RU fouls cost N.J.

DESPITE finishing 0-9 in conference, credit Rutgers football for doing all it can to prove it is serious about being in the Big Ten.

First, there were those six felony arrests of RU players for crimes including home-invasion assaults and armed robbery — given he wasn’t a victim, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie excused the perps as kids just being kids — and now it is a stack of NCAA allegations that RU chose to ignore at least 16 drug-test failures, violated recruiting and academic rules and ran a school “hostesses” program — whatever that means — that made “impermissible contact” with recruits — whatever that means.

Rutgers not only has one of the highest student- and state-subsidized athletic departments — last year the reported deficit was to $25 million from $36 million — RU has hired “outside counsel” to address these NCAA charges, thus the bottomless money pit that is Rutgers football will be further funded by N.J. taxpayers.

DVR alert: Showtime re-airs its strong, shame-on-all-the-systems documentary on the football life and prison death of Lawrence Phillips on Monday, 4:30 p.m.

Oh, little town of Bethlehem Steel: On Christmas and on/for NBC/NFL Network on Sunday, the Steelers are expected to host the purple-and-black Ravens in Nike “Color Rush” all-black uniforms.

Responding to Monday’s suggestion here that the Soviets tampered with the 1960 World Series — the Yanks outscored the Pirates 55-27, but lost — reader John Wagner reminds us the next year the Yanks won the Series, beating the Reds!