Reverse Survivor: The Early Favorite

Of all the teams vying for the honor of being college basketball's first Reverse Survivor winner, one caught my eye above all others. I was warned about making his declaration, on the grounds that it might constitute institutional bias and thereby sully the entire process, but I don't care. It must be said:

The New Jersey Institute of Technology is the shit.

I arrived at this conclusion last night. Looking through the Division 1 basketball standings, I couldn't help but notice the school at the bottom of the Independents list, defined only by its 0-12 record and four letter abbreviation, N.J.I.T. Upon further examination, including a visit to the athletics web site, I uncovered a number of facts about the school and its athletic program that instantly piqued my interest. For instance:

1) NJIT's sports teams are known as the Highlanders. If this doesn't result in approximately 57,275 jokes about Adrian Paul, Christopher Lambert's accent, and "There can be only one!", I will be sorely disappointed in myself.

2) The front page of the "official athletic web site" features a countdown to the men's volleyball season opener in the upper right corner. I don't think anything could ever make me watch men's volleyball.

3) A check of the "Notable Alumni" section on the school's Wikipedia page reveals company presidents, two inventors, a string theorist, an astronaut...and "Rah Digga, American Rapper, member of Flipmode Squad".

4) The leading scorer on the basketball team is named Nesho Milosevic. His last name was the first thing that caught my eye, but I also giggled at the fact that the members of his family are named Nebojsa, Snezana, Milos...and Steven.

5) Again, according to Wikipedia, "NJIT is currently ranked by Princeton Review as #2 in the Nation for Least Happy Students. In recent years, it has been ranked #1 in this category three times (2002-2005), and #5 once (2005-2006 academic year)."

If the Reverse Survivor champion was chosen based on awesomeness, we would have our winner already, and it wouldn't even be close. Even if not all of that stuff is true (and I'm not 100% sold on number five, but I can't possibly leave something like that out), this is quite obviously one of the greatest schools ever. I'm not sure we'll find any other college or university that is so clearly deserving of being the first with its name engraved on the Reverse Survivor plaque. Now, it's up to the basketball team to follow through. I have to think that anything better than 0-28 will be viewed as a disappointment.