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AFM Magazine


Blood Brother

JERSEY GUYS: RUTGERS PINS HOPES ON GREG SCHIANO, ONE OF THEIR OWN.
by: Allen Curtiss, Jr.
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When Rutgers University Athletic Director Robert Mulcahy began his search for a new head football coach last November, die-hard Scarlet Knight fans and a large contingent of New Jersey high school coaches wanted one thing ... they wanted a "Jersey Guy."

They wanted what another favorite son, Bruce Springsteen, refers to in song. What they wanted was one of their "Blood Brothers." They wanted a guy who spent his July weekends down on the Jersey shore cruising the boardwalk, and his November afternoons practicing in near darkness on a frozen patch of dirt. Most importantly, they wanted a guy who, like them, had sat around late into the night talking about how good the Rutgers football program could be if they could do just one thing ... keep the best Jersey kids home.

What they got on December 1, 2001, was Greg Schiano, a Jersey guy who played his high school football at perennial state powerhouse Ramapo High School and even worked as a graduate assistant at Rutgers in 1989. The fact that he was defensive coordinator for the national championship contender and second-ranked University of Miami Hurricanes, and was regarded as a rising star in the college coaching ranks, was just icing on the cake.

At just after noon on that day, Schiano got his chance to step up to the podium for the first time as the Rutgers head coach. He wasted no time. Five minutes into the press conference, Schiano declared he would be recruiting the "State of Rutgers," which he described as New Jersey and anywhere you have to drive through to get there.

To understand why building a homegrown college program at Rutgers is important, it is important to understand New Jersey's place in college football. While the state may be dwarfed in size by the likes of California, Texas, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, New Jersey is on near equal footing when it comes to producing Division I-A talent.

More importantly, unlike the previously mentioned states where at least three Division I-A programs fight for the same in-state recruit, in New Jersey, there is only Rutgers.

The Ties That Bind

Within days after his appointment Schiano gathered with more than 100 high school football coaches from across the state of New Jersey and made a simple request: Help me find New Jersey's best. By the end of the evening they had filled a white board with a list of the state's top senior football players.

"That meeting was a huge help because we set up a recruiting board and we gave them ownership in the program," recalled Schiano. "The only way it is going to get done is if the high school coaches in New Jersey feel like this is their program."

By the next day invitations to a meeting with Schiano and his staff were in the mail. Nearly 40 of New Jersey's top recruits showed up and as they eye-balled one another they heard the new head coach make the single statement that could change Rutgers football forever: "If you stay in New Jersey, we can win championships."

Of the athletes in the room that evening, 13 All-State players eventually signed on with the Scarlet Knights. These homegrown players, along with a strong contingent of another Rutgers recruiting haven, South Florida, helped the Rutgers' 2001 recruiting class place among the top 50 for the first time in the University's Division I-A football history.

"The Jersey kid is a tough kid, but they have always felt like they had to go somewhere else to be a legitimate Division I football player. I think they now understand that we have decided that we are going to win with Jersey kids," said Schiano, who credited the student-athletes in the room that evening for making his dream an early reality. "I think visually seeing each other sitting in that same room made them realize that if 15 or 20 of them come, that we are going to have a heck of team. If we can do this over the course of three or four years, we are going to build a solid base."

Brothers Under the Bridge

Schiano said a big part of landing New Jersey's top recruits is his staff, with 11 coaches also Jersey guys.

"A lot of them left very good jobs to come back to New Jersey. Just as I grew up thinking that this place has all the potential in the world, so did these guys. They have the same vision for Rutgers as I do, so it is more than a job to them," said Schiano. "We have a lot of loyalty to the state, and I think that comes across to the kids we recruited."

New Jersey natives on the staff include recruiting coordinator and running backs coach Mike Miello, one of the most respected and successful scholastic coaches in New Jersey, who Schiano played under at Ramapo High; defensive coordinator Paul Ferraro, who spent the past two seasons as defensive backs coach at Georgia Tech and came to Rutgers with 12 years of experience as a defensive coordinator; defensive line coach Ben Albert, who starred as a player at UMass and coached for three seasons at Richmond; offensive line coach Joe Susan, who as head coach of Division I-AA Davidson led the Wildcats to a 10-0 record last year and who recruited Schiano to attend Bucknell; wide receivers coach Darrell Hazell, who was on staff at Big East rival West Virginia for the past two seasons; defensive backfield coach Scott Lakatos, who served two seasons as the defensive coordinator for the University of Maine; former New Jersey high school Player of the Year and Penn State All-America linebacker Mark D'Onofrio, who will coach the linebackers at Rutgers; and strength and conditioning coach Jay Butler, a teammate of Schiano's in college.

"People believe that this staff is committed to winning championships in this state. That is important to people in New Jersey. It is such a parochial state as far as everyone taking care of their own. You don't just break into this group, and the big thing for us is that we are already part of this group," Schiano said.

The Coach

It will take more than simply being able to match town names with exit numbers on the New Jersey Turnpike to win at Rutgers, but many observers feel Schiano has both the commitment and the coaching pedigree to make it happen.

While he is the youngest Division I-A head football coach in the country, Schiano has worked as a defensive backfield coach for the likes of Joe Paterno at Penn State (1990-96) and Dave Wannstedt with the Chicago Bears (1996-1999), and as defensive coordinator for Butch Davis at Miami (1999-00). Moreover, he has brought lessons from each man with him to his new positions.

