Sometime around 1:30 p.m. this Saturday, a play-by-play announcer in Annapolis, Md., will utter the following words, "Here come the undefeated Rutgers Scarlet Knights."
This phrase -- in the minds of college football fans -- would be classified as an oxymoron in the English language, right up there with jumbo shrimp and Pac-10 defense.
But that is where Rutgers stands, 5-0 after slipping by South Florida 22-20 last Saturday. The victory shows a vast improvement, but still nowhere near a conference title.
Yet, that doesn't seem to bother Rutgers head coach Greg Schiano, the newly crowned savior of the program. During his post-game press conference, he spoke about something not heard in North Jersey for a while: Fun.
"That's why you're in it," Schiano said to ESPN.com. "I told the kids that's why you play and that's why you coach. This is fun. It wasn't always pretty, but we played hard for 60 minutes."
In New Brunswick, N.J. (the birthplace of college football), a whole generation of Scarlet Knight fans had been born since Rutgers football actually mattered nationwide. The Knights had become an automatic win, an afterthought, on every prestigious team's schedule. So fun had not been a word in the faithful fan's vocabulary for many years.
That was until a brash young defensive coordinator from Miami was named the new leader of a dying program.
Schiano's tenure began like his predecessor at Rutgers: He won less than three games in his first two seasons.
But he was able to do something those coaches were unable to do: He recruited well.
After the 2002 team finished winless in the Big East for the second straight year, something strange was brewing as Schiano's inaugural recruiting class finished its first year.
Momentum began to carry through the program as he doubled his career win total over the next two seasons -- from three to nine -- and last season the Knights finished 7-5 and played in their first bowl game since the Garden State Bowl in 1978.
Sure, there have been lightning-in-a-bottle-type seasons before, but the Knights always became a laughing stock again the very next year.
But something is different this season.
The Knights are ranked in the top-25 for the first time since 1976, their last undefeated season.
So believe it or not, Rutgers football is back. Because Schiano used a strategy he probably learned from his former boss, ex-Miami head coach Butch Davis, and recruited speed within the tri-state area (Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey) -- his home base -- and as the old saying goes, "you can't teach speed." His duo of running backs, senior Brian Leonard and sophomore Ray Rice, are the main cogs in the simple machine that is Rutgers. Rice's speed alone has brought respectability back -- he's projected to finish 66 yards shy of the 2,000 yard benchmark -- and he might, pardon the pun, run into the Heisman Race.
Speed and Rutgers -- another extinct oxymoron.
Game of the Week
This was supposed to be the second of three top-5 matchups this season, but no one told Arkansas it had to cooperate.
After the Razorbacks dominated Auburn last week, the significance of the Tigers' game against Florida sunk faster than Florida State's season. But on a weekend where the next best matchup may be Rutgers-Navy -- that is not a misprint -- the loss of significance doesn't effect the game's GOTW status.
As recently as four days ago, this game looked like it would be a repeat of Auburn's game of the year battle with LSU, now I would be surprised if Auburn can even win this game.
For Auburn, Kenny Irons is the only player on the field that has the ability to single-handedly win the game for the Tigers. Irons has a disappointing rushing total, 548. Sure, that's a little under five-yards-per-carry, but for the skills he has, he should be averaging a yard more. That is why he has the chance to explode for 200-plus yards on Saturday and carry the Tigers to victory. Will he do it? Probably not.
The edge goes to the Gators because of their two-quarterback combination, which has shown the ability to be something special. Backup quarterback Tim Tebow's ability to run the football, as well as throw the ball, has allowed the freshman to look eerily like a former Urban Meyer quarterback -- 2005 No. 1 pick in the NFL Draft, Alex Smith. Even with the two-quarterback system, senior Chris Leak will still handle the majority of the passing while Tebow will handle the option parts of Meyer's offense. The combo should be enough to give Auburn headaches all day.
Florida 28, Auburn 17
