Rutgers Football: Why Scarlet Knights will be good in 5 years

Rutgers football has been a gutter program ever since it joined the Big Ten. Here’s why that will end with Greg Schiano as head coach.

When you think of the worst Power Five football programs in the country, a few names will come to mind. Kansas, Arkansas and Oregon State are all contenders for that honor. But in the Midwest and Big Ten territory, the name that will pop up first is Rutgers.

But rewind a few years and you’ll find a different narrative coming out of New Jersey. Not only was Rutgers a consistent winning program, but they won six of their nine bowl appearances after the turn of the millennium. It looked like Greg Schiano had taken a no-name program that hadn’t had a winning season in 12 years and turned it into a squad that could compete in a power 5 conference.

We would never have the privilege of watching this unfold though, as Schiano would leave the program two years before it entered the Big Ten. At first, the Scarlet Knights actually held their own, winning eight games, including a victory in the Quick Lane Bowl against North Carolina.

After this, they would recede back into the shadows. They won just four games the following season and haven’t surpassed that total to this day. They’ve shuffled through four coaches since joining one of the toughest conferences in America, and I think they’ve landed on the right guy this time around.