The Knights Watchman

Scarletknights.com  has posted the official press release  naming making it official that Kyle Flood has hired Jim Panagos to coach the defensive line. With Panagos's hiring, the football staff is complete. Aside from his impressive credentials, Panagos is a native of East Islip, New York, and has multiple ties to the NJ/NY area. Welcome and congratulations Coach Panagos!

Jordan Thomas, Rutgers' leading rusher for the 2010 season, who had switched to defensive back last year, is transferring to SUNY Binghamton to run track. This is according to a tweet from Jason Baum, RU Associate AD Communications. Thomas was also a key contributor on special teams, returning 16 kickoffs last year. Thomas ran and played hard during his time at RU. A true speedster, I'm sure he'll do well upstate. Good luck to you, Jordan.

Scarletknights.com has posted a press release  announcing that Rutgers football will be heading to Fayetteville, Arkansas, to take on the Razorbacks on September 22. Next year, Arkansas will head north to visit Rutgers on September 21, 2013. It's exciting to see that some more big-time competition will be heading to the banks, and you have to commend the ADs for both schools for putting this match-up together on such short notice. One of the things that hurts the Big East schools each year is a lack of top-flight competition in the out-of-conference schedules. This is a step in the right direction. Ideally, I'd like to see RU take on an ACC, Big Ten, and SEC opponent each year and a Pac-10 opponent every couple of years. Beating some of those schools is the only way to put the reconfigured Big East in the same conversation with the more high profile football conferences.

Scarletknights.com  has posted an official press release  confirming the hire of six of the rumored coaches. Follow the link for mini bios on the six coaches. On the offensive side: Dave Brock will serve as the Offensive Coordinator and Receivers coach. Darnell Dinkins will serve as tight ends coach Ben Sirmans will coach running backs Rob Spence will coach quarterbacks Damian Wroblewski will coach the offensive line For the defense, Dave Cohen will coach linebackers. In addition three other coaches have been elevated to new positions: Robb Smith will become Defensive Coordinator Phil Galiano is now the Special Teams Coordinator Jeremy Cole has been lifted to strength and conditioning coach, pun intended. Good luck to all of the new coaches and those in new assignments!

Soaring to Glory ,  a Boston College sports blog, had reported that their defensive line coach, Jeff Commissiong is leaving BC to take the same position at Rutgers. But since then that story has been retracted by many news outlets. Commissiong has also previously coached at Maine and Harvard, after having played is college ball at Maine. According to the Newark Star-Ledger, Kyle Flood is till one coach short, and will announce the new coach in the next few days.

I enjoyed this article from Keith Sargeant  regarding Patrick Kivlehan's move from the football field to the baseball diamond. I'm always impressed with athletes who have the ability to play multiple sports in the same year and the dedication to make a transition like that happen. Good luck, Patrick.

The University of Memphis is coming to the Big East for all sports starting in 2013. Obviously, conference basketball fans are excited about adding this national power after the loss of Syracuse. But I believe this will be a boon to the football schools of the conference as well. It's true that Memphis's football team has fallen on some tough times the past few years. But it wasn't long ago that DeAngelo Williams was burning up the field out there, guiding the team to bowl appearances. From the Rutgers standpoint, I like the idea of having a team in the conference from Tennessee. The state of Tennessee has been a recruiting hotbed forever, and it may give Rutgers and other Big East schools the opportunity to go after a Tennessee kid or two, especially to fill a need. Plus, Memphis BBQ is the best imho, and all the RU players should get to experience it at away games! It seems the defection of West Virginia to the Big 12, and its ability to reach a $20 million settlem...

Rutgers head coach Kyle Flood is rounding out his staff. This article from The Star-Ledger's Tom Luicci sums up more of the changes. Ben Sirmans, running backs coach at Boston College, appears to be taking the same position at Rutgers. Ron Spence, former offensive coordinator at Bethune-Cookman, will be heading to RU as the quarterbacks coach. Dave Cohen will be coaching linebackers. Current special teams coordinator Robb Smith is likely to be elevated to defensive coordinator. In a bit of an ironic twist, Darnell Dinkins, recently the Tampa Bay Bucs assistant tight ends coach has posted that he is the new Rutgers tight ends coach. And current defensive line coach Phil Galiano will be staying on, but may move to secondary coach. All in all, these appear to be solid hires. I'm especially thrilled that Robb Smith is staying on staff, especially with the success the special teams has had under his guidance.

Rutgers sports information director Jason Baum tweeted today that the Scarlet/White Game will be held 4/28/12, time to be determined.

