Home Depot, Motorola CEO’s are Rutgers grads, could help with Big Ten move

If Rutgers was invited to the league and merely looked as if it had a chance to compete for a Big Ten title, its TV numbers would be competitive with any current member. A good part of the reason is its size. Rutgers not only has a comparable enrollment (37,000) with Penn State, its living alumni base (380,000) stacks up with the highest in the nation (PSU’s 475,000 is among the very top). You can make a compelling case that RU football is the proverbial “sleeping giant”. It appears the infrastructure is ready to handle the action. Since Greg Schiano arrived at millennium’s outset, he has turned the program into a consistently competitive one. More important, he has demanded and received pretty much every upgrade in the RU football infrastructure he’s requested. Just completed for last season was a $102 million stadium expansion that added 11,400 seats, 968 loges, with club and luxury box enclosures, personal bars inside and overhanging heaters outside. Left open was the possibility of adding a third deck, much like Louisville’s Papa John’s Stadium. Opened before the final 2009 game against West Virginia was a $5 million recruiting lounge. In one end zone stands the largest scoreboard relative to stadium capacity in nation. Trendy electronic message/advertising ribbons ring the second-deck facade. Potential sugar daddies are plentiful. CEOs of Home Depot and Motorola are Rutgers grads. Johnson & Johnson world headquarters is next door. – Patriot-News

Rutgers moving Army game to the Meadowlands would millions

Rutgers is in line for a big payday — possibly as much as $2.7 million, most of which will be clear profit — if negotiations to move next year’s home football game against Army to the new Meadowlands stadium are successful. Head coach Greg Schiano acknowledged Wednesday following practice that the school has “had discussions” with the New Meadowlands Stadium Corp. (NMSC) to make next year’s scheduled home game against Army the first college game at the new facility. The possibility that Rutgers was seeking to move the game to the new Meadowlands stadium was first reported by The Record. According to Rutgers officials, the school projects a profit of $1.5 million per home game in newly expanded Rutgers Stadium, which will have a capacity of 52,454 once the $102 million construction project is completed in time for the Sept. 7 opener against Cincinnati. – Newark Star-Ledger

Report: Cowher Could Land at Penn State

With Joe Paterno’s health in question, there are several media reports speculating on who may replace the Hall of Famer should be step down at season’s end…

There are three theories on what will happen at Penn State when Joe Paterno finally surrenders to age. 1. A current assistant, probably Tom Bradley, will be elevated. 2. A member of the “Penn State family,” such as former Lions all-America Mike Munchak (now the offensive line coach of the Tennessee Titans), will be named. Former Paterno assistants such as Greg Schiano of Rutgers and Al Golden of Temple also fit in this group. 3. A person with no ties to the program, but a sufficiently “big name” to withstand the pressures of following Paterno, will be named. Bill Cowher long has been the favorite of those who want to go outside, but Lane Kiffin, fired last week by the Oakland Raiders and a onetime assistant at Southern Cal, would also would be a vastly popular choice. – Philadelphia Inquirer

Joe Paterno’s physical health has declined to the point where it could cause him to do something no one expected: retire of his own accord. There is some mystery about the exact condition of Paterno’s right knee, but he is hobbling badly and looked like a man who will be 82 in two months when he made a brief appearance on the field before the game Saturday against Purdue. The injury is said to have occurred three days before the season opener when Paterno was demonstrating a kicking technique. It appears to be getting worse instead of better, not all that surprising for someone his age. Some have speculated he has a ligament injury that will require surgery. A more authoritative source has said the problem is with his hip and that Paterno will require hip-replacement surgery after the season. Paterno was on a golf cart at practice this week, a further indication that he is not getting better. – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The football is going to get kicked off on Saturday night. On Tuesday afternoon, Joe Paterno can’t say where he’s going to be when that ball soars end-over-end through the air. Call it the start of a storyline that may linger throughout the second half of Penn State’s football season. Arthritis pain in his right leg caused Paterno to coach the entire game against Purdue from the Ross-Ade Stadium press box last week, and it might lead him to do the same this week when his sixth-ranked Nittany Lions take on desperate Wisconsin. Although he said his leg was “a little better” Tuesday than it was on Saturday, Paterno said he is reserved to the fact that the pain comes and goes. Which means, he might be coming and going from the sideline. “I’m going to have to live with it for a few weeks, and it might be more than that,” Paterno said during his weekly teleconference on Tuesday. “But hey, that’s why I get that big money.” After the Nittany Lions’ 20-6 win over Purdue, Paterno trumpeted being in the coaches box and what he perceived as the benefits of working with a bird’s-eye view of the action. – Citizens Voice