Blasting Greg Schiano
January 27th, 2012Yesterday, when it was learned that Team Glazer found its man, Rutgers coach Greg Schiano, the move was mostly met with positive reviews, including from the likes of Bill Belicheat and Peter King. Even Joe was impressed.
But Michael Rosenberg, King’s colleague at SI.com was anything but impressed. He put fingers to keyboard and took apart both the Bucs for hiring Schiano and Schiano himself.
It’s true that Schiano built the Rutgers program from nothing. The question is: from nothing to what? He was 28-48 in the Big East, which is not a major conference by any reasonable measure except the one used by the Bowl Championship Series (which, of course, is not reasonable).
In the last three years, Schiano’s Big East record was 8-13. He never won the Big East. He is considered a good guy, and his graduation rate was very high, but he could be a saint and the Saints wouldn’t care.
Schiano is also known for discipline and organization — you’ll hear a lot about that before next season, because it’s his strength and Morris lost the team. But he did not go 8-13 in his league the last three years by accident. There is a reason he never won the Big East.
Fair points, but let’s be honest. We’re talking Rutgers here. Rutgers! That program was a complete toilet when Schiano took it over.
Why didn’t he win the Big East? Joe thinks that question could be better directed at Jim Leavitt than Schiano, who seems to be doing OK for himself as a linebackers coach at San Francisco this past season.
Rutgers is not Penn State, which has top-flight facilities and a bulging river of cash flowing into the program to help bankroll massive recruiting budgets.
Rutgers is not Miami, which sits in the middle of an absolute treasure trove of high school football talent where coaches can roll out of the rack in the morning and be within reach of dozens of high schools stocked with four- and five-star talent, and be back home for lunch.
We’re talking Rutgers here. Rutgers! The job that Schiano did in Piscataway is simply amazing. That takes organizational skills and supreme discipline, something that has been sorely lacking in recent years at One Buc Palace.










Rockstar Bucs general manager Mark Dominik previously has talked publicly about how he’s a defense-first guy. So when the Bucs offered offensive guru Chip Kelly a pile of cash, Joe wondered how Kelly might have wowed Dominik with his defensive plan for the Bucs.






Now Joe, of course, has no clue about the granular details of Greg Schiano’s head coaching contract with the Buccaneers. There could be more fancy clauses than a family reunion at the North Pole.










