You thought getting a lot of people to wear black shirts was impressive? Rutgers laughs at you.
In anticipation of Thursday night's ginormous game against Louisville, the Rutgers athletic department has arranged it so the Empire State Building, just 45 minutes away in Manhattan, will be lit in scarlet on game night. That's right, the Empire State Building is going to specially lit for a college football game featuring friggin Rutgers.
This may seem like a really cool thing to do for a huge college football game, but all we keep thinking about is Sleepless in Seattle. That probably says something about us (and those of you who know what we're talking about) more than anything.
Jonah always kind of pissed us off. We're assuming
that's ok to say now since he's grown up.
To help ease the previously unheard of demand for tickets, the university has installed bleachers at the open end of the stadium to accommodate about 1,500 more students. About 600-800 of those students camped out overnight for the Tuesday morning distribution of the precious tickets, and were compensated with pizza brought by the soon to be departed Greg Schiano. The 10,500 tickets available to students went in four hours. There will be standing-room space on the hills adjacent to the bleachers, which should swell the crowd to close to a record 44,000. Some have put the estimate even closer to 50,000.
We've gone on record in saying that this will be the most hostile environment that most of these guys have ever played in. Sure the Orange Bowl is intimidating, but Miami fans aren't exacly known for their rowdiness, and sure Morgantown is a difficult place to play, but at the time WVU wasn't even ranked, Louisville was only 19th, and at least a couple thousand fans left at halftime. The cramped quarters at Rutgers Stadium coupled with the minute fact that this is the biggest game the Scarlet Knights have played since they became one of the first two programs to ever play the game in 1869 will make this the toughest place that these kids have ever played since they arrived on campus.