The Rutgers fan’s dilemma

There is enough liquor and therapy in our community to deal with Rutgers football. At least that is what we keep telling ourselves. Life as a Rutgers football fan is eerily similar to the apocalypse truther holding the sign under the train station demanding us to repent for our sins now. Both have blind faith in something that any sane human being would ridicule.

Outside of the late Schiano years, Rutgers football has been an emotional roller coaster. Every August, I dissect the depth charts, media predictions and strength of our opponents more intensely than the Zapruder film, but every December I feel the same bewildered disappointment. A disappointment I wear. Three o’clock happy hours turning into 2 A.M. public urination citations. One Oreo turning into a pizza fueled attempt at carbocide. A robust, chiseled chest melting into an emergency public breast feeding station. I would compare the physical makeup of a Rutgers football fan in December to the face of about every married couple waking up to a crying infant. A face once filled with excitement and curiosity, now filled with fatigue and regret.

If there is anything we believe in, it is karma. The knife of karma that perpetually inflicts Rutgers with the ferocity of a young Lizzie Borden is a cruel reminder that life often has nothing in common with the lies we cultivate for ourselves.

2015 highlights included players getting flexed by the NBPD, our best receiver fighting in the parking lot after a game,  and head Coach Kyle Flood surreptitiously meeting a professor in the hopes that he could influence the grade of an athlete. The common theme was the belief of exemption, due in part, to the belief that football was a license for defiance. Flood believed he was safe behind the walls he built for himself with the lies he propagated day in and day out. Eventually, the siege walls were penetrated, Flood was fired and it was just another day in the 08901. We knew karma and lies were manifesting behind those walls.

Many of us start down this emotional hill. Many of us pull up before it becomes too steep to stop, clinging to relics of the past as proof of what could be. In order to be a 2016 Rutgers football fan, we must start down the hill accepting that death is imminent. In order for one to be reborn, one must die.

Chris Ash and Co. have forced change because they want Rutgers to be reborn. Ash ushered in a new offense, even though the current roster does not fit the scheme. Ash implemented a completely new coaching staff, even though most players came to Rutgers to play for the coaches he fired. Ash is starting Chris Laviano, a much maligned player and catalyst behind the 2015 campaign. It may not appear this way, but Ash is stabbing the past out of Rutgers football, then shooting it in the head to guarantee no chance of resurrection.

If Greek history has taught us anything, it is one must never disobey the will of the Gods.

As a disciple of the college football Gods, Ash knows that if sacrifice is necessary for glory, then it is perfectly acceptable for him to desire sacrifice. Often in Greek tragedies, the hero is willing to sacrifice anyone in the pursuit of glory, even family. In Agamemnon, Agamemnon chose to sacrifice his daughter just so the Deity Artemis would fill his Army’s sails with strong winds that would propel them into battle.

If Chris Ash is Agamemnon, then we are Artemis. The will of fans is to be able to take pride in our team’s ability to perform on the field. Our will is change. Change that we can’t see nor judge, but only trust. We trust Ash is performing the sacrifice. A sacrifice that ensures our Army will finally propel past December.

If we disagree with his decisions, then we disagree with our own will. The decisions he has made in his short time here have been welcomed with rapture. However, the honeymoon is always sweeter than the marriage, but shit, we’re just happy that he agreed to marry us after we spent the bachelorette party high on LSD at a swinger’s party.

For decades, Rutgers football has bled embarrassment. Whether it be the field follies, or the lawlessness, the bleeding spreads from the banks of the Raritan to Puget Sound, descending like a fog and planting ideas of what Rutgers is in the minds of a nation.

Our past is associated with a myriad of emotions, all requiring an injection of nostalgia. Nostalgia, is the most lethal drug to a sports fan. In our case, we fill our needles with nostalgia and shoot it in our parched veins. Then, we relish in the replays of Jeremy Ito pointing to us in our living rooms. Inevitably, the high is only temporary and the only remedy is forgetting all of the past, no matter how jovial some of it may be. Happiness is only attained when there is something to forget.

Forgetting our past should be easy. At least, the incentive of forgetting it is much more desirable than remembering it. Ash will continue to make decisions and eventually the critics will sing, but an analysis of the changes we can see is never relevant when our tragic flaw is always rooted in what we can’t see. Trust that Ash is making the best decision. The past is what it is, and Ash is doing his part to kill it. Our job is to continue to look ahead and cheer for the new uniforms that offer a eulogy to the past and continue to show up every game day with the same cacophony of cheers that only drunk Rutgers football fans can concoct.