Greg Schiano deserves some kind of lifetime achievement award. He’s got to be a lock for College Football Coach of the Year, but that’s not enough. Give him the Heisman, too, a couple of Daytime Emmys, a purple heart, an Arby’s employee of the month, and he should fill in for Jeff Gordon on his honeymoon. He’s earned it.
Coaching accomplishments just don’t get any more impressive than what Schiano’s done at Rutgers. Winning a national title at Miami or Notre Dame or USC… that’s great. But I think it’s probably a lot harder for a coach to step into a near-hopeless situation and turn it around to the point it’s at right now. He built this thing from the ground up. Started with nothing. Rutgers is so new to winning that when they went to dump the Gatorade on Schiano, they ended up clubbing him in the head with the cooler. Schiano thought he was being attacked.
Even if they had lost to Louisville, all of this would still apply. And I don’t think this is something that isn’t going to last. You look at how Schiano’s built this team, and why they’re as good as they are right now, and it’s not because they lucked into having a couple of great athletes, and this is going to fade away when the leave. They’ve done it by becoming a tough, physical team that controls the line of scrimmage and hits hard on defense.
So where do you put them now, if you’re a voter? Well, if Louisville or West Virginia deserved the #3 spot, then I’d find it difficult to believe that Rutgers hasn’t earned the same thing right now. They’re not going to get it, of course. I’m sure they’ll still be below Texas, Auburn, Florida, and USC … probably Notre Dame and Cal, as well.
Where you end up often has a lot to do with your starting point, and Rutgers didn’t have a great one. That’s terribly unfair, but… that’s the system we’ve carved out for ourselves here. It’s not about their strength of schedule, or anything like that… West Virginia and Louisville played similar schedules, and they had that #3 spot. Rutgers won’t, and it’s about starting point. It’s about the educated guesses of sportswriters, before the season, about how good Rutgers would be. That’s why Rutgers won’t get there. That’s the system we have. Like Will Munny says, “Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.”
I’ve gotta admit, though… while I’m enjoying the Rutgers underdog story as much as anyone… I couldn’t help but think, anytime ESPN had a crowd shot, that about 40,000 of those people are brand new Rutgers fans. Two years ago, for a game this time of year, Rutgers probably wouldn’t have had a crowd of 20,000.
I’m glad people are hopping on the bandwagon now, but… considering past attendance figures against current ones, I’m putting a little extra emphasis on the word bandwagon. I suppose I shouldn’t judge… I can’t say for sure what I’d have done if I was a Rutgers student that was there for two years when they were terrible, and now they’re good, but I don’t think I’d have just ignored them then and started showing up to games now.
With Pat Tillman’s 30th birthday coming on Monday, and the Cardinals putting him in their ring of honor this weekend, the Associated Press has dug through a ton of Army evidence about how Pat Tillman was killed.
