The Rutgers football team lost to No. 8 Penn State on Saturday. The final score was 39-0. Here’s how that fits into a longer list, which includes all of Rutgers’ scoring margins against teams from its own division, the Big Ten East:
Rutgers lost 224-0 this year to Ohio State, Michigan, MSU and Penn State
The Big Ten East is cold and dark, and Rutgers is bad.
Noah K. Murray-USA TODAY Sports
Oct. 1: Ohio State 58, Rutgers 0
Oct. 8: Michigan 78, Rutgers 0
Nov. 5: Indiana 33, Rutgers 27
Nov. 12: Michigan State 49, Rutgers 0
Nov. 19: Penn State 39, Rutgers, 0.
The combined score to date: Big Ten East, 257, Rutgers, 27.
And if you’re the type who wants to compare Rutgers to the historical blue bloods of the division (OSU, Michigan, MSU, Penn State), you get: Them 224, Rutgers, 0.
The Scarlet Knights have one more game to play, next Saturday at Maryland. The Terps have appeared to be the second-worst team in the division, and they’ve also taken gigantic losses against Ohio State and Michigan.
But the consistency and longevity with which Rutgers has been non-competitive is fairly jarring. Rutgers has now clinched being shut out in a simple majority of its own divisional games. The Knights have stayed within one possession in losses to Indiana, Iowa and Minnesota, and they “only” lost by 17 to dreadful Illinois. That those stand out as high points of the season is a positive reflection on exactly nobody.
Rutgers has clinched last place in the East, and first-year coach Chris Ash is still looking for his first Big Ten win at his new school. These are dark times.
I’ll leave you with a screen cap that pretty accurately gets to the state of play.
It was raining, but that’s part of the metaphor, too.
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