Counting chickens

The Labor Day weekend, and therefore college football, has barely begun, and already we have a clear frontrunner for the Fubar Of The Year Award Sponsored By Yugo -- aka the Ford Edsel Oopsie Award, aka the Exploding Pinto Snafu Award, aka the New Coke Oh Hell I Crapped My Pants Trophy.

Come on down, you Rutgers Scarlet Knights!

Who planned a big opening night celebration, complete with fireworks, after they crushed sacrificial lamb UMass, which is not an authentic big-boy school but a Mid-American Conference school that went 0-12 last season and hadn't beaten an FBS school since 2023.

So what happened?

You know what happened: UMass 37, Rutgers 21.

"I'm guessing they canceled the fireworks," you're saying now.

Wrong, bucko!

Apparently someone didn't get the word, so the fireworks went off as scheduled. Talk about the fubar of all fubars. Hey, look, everyone, fireworks to celebrate getting eaten by the cupcake we scheduled! 'Cause football is BACK, BABY and we are BIG-TIME!

Yikes.

Now, some will say this was a bigger (huge-r?) upset than Appalachian State marching into the Big House some years back and taking down Michigan. Nah. I mean, sure, App State was an FCS powerhouse and UMass is ... well, UMass. But Rutgers ain't exactly Michigan, either.

Frankly it's a school that probably ought to be in the MAC itself, because it has no business playing football in the Big Ten. It doesn't fit the profile, and if for sure doesn't fit the footprint, not that that matters anymore. The Big Ten abandoned its footprint some time back to go grasping for dollars.

Now Rutgers, and also Maryland, are "Big Ten schools" because the conference wanted to expand the Big Ten Network into the East Coast TV markets. And UCLA, USC, Oregon and Washington are "Big Ten schools" because the conference wanted to do the same thing on the West Coast.

None of this is legit, of course. You can call a rhinoceros an SUV but that doesn't make it one.

In any case, more than just the uniforms are red these days in New Brunswick, N.J. This will happen when you put a W on the board before you've actually played the game, which is why wiser heads never do that. Even Lou Holtz knew to be scared to death of Rice before going out and beating the Owls eleventy-hundred to seven or whatever.

Then again, there is a bit of solace for poor Rutgers here. Dubious though it might be.

On this first full weekend of college football, the Scarlet Knights lead the nation in number of unhatched chickens counted.

So, you know, they've got that going for them.