Blog ... Rutgers' Strange Stadium Bargain

Greg Schiano has a contract clause with Rutgers allowing him to leave without penalty if Rutgers Stadium expansion isn't completed by 2009. But it still doesn't explain why expansion is being pushed so hard in the first place.

By J.P. Girouard

I recently suggested that Greg Schiano has gotten everything he's wanted from Rutgers since he started in 2001 - contract extensions, an increased football budget and facilities improvements chief among them. The crown jewel of Schiano's wish list was a $100+ million stadium expansion which would add 13,000 seats to Rutgers Stadium.

Now recent facts have come to light which explain Rutgers' hurry to complete the stadium expansion. According to the Newark Star-Ledger, part of the contract extension Greg Schiano signed in 2007 had a clause that would allow the coach to leave without penalty (i.e, no buyout) if the project wasn't completed by 2009. This revelation, which wasn't made public until now, opens up a whole new set of questions without easy answers.

If Schiano wanted to leave Piscataway, his current buyout ($500,000) wasn't going to really act a deterrent. Considering Michigan just agreed to pay $2.5 million to buyout Rich Rodriguez's contract from West Virginia, $500,000 is, in relative terms, chump change. Why even add the clause at all when it won't mean anything if Schiano decides he wants to bolt to Penn State or some other football power?

Even more odd is that fact the Rutgers administration apparently pushed for this stadium expansion to start this year in order to meet Schiano's contract point. In a weak economy at a cash-strapped university, why expand now? Considering bids on the project came in $20 million more than expected, it's clear getting construction done within budget is going to be a challenge. And understand that it's not as if the Scarlet Knights have been routinely selling out Rutgers Stadium for years - Rutgers is only a few years removed from drawing less than 30,000 fans per game, and will now need to draw almost twice that number on a regular basis.

So the question remains...why is everyone so gung-ho on completing stadium expansion now?

Is it because Schiano forced their hand, perhaps threatening not to sign that contract extension (or even leave altogether) without assurances that the stadium expansion would take place? And if so, maybe the university capitulated, not wanting to suffer the PR nightmare of their uber-popular head coach leaving to take over another program.

Was it over-exuberance on the part of the university officials, who got caught up in the success of the 2006 team and thought that a quick stadium expansion was the way to cash in? It's certainly plausible that the contract point was just an added incentive, a way to sweeten the deal for Schiano to sign the extension.

Or is the answer somewhere in the middle of those two points of view?

In light of these facts coming to light, Schiano still has only one option to come out looking good - the one option that always heals all wounds.

Bolt in the middle of the expansion, and it'll be perceived as leaving Rutgers in the lurch. Stay - but fail to take the program to the next level - and the empty seats in Rutgers Stadium won't sit well with an administration that's apparently doing everything they can (and then some) to keep their coach.

But if Schiano can win big and keep Rutgers Stadium full on Saturdays during the fall, concerns about contract clauses and side deals will fade. They usually do.

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