The deal with Rutgers is not about delivering ratings to the Big Ten. It's about delivering cable subscriber fees. The numbers are huge if they can get on the provider's basic packages and Rutgers helps them do that.
Bigger ratings will mean more advertising revenue for the providers and they'd be very welcome, but it's the subscriber fees that are the draw.
Besides, the Big Ten network will obviously feature far more than Rutgers. There are plenty of Ohio State, Penn State, etc fans in the NYC market to drive ratings.
Rutgers was in the college football wasteland for a long long time. I know, I've been watching them for 30 years, with season tickets for twenty. But they have been on a slow but steady climb up since about 1995. The difference in interest throughout NJ and even NYC is huge in that time, though still way behind where it could be. Billboards, coverage on the NYC sports networks and sports talk shows, merchandising etc. have all become significant, where it used to be zero.
NYC hasn't had a college football presence since Columbia beat Army in 1947! But that could be a couple BCS bowl games away.
One last thing dead, I don’t mean to offend you being a fan of Rutgers and all. I’m just trying to state the truth as I see it. Look, I’m a fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Talk about long suffering and not drawing fans!! Go ahead, make the jokes about them. I can take it!!! : )