Various news outlets are reporting that Dave Brock, most recently the interim offensive coordinator at Boston College, will be named Rutgers new offensive coordinator. Click on the post heading to read Tom Luicci's Star-Ledger article about the hire. Brock has coached with Kyle Flood while both were at Hofstra, and it's encouraging that Brock is a New Jersey guy. Just as important, the list of players he has coached is impressive. Frank Cignetti, meanwhile, seems to have landed in St. Louis as the Rams quarterbacks coach. According to Fox Sports' Alex Marvez , recent Rutgers coaches Bob Fraser, Brian Angelichio, and Jeff Hafley are all joining Schiano and Fleck in Tampa Bay. I'm somewhat sorry to see Cignetti and Hafley go because their names came up so often when I read recruiting articles as having been singled out by players as the coach instrumental in recruiting them. But I figure at least all of these coaches are leaving for a pro team rather than heading to...

Apparently, P.J. Fleck reneged on his alma mater Northern Illinois and spurned it to become Schiano's receivers coach in Tampa. I would argue if he was going to do that he should've stayed at Rutgers because the RU receiving corps is better than the Bucs.

Star-Ledger is reporting that Damian Wroblewski, most recently the O-Line coach at Delaware, will become Rutgers new offensive line coach. If that's the case, it won't be up for long, but here is his  BIO  on the Delaware Blue Hens Web site.

Is Rutgers athletic program worth the money? That seems to be the question flying around after the faculty voted to overwhelmingly ask the Board of Governors to end subsidies to the athletic department. Upon closer inspection, though, this article from the Star-Ledger  shows some evidence that the discussion might be overblown. The vote was taken by only 177 of the 910 faculty members of the School of Arts and Sciences. So, while it's obvious that the athletic department is losing support among the faculty, this is still a rather small sampling of the larger body of educators. Second, the largest subsidy was to the football team to the tune of 2.9 million dollars. The current budget calls for a reduction of that deficit by 1 million dollars this year. And Rutgers is paying over 1 million dollars less to employ Kyle Flood as the head coach as opposed to Greg Schiano. It seems to me that 1 million dollar reduction has been taken care of. The deficit was brought to light as a resu...

What an amazing week for Rutgers football! For a Scarlet Knights fan, this was perhaps the most contentious 7-day period I can remember, and to have it end with the announcement that the school pulled in what on paper is the best group of football recruits in school history is nothing short of amazing. What an incredible job by Kyle Flood and his entire staff, as well as incoming freshmen Darius Hamilton and Chris Muller who Coach Flood mentioned in his press conference as being instrumental in keeping the class together. In case you haven't seen the list of recruits, check here: http://scarletknights.com/football/roster/recruits.asp I was following RU Sports Information director Jason Baum's Twitter feed and it was exciting to see the list of recruits come in fast and furiously. Last night I had printed out the list of verbals from scout.com and as I got the tweets announcing the next recruit from my phone I checked them off one at a time. The sum total is that Rutgers...

Live on MSG varsity earlier tonight, 5-star recruit Darius Hamilton, son of former New York Giant Keith Hamilton, officially chose Rutgers over the University of Miami and a host of other schools. Around the same time, fellow commits Steve Longa and Quanzell Lambert confirmed their allegiance to Rutgers. Earlier in the day 4-star recruit Leonte Carroo had done the same. (As a fellow Edison guy, I knew you were going to do the right thing.:->) Best of luck to all the recruits, and here's to having a successful signing day for Coach Flood tomorrow! 

I am unofficially knighting Rutgers athletic director Tim Pernetti for the way he has handled the Rutgers head football coaching search, the sensitivity of losing a coach so close to signing day, and for reminding the press and the Rutgers faithful what it means to be a Scarlet Knight. The thing that struck me the most about Pernetti's words during the press conference announcing the hiring of head coach Kyle Flood was that he emphasized that at Rutgers "we don't win at all costs." Pernetti wanted to ensure that his hire would be a man of character who would continue to keep Rutgers football ranked at the top of nation's student athletes while still maintaining a level of success on the field. By going the extra mile and getting certified as an assistant coach to aid in recruiting he proved how meaningful it is to have a Rutgers man and former student-athlete as the AD rather than an outsider. Thank you for doing things the right way.

The time of the Flood, Kyle Flood, is the dawning of a new era for Rutgers football. As such, it seemed appropriate for it to be the dawn of a new day for this blog. First off, congratulations to Coach Flood on being named head coach of the oldest program in BCS football after 19 long, hard years as an RU assistant. When Greg Schiano shocked the Rutgers faithful and left for Tampa Bay, at first it seemed to me to be almost a panic measure for AD Tim Pernetti to install Flood as the interim head coach rather than simply leaving the position vacant until naming a permanent replacement. But it made sense to me from the perspective of him already being the Assistant Head Coach, who else would you name, especially at such a delicate time in the recruiting process. As the days went on, more and more current and former Rutgers players, prospective recruits, and local big-name high school coaches essentially vouched for Kyle Flood. It's like the old Elvis album title 100,000,000 Elvis F...