CHICAGO – Rutgers hoped that joining the Big Ten would change its image as a football program, and if the Scarlet Knights' first trip to the conference's annual media cattle call is any indication, it certainly has.

It changed it right back to the late 1990s.

Remember those days (and, if your therapist has worked with you to forget them, please forgive me for asking)? The Scarlet Knights were the doormat of Division 1 football, a national laughingstock, with no end to the suffering in sight.

Then, over the next 10-15 years, they slowly built themselves into a regular postseason participant with a few flashes in the national rankings. Rutgers expanded its stadium. Rutgers won big games. Rutgers played in big games on ESPN – a lot of them, actually.

This did happen, and all of New Jersey witnessed it.

Well, out here in Big Ten country, it sure feels like the past decade never took place. It isn't just the preseason predictions, which – almost unanimously – have Rutgers at the bottom of the new East Division. One recent poll of conference writers had the Scarlet Knights in dead last with half as many points as Indiana, a team that has one winning season in the past 19 years.

It isn't just the acknowledgement from Big Ten officials that adding Rutgers and Maryland to the conference was better for the bottom line than football. Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith didn't even try to dance around that one in a recent interview with the Columbus Dispatch.

“This is a business deal,” he said of the league's expansion east. “This is about money. Everybody wants to dodge that; I don’t.”

No, it was the general tone of the day, and that includes the questions from the Big Ten media. Rutgers did plenty to change its image over the past 10 years, but out here, Jim Delany might as well have invited Montclair State to join Michigan and Iowa.

“Have you ever played a big, physical team like Wisconsin?” one TV guy asked Rutgers safety Lorenzo Waters, who chose not to reference the spunky little team he faced in a bowl game last winter … called Notre Dame.

“You're from New Jersey. Do people there care about the Big Ten?” a writer asked Rutgers defensive lineman Darius Hamilton, who was too kind to reference a 33 percent spike in season ticket sales from two years ago.

“Do you think now you'll be able to go into those homes and get commitments from (the top New Jersey players?)” someone asked Kyle Flood, and he managed not to point to Hamilton, a five-star recruit out of Don Bosco, who was standing in the room.

So this is where Rutgers finds itself as it enters its new home: Back where it was a decade ago, fighting the perception that it's overmatched, out of its league, headed for disaster. Even back home, noted Big Ten expert Mike Francesa was weighing in, insisting the Rutgers would be "embarrassed" in its new league.

No one expected to see the Scarlet Knights placed on an even par with the Buckeyes, nor should they. But given how far the program has come, it's all a bit unfair.

It's also an opportunity, too, to change that perception again. The bar is so low it's touching the ground for Rutgers now, and even after a rocky end to 2013 for Flood and his players, it's not like the cupboard is bare here. Rutgers didn't finish 1-11 last season (that was Purdue, for the record), but it sure is being treated that way.

"That's fine. Everyone is entitled to that opinion," Hamilton said. "It's all on us, and that's the best part about it. We have the power to change those minds. We control our own destiny."



"We're going to tell the rest of the world who we are," Waters sad. "This season is a defining moment for us."

So that was the theme for the Scarlet Knights as they stepped onto the Big Ten stage for the first time, and make no mistake, they were not overwhelmed by their surroundings. Flood looked poised and professional in his 15 minutes answering questions on the Big Ten Network. The three players smartly dodged a few grenades tossed at them from reporters and avoided unnecessary controversies.

They might be the new guys, but they looked and acted like they belonged. Flood admitted that it felt more real, seeing the block R hanging with the other Big Ten banners in the Chicago Hilton and meeting with the other 13 coaches before the media sessions started. But it didn't feel weird.

“It feels right,” Flood said.

Now his football team, which again finds itself fighting a perception it thought it long ago had defeated, has one mission: To prove it belongs.