Ohio State Fans Take an Informal Rutgers Pop Quiz
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Despite warnings from Coach Urban Meyer not to take this week's Big Ten opponent lightly, the Ohio State football community flunked its Rutgers pop quiz late Thursday afternoon. Some test scores were zero.
'It's in New Jersey? I didn't know, sorry,' said Adrienne Hennessy, a junior who added she would, as always, be in the student section Saturday at Ohio Stadium, known as The Horseshoe, for the Buckeyes' first-ever meeting with Rutgers. Her face would be painted with her school's colors, scarlet and gray.
Speaking of which, did she want to take a shot at the Rutgers' team nickname?
'Um, is it the Nuggets?'
Scarlet Knights? What a coincidence.
Hennessy was sitting on a bench outside College Traditions, an Ohio State apparel store, where a bronze statue of Woody Hayes loomed over West Lane Avenue and the university's fight song played outside on a loop.
Inside the store, behind a counter, Jamie Thivener, a freshman, said, 'To be honest, I'd never heard of Rutgers until I got my season tickets.'
An older co-worker was of no help. 'I'm an Ohio State fan, glad you're asking her the questions,' she said.
Thivener decided maybe it was 'a girl thing' and the guys would have better luck at distinguishing Rutgers from Valdosta State. But back outside, hit with the nickname question, Josh Paulus, a junior, said, 'I'd guess the Bulldogs.'
Try again, he was told. He shook his head.
'I just don't think the majority of Ohio State fans know anything about Rutgers,' he said. 'We haven't played them. They were in that other conference, the, you know ...'
Yes, the Big East, until it broke up and became a basketball league. Out here, there was never anything big about college football in the East.
At least Steven Politowicz, a senior, had a wider historical view. 'Isn't Rutgers like one of the oldest collegiate programs?' he said.
He nodded when told that it had played in what has been considered the first collegiate football game, in 1869 against Princeton. But asked if he could name a single Rutgers athlete - in football or any sport - he shrugged.
More than a few have played in the N.F.L., but offered a hint about recent infamy inside an elevator, he brightened and said, 'Ray Lewis.' Hooray, close enough (to Ray Rice).
Granted, this was a random sampling, about 20 people, most of them students from Ohio. Rutgers is much better known in State College, Pa., where the Big Ten's Penn State draws many students from neighboring New Jersey. And to their credit, the Buckeyes' fans were more sheepishly than derisively uninformed about this new conference foe.
A few mentions of Paul Robeson, the African-American actor and activist who was an all-American football player at Rutgers in the early 20th century, were met with blank stares. Thankfully, nobody took a wild guess with the name-one-athlete question and figured Chris Christie for an old offensive tackle.
Next door to College Traditions, inside the popular Varsity Club bar and restaurant, a quintet of Rutgers fans, newly arrived from New Jersey for Rutgers' first Big Ten road game, showed little resentment, more resignation.
'When we played Auburn a few years ago, I went down there and it wasn't even, 'Where is Rutgers,' it was, 'What's a Rutgers?' ' said Rick Geiger, 61. 'My favorite is when they ask, 'Isn't it one of those fancy Ivy League schools?' But should we even care what they think?'
His son, also named Rick, 38, recalled youthful days of sneaking in to watch Rutgers football when it did play the fancy schools before surrendering to national profile temptations, for better or (as many taxpayers in New Jersey have argued) worse.
'I have all these pins that say, 'Beat Colgate,' ' the younger Geiger said, essentially asking how much these Ohioans should be expected to know about a program that for decades didn't exactly treat football like the cult it is here and has had only marginal success since converting.
Mark Creighton, 36, said: 'We're going to have to beat one of these big-name schools on the road for people to know us. If we win here, it'll be unbelievable. Honestly, I'm just hoping for a close game.'
Rutgers is a huge underdog, but on his local radio show Thursday, Meyer called the Scarlet Knights 'probably the most improved team in the country,' one blown late coverage in the secondary against Penn State from being 6-0. And Ohio State's Eli Apple, a redshirt freshman cornerback from Voorhees, N.J., said in a telephone interview he has been warning teammates, 'Rutgers is going to come out here with a chip on their shoulder because a lot of people outside of New Jersey don't even know they're a Division I program.'
Apple was heavily recruited by Rutgers, but had been attending Ohio State camps since seventh grade. Asked if he thought Rutgers was compromised because the name did not reflect location, he said, 'I never thought about that, but it could be that people just don't know where it is.'
Stepping out of the Ohio State R.O.T.C. building, James Funk, who had driven into town from 40 miles north for a Navy League meeting, said he wasn't a rabid football fan but knew Rutgers was in the Big Ten 'for the New York market.'
Hence, the conundrum: Rutgers' identity is tied to a place it is only wishfully connected to.
Walking across the street from the football stadium, Mark Bechtel, a medical school faculty member, said he was familiar with Rutgers because, growing up in a small farming community in northern Indiana, his neighbor earned his Ph.D. there.
But did he know where 'there' actually was?
'I do not,' said Bechtel, who appreciated being informed that Rutgers's main campus was in New Brunswick. We left it at that. The question of Piscataway, where the Scarlet Knights play home games, is years away from being part of the quiz.
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