Let Them Eat Pigskin
July 21, 2008
As I’ve said before, I preferred the days when the big-time Rutgers University football program was providing fodder for jokes on The Sopranos. It’s not that I have a special animus against football, but because the Scarlet Knights managed to become slightly less of an embarrassment after decades of floundering, too many people are ready to overlook the Enron-level accounting and origami-style logical twists needed to make this pigskin-lined money sink look like a real asset to the university and the state.
This Star-Ledger cartoon puts it nicely, but if you need some more information, check out the Rutgers 1000 site, which highlights the steadily mounting expense of the planned expansion of the Robert E. Mulcahy Ego Emporium and Fiscal Fiasco Forum Rutgers Football Stadium in Piscataway. In the past I’ve thought that the image of the Big Time Football Program should not be a knight but Mister Magoo, all nearsightedness and blissful ignorance as he staggers down George Street in his racoon-skin coat.
Nowadays, I’m more inclined to think the program’s mascot should be Count Dracula, dribbling red ink as he sucks away more and more resources from a university that needs to remember its responsibilities as an educational institution, not a welfare program for gridiron groupies.
