Rutgers University Athletics

Printable 2017-18 Points of Pride (pdf)

• Rutgers is the Birthplace of College Football. Rutgers hosted Princeton on Nov. 6, 1869, with RU earning a 6-4 victory. The Scarlet Knights are collaborating with the NCAA and Princeton on a 150th anniversary celebration to take place during the 2019 season.
• Rutgers is a member of the Big Ten Conference, which leads the nation in total students competing in intercollegiate athletics and participation opportunities. Over the last 12 full academic years, current Big Ten institutions have won 85 team national titles in 23 different sports. Each year more than 11 million patrons attend Big Ten home contests, as the conference has led the nation in attendance for men’s basketball, volleyball and wrestling.
• Rutgers is the only Power Five conference program located in the nation’s largest media market, New York City, with 7,348,620 television households comprising 6.407% of the United States.
• Rutgers had four programs nationally-ranked for the second time in three years under Director of Athletics Pat Hobbs, with the Scarlet Knights’ wrestling (11), men’s lacrosse (11), field hockey (21), women’s soccer (22) teams all listed in among the top 25 in respective coaches polls.
• Rutgers held a topping off ceremony on June 4 to symbolize the placement of the final piece of structural steel in the construction of the RWJBarnabas Health Athletic Performance Center at Rutgers University, slated for completion in summer 2019. The 307,000-square-foot, four-story facility and parking deck will serve as home to a comprehensive sports medicine program to serve Rutgers athletes, students and communities throughout New Jersey. Under the leadership of Dr. Yvette Rooks and in partnership with RWJBarnabas Health, the sports medicine program continues to expand the clinical network of specialists delivering world class, high quality care to Rutgers’ student athletes. The facility will provide state-of-the-art practice facilities, training areas, locker room and office space for men's and women's basketball, wrestling and gymnastics. The facility will also house a nutrition café, as well as a Hall of Fame lobby and spirit store open to the public.
• Rutgers secured the largest gift in its Athletics history - $15 million - to support the academic achievements of its student-athletes via the construction of the Gary and Barbara Rodkin Academic Success Center. The building to be constructed on the Busch Campus will consolidate all academic support services for Athletics in a single building. The Center will also house training facilities for the men's and women's soccer and lacrosse programs and offices for athletics' administration.
• Rutgers held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to dedicate the Marco Battaglia Football Practice Complex, a state-of-the-art facility among the best in the nation, on August 6. The privately-funded Complex includes Kentucky bluegrass fields, a FieldTurf surface, high-powered Musco LED lighting, permanent 54-foot film towers, scoreboards and an LED videoboard that augments the fan experience on gameday. The Complex was the latest privately-funded facility to open under Hobbs, following the Fred Hill Training Complex, the Garutti Strength and Conditioning Center, the Druskin Strength and Conditioning Center and the Suydam basketball locker room.
• RFund secured $30 million in new gifts and pledges to surpass its previous record of $28.9 million achieved in fiscal year 2016.
• “R B1G Build,” a comprehensive campaign launched on Jan. 20, 2016 to raise $100 million for new or upgraded facilities, has raised $93,655,543 from 3,879 donors as of June 1, 2018.
• Rutgers produced 14 All-Americans, 40 All Big-Ten selections/place winners, three Big Ten Position Players of the Year and one Big Ten Freshman of the Year. Wrestling’s Nick Suriano was a national finalist at 125 pounds.
• Ten student-athletes were selected in major professional league drafts. Kemoko Turay and Sebastian Joseph were selected in the NFL Draft to ensure RU two or more draft choices in three of the last six years, including 12 in that span. Jawuan Harris and Nick Matera were selected in the MLB Draft, providing the program multiple selections for the first time since 2010. Casey Murphy was selected in the NWSL Draft, marking the third straight year at least one women’s soccer player has been drafted.
• A school-record 80 student-athletes across 19 programs earned Big Ten Distinguished Scholar honors with grade-point averages of 3.7 or higher. Among the honorees (at least sophomore status), 34 were repeat selections and 21 maintained perfect 4.0 GPAs.
• A school-record 249 (78 Fall, 33 Winter, 138 Spring) student-athletes earned Big Ten All-Academic accolades.
• A school record-tying eight programs - baseball, gymnastics, tennis, volleyball, men's cross country, women's cross country, women's golf and women's lacrosse – earned public recognition from the NCAA for their multiyear Academic Progress Rate (APR). The average multiyear APR rate for Rutgers athletic programs increased to 991, eight points above the NCAA average rate of 983. The eight programs tied for third-most among all Big Ten Conference institutions.
