DJ Yoshi

DJ Yoshi, who is well known at Rutgers football games, will be adding to the atmosphere at the Big Ten Championship game.

(Photo by Drew Robinson | Rutgers athletics)

INDIANAPOLIS — If the music played inside Lucas Oil Stadium before and during the Big Ten Championship sounds familiar to the pregame tunes that blast over the High Point Solutions Stadium speakers during Rutgers football games, there's a good reason why.

Eric De Torres, who is better known as DJ Yoshi as he spins the turntable to enhance the atmosphere at Rutgers football games, will be doing the same Saturday when Ohio State and Wisconsin clash for the Big Ten Championship.

The gig came about after Big Ten officials sought out Drew Robinson, Rutgers' assistant athletic director for creative services and fan experience, for ideas on how to enhance the atmosphere for the conference championship game.

"Really it's a credit to the fans who created an electric atmosphere for the Penn State and Michigan games,'' Robinson said. "The Big Ten officials who came up for those games were really impressed by the atmosphere and they really liked DJ Yoshi when they were here, so we started talking about doing something for the championship game.''

For Rutgers games, De Torres spins music during pregame but, for the Big Ten championship, he will enhance the atmosphere during timeouts, quarter breaks and at halftime when the schools' respective bands are not performing. Robinson will be on headset, communicating to the in-game stadium producer and alerting DJ Yoshi on when to play.

"The last three seasons I get more calls from people asking how do you do it than you can believe,'' Robinson said. "I tell everyone that you can't just hire any DJ you'd find in a club. DJ Yoshi has 10 years of stadium-venue experience so he knows when to play and when not to play, he knows all the little things to do that will change the experience; The thing I like about Yoshi the most is he plays to the crowd. He can play crossover stuff, mixing both old and new music to appeal to a wide range of people within the crowd.''

The sight of a DJ spinning music for football games these days is hardly unusual, but it's believed that Rutgers was the first major college football program to put a DJ on the field to enhance the stadium atmosphere.

Robinson recalls sitting down with Greg Schiano seven years ago when the former Rutgers coach asked for ideas to improve the in-game experience.

"Coach Schiano had really stressed that he wanted to make our in-game experience better especially from a recruiting standpoint,'' Robinson said. "So I just threw the idea out there, 'What about a DJ? We could put him on the field. Recruits will see him. It'll just be another cool thing that we could say, 'Hey, we have this. Others don't have it.'

"It took (Schiano) a few days to think about it and he said, 'Let's try it.' Two days later I got a random email from (DJ Yoshi), who was working for the Nets at the time. I did some research online, talked to people with the Nets, and since then it's really grown into something that makes us stand apart with other schools.''

De Torres has nearly 20 years of DJ experience and, according to his website, he "has rocked the turntables for celebrities like: Ivanka Trump, P. Diddy, Mariah Carey, Mary J. Blige, John Legend, Maury Povich, The B-52's, Jamie Foxx, Slick Rick, GURU, Black Sheep, Sean Paul and William Benson.''

He considers the honor of performing at the Big Ten Championship No. 2 on his list of DJ experiences, trailing only a 2011 NFL game between the Jets and Dallas Cowboys that coincided with the 10-year anniversary of 9/11.

In his day job, De Torres works as a University Hospital administrator and says creating high-energy musical sets from his turntable is just for fun.

"DJ'ing is a good release for me,'' the Rutgers graduate said. "I get to go from a board meeting to a turntable, and there's nothing better than that.''

Keith Sargeant may be reached at ksargeant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @KSargeantNJ. Find NJ.com Rutgers Football on Facebook.