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An Unhealthily Rabid Rutgers Fan’s Post-Mortem On The Greg Schiano Era

Dashed hopes

So close.

Rutgers football was less than a week away from signing the best recruiting class in program history. Here are the players committed now. That’s not a bad class already. And since Rutgers was the favorite to land defensive end Darius Hamilton – Rivals’ 11th-ranked player in the country – and quarterback Devin Fuller (Rivals’ 37th-ranked player), that class stood to get a lot better in those last few days.

That class was going to get so good, in fact, that I took to joking with friends that for his signing day press conference this year, Rutgers coach Greg Schiano would get obnoxiously overconfident at signing the class that would finally get the program he built from nothing over the hump. He’d strut out to the podium wearing a smoking jacket (possibly a top hat as well) and puffing on a cigar. He’d tell reporters they were very welcome for the opportunity to be in his presence, instead of thanking them for being there. Instead of thanking his entire staff for their hard work, Schiano would simply say, “I’m very thankful for myself. This class was all me.”

That’s not going to happen. Well, okay, fine, it was never going to happen anyway, but we Rutgers fans figured that at least when the signing day presser came around, Schiano would be there. And then, it came out that he was, shockingly, the new head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And now everything’s in flux. Fuller and Hamilton suddenly look like longshots. Some of the guys already committed look like longshots. Rutgers was so close. And that’s fitting.

Because “so close” was the main problem with the Greg Schiano era. Before Rutgers was so close to closing the deal on an excellent 2012 recruiting class, they were one win away from finally grabbing a share of a Big East title last season. What happened? A 40-22 blowout loss to an inferior Connecticut team. In 2006, Rutgers was a win at West Virginia away from winning the conference outright and locking up a BCS bowl berth. The result that time? A soul-crushing 41-39 triple overtime defeat I can barely bring myself to think about even today. In 2007, having built up so much momentum and being so close to a big-time national breakthrough…the team backslid to an 8-5 record.

More than the record

Schiano drastically improved Rutgers but leaves without ever fully breaking through and winning a conference title. That’s the thing about Schiano’s tenure, though: that Rutgers football is even at a point where it makes sense to discuss conference titles speaks to just how much Schiano achieved. When he was hired, Rutgers was probably the worst Division I-A football program in the country. It’s hard to put into words just how bad the program was, so I’ll let the cold hard facts speak for me. This is the record of Schiano’s predecessor, Terry Shea. Explore at your own risk.

Sure, Schiano finished with an overall mediocre-looking record (68-67) that he aided with some famously weak non-conference schedules. But I can tell you this: growing up a short distance from Rutgers’ campus, in the years before Schiano got there, the awfulness of Rutgers football was practically an organizing principle of the universe. Every game against a decent team was an almost guaranteed blowout loss. That continued in Schiano’s first couple seasons (thanks largely to the mess he inherited), but he eventually changed that perception, and he changed it for good.

Instead – and this especially comes into focus knowing he won’t be around anymore – Schiano’s presence itself became the organizing principle. And considering where the program was before he took it over, that wasn’t such a bad thing. Sure, he was a stubborn control freak (this piece from Dan Levy, who’s worked with Schiano directly, illustrates that control freakishness) who infuriated us sometimes with those qualities, but he was our stubborn control freak who occasionally drove us crazy, dammit. Schiano preached the motto F.A.M.I.L.Y. (Forget About Me, I Love You – corny, but oh well), and after long enough, he almost felt like family to fans.

NEXT PAGE: Schiano’s fitness for the NFL game is questionable. Ultimately, his legacy at Rutgers is clearer…in a good way.

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