of the league's concerns.

Now, if the conference wasn't being run by morons who hate football and making profits, we could have just listened to Pernetti a year ago and not seen the conference thrown into turmoil.

Update: this ESPN report is laughably bad in many respects.

The university's Board of Governors has yet to weigh in though, and this plan may be DOA.

In that sense, the vote doesn't really mean much. As far as Rutgers is concerned, the original plan may well be far better than the new alternative, which would still let George Norcross take over Rutgers-Camden, and would unfairly let the Newark and Camden campuses benefit from their affiliation with the New Brunswick campus without fair compensation.

From the Rutgers perspective, losing Camden is regrettable, but it is worth the loss of a hospital. Having a Rutgers campus not actually controlled by Rutgers is another matter entirely. This could well hold the potential to destroy the academic reputation of Rutgers University. Just imagine George Norcross setting the tenure standards on campus, hiring and firing faculty, giving degrees on a whim to the politically connected, all by fiat. By hook or by crook, Norcross would inevitably use Camden to prop up his indebted Cooper Medical School.

This "compromise" is worse than the original proposal, and is not a compromise in any manner of the sort. In fact, it's a better deal for Norcross, in being able to seize control of the Camden campus, and still have the ability to steal the Rutgers name to launder all manner of misdeeds. The very fact that this is being negotiated proves that the Rutgers name is an invaluable commodity, and is not something that any Rutgers governing body can afford to cede under any circumstances.

As usual, there is a lot of useful information in this article - but it's distorted by a wildly misleading lede. If you look at Bloomberg's own figures (page 25), the vast majority of student fees goes to non-football sports.

The stuff about concessions, future revenue projections, uniforms, etc... is really great though.

As Pernetti says, students get free tickets in exchange for their student fees, and this is a practice that literally happens everywhere, even at big time SEC programs. If you want to be upset about something, be upset about the school's direct institutional support, which, again, largely goes to non-football sports. Not football.

Edit: the claim about each student paying $1000 for athletics is ludicrous too. That assumes that tuition pays for 100% of the Rutgers budget, when it actually is 36%. Using the official Rutgers count of full-time undergraduates, that makes the actual per student contribution to $506. Which is mostly going to olympic sports.

State of Rutgers has a great feature up about who were the breakout players during the spring.

Sorry, was not able to do anything but watch yesterday (no live notes=no recap with no replay available) to do some other commitments.

As expected though, the deck was pretty stacked for the Scarlet team, with most of the upperclassmen on that side - QBs Gary Nova and Chas Dodd shared reps under center. With such a big talent advantage on one side, Scarlet understandably took this one running away. Plenty of starters were sitting out on both sides of the ball recovering from injuries. It was nice to see Brandon Coleman and Mark Harrison catching passes, although they weren't exactly lined up against Logan Ryan out there. The Scarlet defense was similarly impressive against overmatched competition.

Another attraction was the chance to view a revamped OL, featuring Maryland transfer R.J. Dill, and a re-motivated Antwan Lowery. As far as the running game goes, it was more of the same as last year. Savon Huggins has more raw talent than Jawan Jamison clearly, but Huggins's bruising style probably isn't as good as a fit for Kyle Flood's zone blocking scheme as Jamison's tendency to make quick cuts on a dime.

Last year Marcus Thompson was a game standout as a receiving FB, which didn't mean all that much in the end with him soon to switch to DE. This year, Tyler Kroft definitely showed something as a receiving for the white team.

It was nice seeing the younger players in general, with a very young roster finally starting to come of age - DE Ka'Lial Glaud (who strangely enough is already a senior), OL Taj Alexander, and LB Quentin Gause received the three spring practice awards. Some of the other fans were talking up Al Page at DT, although who knows as it is difficult to evaluate line play in real time beyond general trends.

That certainly was unpleasant. It was one thing for Mohamed Sanu not to go in the first round, as he seemed to be universally considered to be grouped together with many other second-tier WRs after Justin Blackmon and Michael Floyd.

To suffer the indignity of falling down to the third round though, to be picked after sleepers like T.J. Graham and DeVier Posey, that is really hard to square. Maybe Sanu isn't the best WR in the draft this year. Are there really ten or more receivers who are better though? Even in a very deep class, the answer is clearly no. Stephen Hill and Brian Quick have very high ceilings, but it should be safe to wager that Sanu has a better chance of contributing than either over the life of his rookie contract.

The Rowan merger may be dead, but Donald Norcross is still trying to seize control of Rutgers-Camden. As reported in the past, the new plan is for Rutgers-Camden to keep its name, but have a governing board solely consisting of George Norcross lackeys.

This is completely unacceptable, and in many respects worse than the Rowan merger. In all likelihood, RU-Camden will still be merged with Rowan down the line with all of its Cooper Medical School debt. The idea of an institution with the Rutgers name not being governed by the Rutgers Board of Governors is a complete non-starter that Rutgers should not agree to under any circumstances.

This is the same crappy deal in a different wrapping. It is in no way a compromise. Norcross is trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes.

Tomahawk Nation reports that Luc will transfer. Kansas State is his rumored destination, but Rutgers is reportedly on his list.

Coach Smith was last seen around these parts hurting Drew Stanton in garbage time and spending his offseason CLIMBING A MOUNTAIN instead of actually prepping for games. Oh, and he's famous for giving ridiculous press conferences too. Rutgers fans can be forgiven if their feeling about this game suddenly became far more optimistic. New Hampshire isn't scheduled for the week after Arkansas this year, right?

To be fair to Smith, he was hired mainly because he was just an assistant to Arkansas the past few years. Also, he's more of a bad coach than a program killing one. Still, there's no way this can go that well for Arkansas. They had to go for a caretaker if they didn't want to take a chance on a C-USA or Sun Belt coach, as many candidates not named Todd Graham wouldn't be available this late.

That seems to be the refrain this spring, with the whole topic essentially being debated to death on the boards and such. The Rutgers defense is looking very good, with the offense not as much. It doesn't help that so many linemen are out at the moment (they had to cut Saturday's scrimmage short due to running out of centers.) That will definitely limit room for Savon Huggins, and hurt Dodd/Nova in the passing game, but is it too much to ask for one definitive breakout performer on that side of the ball?

Probably the biggest negative consequence of all the budget cuts to higher education in New Jersey over the past decade was that Rutgers actively increased the size of its undergraduate student body in New Brunswick, hoping to make up for the difference by collecting more tuition.

This had the side effect however of reducing the university's academic prestige. There are plans afoot to reverse that trend and increase selectivity again (hence, all the fundraising), but it won't be reversed in a year. Rather Rutgers is more likely to slowly tighten the spigot. Hence, the new admissions data from the New York Times shows a slight increase in selectivity from 2011 to 2012. Applications seem relatively flat, but this may not be the final data (which is also an important caveat for selectivity as well.)

Tighter standards are one step of the way forward. Another, unfortunately, is that they need to start playing the US News games. That means aggressively recruiting applicants for the sole purpose of rejecting them (which is a dastardly way of increasing admissions standards), using accounting tricks to appear to have smaller classes, being more aggressive in soliciting even tiny donations from alumni to increase the alumni giving rate, and other chicanery along those lines that are frequently practiced by other universities.