From Paterno he learned not to worry about issues that are weeks and months away. "I think that is why he (Joe) has lasted so long. If something is an issue, worry about it a week beforehand, not now. He always had a saying that things have a way of working themselves out, and they do."

The Wannstedt influence is prevalent in watching Schiano and his staff interact with their players. "Dave knew how to get players to play for him. Not from a fiery motivation standpoint but in a way that comes from getting close to the players so that they felt indebted to him to play hard," he explained.

Schiano's staff puts these words into practice on a daily basis. For example, during the school year, the staff eats breakfast with the players and reviews their academic playbook. "This not only helps our kids with time management, but our kids also know that we care more about them than just what they do on the field."

The daily breakfast meetings are just one way that Schiano has set about to build the one ingredient that he feels is inherent in all successful football programs - trust.

"We are going to do things the right way training-wise. We are going to do things the right way academically, as far as support. And, we are going to do all the x's and o's. But," he said, "all that won't matter if there is not something bigger, if there is not trust. I have seen 7-4 football teams that should have been 11-0, but they lacked that key ingredient."

Schiano said coaches could go a long way to building this trust by simply keeping true to their word. "If you say you are going to be out on the practice field for an hour, be out there for an hour. If you promise them a day off, give them the day off. So many of the young people we are coaching right now have an inherent distrust for men because they have been burned in their life by fathers who have left and the like."

Is it working? If the number of players in and out of the coaches' offices and hanging around the football complex during the summer is any indication, the early answer is - yes. "That is the trust I talk about," he said. "When they trust you, they want to be around you. When they don't trust you, they stay as far away as they can."

He saw this type of trust most recently at Miami, where he says he learned the most about being a head coach during his two years as the Hurricanes' defensive coordinator for Butch Davis.

"Butch let me into a different circle. He involved me in a lot of things and shared with me a lot of issues that are important for a head coach to deal with. There were a lot of things I did not know about that went into being a head coach that he taught me, and I owe him a lot for that."

Despite notebook pages filled with lessons learned while being an assistant coach, Schiano said he learned many new lessons while running his first spring practice season.

"We had a great response from our football team doing what we asked them to do, but in any group there is going to be a small percentage of guys that buck the system. As a head coach, you can't let those few guys pull you down and hurt your excitement level because everyone is looking toward you as the leader,' said Schiano.

It's Time

Schiano's shear excitement level when he proclaims, "We are going to win championships at Rutgers and we are going to do it the right way," has turned more than a few December snickers into July head nods. For besides "Recruiting the State of Rutgers," the other new slogan to enter the Scarlet Knights' lexicon is: "It's Time!"

Within the Rutgers community "It's Time" is more than a slogan ... it's a reality. Rutgers University may the birthplace of collegiate football, a 6-4 victory over Princeton in 1869, but never before in its 132 history have so many invested so much in trying to turn Rutgers Football into a Division 1-A powerhouse.

In addition to Schiano and his coaching staff, which he has called the best he has ever worked with, there is Athletic Director Bob Mulcahy, who was hired to bring big-time college football to Rutgers and knows full well that most athletic directors don't get to hire a second head football coach unless they do it right the first time. There are the state's high school football coaches, who followed through on a pledge made to Mulcahy and Schiano to get behind the program, and have done so with energy not enjoyed by any of Schiano's predecessors. And then there are the New Jersey student-athletes who believe in the vision and promise that Rutgers football offers.

So why now? According to Schiano, Rutgers finally has the ammunition to fight the Division I-A recruiting battle.

"Rutgers may have played the first ever collegiate football game, but Division I-A college football is only 20-years old at Rutgers, and we finally have everything in place to compete," said Schiano, who remembers what is was like back in 1989 when he served as a graduate assistant during the last season of Dick Anderson's tenure at the helm. "We would take a recruit into look at the stadium during the summer and they would see grass growing up through the wooden bleachers."

He credits predecessors Anderson, Doug Graber and Terry Shea for adding the ammunition in the form of indoor/outdoor practice facilities, the new 41,500-seat football stadium, and an academic support program. "These guys made the job what it is today, a great coaching job at a great school."

The facilities are only going to improve even more, as extensive plans are in the works to expand the football complex (Hale Center). "The Hale Center expansion will make our facility one of the Top 10 in the nation," predicted Schiano. "It will allow us build a state-of-the-art weight room and to take our existing meeting rooms and reconfigure them into an academic support suite. It upgrades both our football facility and our academic support facility."

The 2001 Outlook

Mixed in with all this excitement and talk about championships is the stark reality that Schiano may not be playing the leading man in an overnight success story during the 2001 season.

But, Schiano is refusing to use this season's won-loss record as a measuring stick for success. Rather he points to the recruiting wars, and feels that it will take three or four more recruiting classes like the one he had this past season to fulfill his promise of turning Rutgers into the perennial Big East powerhouse.

"I know there are certain kids who grow up and are destined to go to other schools. But we are going to win championships here and we are going to do it with our kids," said Schiano. "This state and this university are starved for a championship football team, and when it happens here it is going to give our state something to be proud of."
By declaring New Jersey the "State of Rutgers," Schiano hopes ot build a winner in his home state.









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