By
J.P. Girouard
If you take Rich Rodriguez's side during his messy divorce from the West Virginia football program and subsequent acceptance of the Michigan position, he left in large part due to unkept promises by the WVU administration.
On the other hand, there was another Big East coach who was approached about the job Rodriguez eventually accepted - Rutgers head coach Greg Schiano. It would be difficult to argue that Schiano hasn't gotten exactly what he's wanted from his school's administration (even beyond a pair of lucrative contract extensions) since he arrived in 2000. To wit:
The overall football budget at Rutgers has essentially doubled during Schiano's tenure, to $13 million in 2006. This cash infusion has allowed Rutgers to dramatically improve the program's infrastructure, increase staff and improve academic support - the latter likely being reflected in the Scarlet Knights' recent top-5 NCAA APR (Academic Progress Report) ranking.
A multi-million dollar upgrade to the Hale Center was completed. The Hale Center houses the football offices and training complex and is considered state-of-the-art, giving Rutgers facilities that are considered to be on par with the vast majority of BCS schools. It's no wonder that these facilities - along with the success of the program in general - have helped recruiting significantly. In fact, the 2009 recruiting haul at Rutgers is shaping up to be its best ever and potentially a top-25 class.
An expansion of Rutgers Stadium that is expected to add 13,000 seats for the start of the 2009 season - bringing its total capacity to north of 55,000. At least $70 million of the $100+ million price tag is being borrowed by the university to pay for the expansion, which the Newark Star-Ledger and others have reported is considerably over-budget and may have to be scaled back. But even if the project is down-sized in some way, the investment in the football program is still enormous by any measure.
Keep in mind that these enhancements to the football program have come during a particularly challenging time for the state of New Jersey, most notably $50 million worth of slashing to the Rutgers university budget in 2006 that resulted in job cuts, elimination or reduction of numerous academic programs and the demise of several long-standing non-revenue sports. So the fact that investment in football continues in the midst of these difficulties indicates a willingness by the university to "hitch their wagon" to the program - a point Rutgers president Richard McCormick made clear in his comments after the stadium expansion project was approved this past January:
"The continued success of the Scarlet Knights football program is an important goal for the University."
The big question for Rutgers, and Schiano, is how much success is necessary to meet that goal.
It's important to understand that as recently as 2003, Rutgers averaged less than 28,000 fans per contest. Crowds of 40,000 or more have only been commonplace the last two seasons. Now the Scarlet Knights will be expected to draw over 50,000 per game on a regular basis, year in and year out, in a media market dominated by pro sports teams.
An example of a college team struggling in a pro-sports market is the University of Miami. While it certainly isn't a perfect comparison, Miami's average attendance dropped over 40 percent between the 2002 team that played for the national title and the 2006 team that played a bowl game in Boise. Boston College draws more than respectably in a similar pro-sports market, but doesn't exactly set the world on fire at the gate either.
Another challenge is that there will be few opportunities to schedule marquee, non-conference home games. Rutgers appears committed to at least seven home games at Rutgers Stadium per year, as evidenced in part by their reluctance to enter into a six-game series with Notre Dame in which half the contests would be played at Giants Stadium. If you factor in the long-term relationships with Army and Navy, home-and-home deals with major programs will be harder to come by - there just won't be openings available on the schedule to give back an away game. It is likely that deals with 1-AA and mid-major programs will continue to be the norm.
So forget for a moment the doomsday scenarios where Rutgers devolves back to being the Rutgers of a decade ago - what if instead they're just ok? Would the reported 10,000-deep waiting list for season tickets dry up if the Scarlet Knights trended towards being a 7-5 team every year instead of 10-2? As the novelty of "Rutgers as a legitimate college football entity" wears off, would they ultimately be overshadowed again by the multitude of pro-sports franchises in the New York/New Jersey metro area?
In other words, does Greg Schiano need to do more than win, but rather win big?
And if winning big doesn't happen, would the administration at Rutgers believe they hadn't gotten the desired return from their investment in football and assign blame to the most obvious scapegoat - the head coach? Could that decision come sooner than most people think?
You see, that's the danger in getting everything you want.
Sometimes you actually get it.
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