When Rutgers wins, we eat chili.

In the grand scheme of college football traditions, it's not much. But for my friends who regularly attend Rutgers football games, the steak chili from Hansel 'n Griddle on Easton Avenue is our reward.

But in the last three years, "victory chili" has become a delicacy. Because since 2015, Rutgers University has become amazingly unexplainably terribly awful at football.

I mean, seriously. They capped off an 11-game losing streak with an excruciating loss to Eastern Michigan. Last week, I pumped my fist in celebration after their second win of the season.

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Don't get me wrong: I know my place. If I were five or 10 years older, the idea of Rutgers winning two games would seem like the good old days.

I'm lucky to have attended Rutgers when I did. Sure, I missed the Louisville game in November 2006 but, from 2007 until 2011, Rutgers was a real team. Devin McCourty. Mike Teel. Kenny Britt. Mohamed Sanu(uuuuuuuuu).

It was awesome. A team I rooted for (and as a student, helped finance) was routinely ranked in the Top 25.

And like clockwork, they'd choke and lose a terrible game to Maryland. Or West Virginia. Or Syracuse. Or West Virginia. Or Kent State.

Or West Virginia, again.

(Don't even mention 2012 against Louisville with the Sugar Bowl on the line. I have honestly convinced myself that game was rained out.)

The Rutgers frustration of my teens and early twenties was all about how they'd make The Jump and finally beat West Virginia and win the Big East.

Nowadays? I'd take that situation in a heartbeat.

But here's the weird thing: In 2013, one of my closest college friends and I bought season tickets. Rutgers was going to the Big Ten and we (hilariously) thought there was nowhere to go but up.

Over the last five years, the team has sunk from "mediocre" to "frustrating" to the football equivalent of someone punching you in the nose and spitting in your face at the same time.

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And I wouldn't trade it for anything. I was one of the idiots who stormed the field when Rutgers beat Michigan in 2014 for their first Big 10 win and may have cried when the team retired Eric LeGrand's number.

We have a fun group in Section 131 (come say hi!). We wave a big New Jersey flag when Rutgers scores. We're loud enough to make up our own chants (or adapt them from soccer songs) and make them stick.

These days, I go to Rutgers High Points Solutions Stadium out of habit. When the team is bad, everything seems slightly off. The walk to the stadium seems a little longer. The buses are a little slower. The 18-year-old freshmen seem a little more inebriated and I'm a little too jaded to accept the fact that it's been a full decade since I was their age.

But I've never once considered cancelling my tickets — not when they lost a heartbreaker to Penn State in 2014 (ugh). Not after the 4th down spike against Michigan State in 2015 (ugh ugh). Not even after Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State and Penn State beat them by a combined score of 224 to 0 last year (ugh ugh ugh).

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At six home games every year, I'll undoubtedly lose my voice making noise on third down and screaming at a referee for making what assuredly will go down in history as The Worst Call of All-Time.

And when Rutgers scores a touchdown — there's only been three in non-FCS home games this season — I'll gladly jump up and down and yell "R-U-rah-rah," just like the glory days.

Who knows? Our sports columnist, Steve Edelson, picked Rutgers to beat Purdue on Saturday. After all, the glory days have to start somewhere.

So why not right now? It starts to get cold in late October, and nothing warms the body and soul like a hot cup of victory chili.

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By day, Mike Davis is a news reporter for the Asbury Park Press. By night, he's an absolutely masochistic Mets, Jets and Rutgers fan.