And you thought soccer was not growing

On Wednesday the home office of OTWT received a shocking call from Endy in Outfield. At first I could not believe what I was hearing, it sounded like something tragic had happened. After talking to him, I try to figure out what was going on.

Endy called me to let me know that my father, who is 60 and home recovering after being sick for two months, watched the first half of the Barcelona/Racing Santander match on ESPN. I know what people are thinking, so what is the big deal with this, everything is. My dad hated the beautiful game, even going as far as making fun of my brother and I for spending so many hours on the weekend watching, but now maybe that is changing.

So after hearing the astonishing news, I called my father to see how he was doing and all he wanted to do is talking about "the big white guy with the big nose'' or as everyone knows him Zlatan Ibrahimovic (pictured right). He said he really liked him and thought he was fun to watch, he also expressed great love for the slick passing midfield duo of Xavi and Iniesta or as he called them ""the two short guys that look alike.'' Then my dad went on to tell to me about Barcelona and wanted to talk about how entertaining they were. It was almost cool to hear.

Maybe ESPN is the key to making soccer successful in this country, if my father can watch the first half of a game and express interest, who knows what is possible.

It's a home game this weekend

Wow with Rutgers at Maryland this weekend, that can mean only one thing a home game for OTWT. On Saturday, I will spending the day at the home office watching all of the games going on and twittering my thoughts starting tonight with Ole Miss trip to South Carolina. Follow OTWT on Twitter here.

The First 100 are always key

The first 100 of anything are always key, from the first 100 days of a presidency to the first 100 hits of a major league baseball career. The 100 of any thing is a mark to both savor and both grade out someones performance.

On Saturday, Greg Schiano coached his 100 game as the leader of the Scarlet Nation. At the start of his tenure, few thought that he would see this day but now that he has lets grade the leader on his performance of the last nine seasons.

A 100 games in charge, wow after his first four season, in which he won a grand total of 12 game, few people thought that he would make it. The first four years of his career at the State University of New Jersey featured some embarrassing moments including dropping games to Villanova and New Hampshire. But the administration decided to stick with him and good thing they did.

Schiano started to get his recruits in during his fifth season the when the Knights went 7-5 and went to the Insight Bowl and loss 45-40 to Arizona State. But things were starting to look up. The next three season, Knights returned to bowl games.

Aside from the success on the field, Schiano has been a success off the field. After flirting with various jobs around the country, Miami and Michigan, Schiano pushed the administration to add on to Rutgers Stadium.

In addition to the stadium, Schiano has also made Rutgers relevant on the recruiting trail. Take the recruiting of New York defensive end Dominique Easley. Sure Easley selected Penn State, but Rutgers was in it to the end with programs such as Florida and Georgia. Take a look at the top 50 high school players from the region and you will see that Rutgers has been involved with most of them till the end. Under Schiano, Rutgers has been able to make inroads in places that they have never been able to like South Carolina. In the 2010 class Rutgers signed Chas Dodd a quarterback at the famed Byrnes High School in South Carolina. Imagine back about five years, the thought of a player coming to Rutgers from South Carolina was out of the question, now it has become a reality.

While Schiano has a 48-52 record during his tenure and has been a pain to the media, he goes down as the great coach in the history of the school. As for a letter grade, OTWT would have to give him an A, if he would have taken Rutgers to BCS Bowl then he would have gotten the plus. To take a program from where he got to now deserves all of the credit in the world.

This is a NFL City?

This is a photo, which came from a friend on facebook, from the press box Sunday at Jacksonville Municipal Stadium, the home of the Jags. A ton of people decided to go to the game dressed as seats as you can tell. The attendance for the game against the NFC Champions Cardinals was 46,520, the stadium holds 67,164 for NFL games and 84,000 for college football games. It looks like all of the Jags home games will be blacked out this year.

This is another reason that the NFL does not work in the south. In the south people care more about the college sports then they do the NFL. Can you image seeing that many empty seats for the Georgia Florida game I think not.

Professional Tailgating: Sometimes it aint easy

So Rutgers did not look that great but in the end they beat Florida International, which brings them to 2-1 on the season. The real story was the tailgating as usual and the OTWT Tailgating crew being introduced to a new drinking game.

Our tailgating neighbors playing Stump, it involved a hammer and nails. So I decided to take a pass on it.

Stump in action

The new section of the stadium features a DJ booth, Rutgers might be the only school in american that has a pregame DJ.

The Wall of Victory, some interesting things on it.

Rutgers takes the fields and keeps choppin'

The hippies even came out to support the team

Rutgers will be on the road for the next couple of weeks and this will allow the OTWT Tailgating Crew to rest up, which is needed. The Knights return home Oct. 10.