Handing It Down

There once was a day when I used to count victories before a season and hope we could scratch our way to .500 at the end of the day. Now I am dealing with learning to temper my expectations and trying to keep too many people from thinking this team is destined for a bowl, maybe an undefeated season, maybe a national title. Look, in addition to being a big-time Rutgers fan, I have also bled Phillies red for many years, so I know about expectations that can be so lofty that people forget about actually having to play the games. So for me, predictions are nice, but results come from the same breaks that led The Scarlet Knights to 11-2 could have easily been 7-4.

So here I am, in a new type of day where I am tempering my expectation, not hiding my eyes from the upcoming horror show, and I see a new phenomena on the Banks. Guys who fought through adversity (which we have had a multitude of) and know what they did do taste success (which football hasn't had for a long while). A guy like Brian Leonard is the poster child of someone who could sit around a campfire with a piece of straw dangling from his lips and talk about the bad ole days of 1-11. Now there are guys like Ray Rice or Jeremy Ito who are taking young guys under their wings and showing them the right way. And as with any success in the making, it takes a few generations to build up the gene pool so that you produce consistent winners. Not that I am getting all Jimmy the Greek here, but I am talking about the culture of winning that has guys constantly saying things like "The team comes first" or "We still have goals we didn't accomplish" and almost shunning a Texas bowl massacre as not really being all that much of an accomplishment. (I have a slightly off-key version of "born to Run' on a karaoke machine in the middle of a bar that says it was anything but an unsuccessful end to a season).

So as we all learn to deal with this newfound success, let us remember to take notes of how we got here, and try to pass on the new fans who are going to fill the Chophouse, and maybe the often cited 6,000 people on the waiting list, that it isn't always 11-2 and Texas toast. And when someone fumbles on a Saturday, that it isn't time to throw in the ax. We have been building this thing for many years, through all the insults and taunts, and it takes patience and passion to bleed Scarlet. Remeber to hand that down.