• Senior golfer Emily Mills was the female recipient of the prestigious Wayne Duke Postgraduate Scholarship, presented annually to one male and one female Big Ten senior pursuing a postgraduate degree for achievements in academics, athletics, extracurricular activities and leadership. In addition, swimming & diving’s Addison Walkowiak and lacrosse’s Michael Rexrode earned Big Ten postgraduate scholarships, while field hockey alumna Sarah Regn was awarded a Fulbright Grant.
• Five programs produced perfect scores of 100, while 16 out of 20 teams earned marks above 80 percent in the NCAA’s Graduation Success Rate (GSR) report. Athletics posted an overall score of 85, its ninth consecutive year with a score of 84 or above.
• 45 student-athletes, representing 19 different programs, were inducted into the Delta Chapter of Chi Alpha Sigma Society, the first national scholar-athlete society to honor collegiate student-athletes who have excelled in both the classroom and in athletic competition.
• 137 student-athletes earned degrees in 2018. These graduates join the more than 500,000 Rutgers and more than 5.7 million Big Ten Conference alumni.
• In between their athletic and academic achievements, student-athletes made 160 unique site visits in 2017-18 and performed 5,187 hours of community service. Rather than take a much-deserved break to begin their summers, 24 student-athletes traveled to Puerto Rico with the Rutgers Leadership Academy to benefit Soles4Souls, a global not-for-profit dedicated to fighting poverty.
• The Rutgers Leadership Academy coordinated 14 customized career events, made 161 professional connections and engaged with 519 organizations in 2017-18.
• Rutgers was home to 49 international student-athletes from 23 countries in 2017-18.
• To ensure the integrity and performance of its competition fields, Rutgers supplemented its facilities staff with a turf management specialist.
• 86 Rutgers Athletics competitions were televised live on national linear networks in 2017-18. 72 competitions were televised on BTN, in almost 60 million homes across the United States and Canada. In total, 348 Rutgers Athletics competitions were televised on linear networks or streamed online over 280 days, an average of 1.24 live competition per calendar day of exposure. 
• RVision produced 72 competitions for BTN Plus, streamed 26 games for BTN2Go, produced 17 additional events for stream and streamed 22 press conferences to make a total of 137 events available for live consumption in 2017-18. In addition, RVision produced 238 video features, 99 highlight packages and 55 video recaps, a total of 392 segments of video content.
• In conjunction with IMG College Sports, Rutgers Athletics produces Emmy Award-winning coaches television shows for football and basketball. The 30-minute shows have extensive distribution in the New York (MSG), Philadelphia (NBC Sports Philadelphia) and the Washington, D.C./Baltimore (MASN) markets, which combine to reach 12,436,500 households (11.09% of U.S.), and are available via satellite providers and web streams.
• From August 18, 2017 through May 25, 2018, 1,685 previews, recaps or features were posted to the official Athletics web site. A revitalized ScarletKnights.com featuring improved mobile connectivity and a more intuitive design was launched on July 1, 2017. Page views improved 200k per month since the redesign. From August through March, the site averaged 1.2 million page views and 141,116 users per month.
• Rutgers launched a new mobile fan experience app, titled "Rutgers Gameday," which features live scores and statistics for football, men's and women's basketball games in addition to special discounted offerings on concessions, merchandise and seat upgrades. Fans benefit from timely push notifications, a dedicated gameday guide, and interactive map and timelines.
• Rutgers launched a dedicated ticket information website (RutgersGameday.com) for football, men’s and women’s basketball and wrestling. The sites provide fans enhanced information on ticketing options and experience opportunities.
• Men’s basketball enjoyed multiple home sell-outs at the RAC in the same season for the first time since 2011. The 8,325 attendance vs. Purdue (Feb. 3) was the largest at the RAC in 15 years.
• Rutgers introduced RAC Pass, an innovative, mobile-only ticket solution that guarantees admission to all men's basketball regular season home games at a reduced cost on gameday. A total of 200 RAC Passes were made available to the public and sold out within 48 hours.
• Wrestling finished fourth in average home attendance, placing in the top five nationally for fourth consecutive season. The program reset its home RAC attendance record twice in 2017-18, as 6,754 watched RU take on Iowa before 8,321 fans watched the Scarlet Knights wrestle Penn State. Wrestling sold more than 2,000 season ticket packages, the third-straight year the program sold the most season tickets in its history. 
• Rutgers disseminated over 500 donation certificates for football, men’s and women’s basketball, wrestling and gymnastics to community initiatives during the 2017-18 athletics season.
• The mascot made 247 appearances and the cheer and dance teams combined for 124 appearances in 2017-18.
• The Rutgers dance team won the ICU World Championships in the Team Cheer Freestyle Pom category, defeating 20 international squads to capture the Gold medal.
• Five-year old Mordecai Carthy, a patient at nearby Children’s Specialized Hospital, scored a school-record 93-yard rushing touchdown to conclude the annual Scarlet-White Spring Football Game.

(as of July 10, 2018)