For Once, Spotlight Shines on Rutgers

PHOENIX —  Ryan Neill could have left New Jersey to play college football. Instead, he stayed home, buying into the belief that a new coach was finally going to turn things around at woeful Rutgers, the state university.

It took time, but his patience will be rewarded tonight when Rutgers (7-4) plays Arizona State (6-5) in the Insight Bowl at Chase Field here -- only the second bowl game for Rutgers in its 137 seasons of college football.

“Expectations aren’t reality,” said Neill, a star defensive end. “I’ve sure learned that.”

The Scarlet Knights played their first bowl game, also against Arizona State, in 1978 at the long-gone Garden State Bowl at Giants Stadium. Arizona State won, 38-14.

Despite its many decades of futility, Rutgers has maintained a place in college football history.

The Scarlet Knights played in the first game ever, on Nov. 6, 1869, when two teams of 25 men each squared off in what more resembled rugby than football. The Scarlet Knights beat Princeton, 6-4.

“But it was replete with surprise strategy, prodigies of determination and physical prowess,” wrote one of the Rutgers players in a quote that lives on in the Rutgers media guide.

Only now is Rutgers playing in its first out-of-state bowl game.

“It’s kind of unreal when you look at it that way,” said Neill, a star at Wayne Hills (N.J.) High School and a fifth-year senior. “I know people thought I was crazy when I came here. I could have gone lots of other places and honestly I didn’t even consider Rutgers at first, but Coach [Greg] Schiano convinced me good things were going to happen. It just took awhile.”

During that “awhile” period, Rutgers had a 25-game losing streak in the Big East. It had an 80-7 loss to West Virginia in 2001, “probably the low point of anything I’ve had in any of my careers,” Athletic Director Bob Mulcahy said.

Schiano was hired in 2000 to replace Terry Shea. Three head coaches before Shea, Frank Burns had guided Rutgers to the Garden State Bowl.

Bob Hering, who was the quarterback of the 1978 team and is now a member of the Rutgers board of trustees, said that back in his day, “we were pretty good. People don’t even know that. But the year before we played in the Garden State Bowl, we had gone 11-0 and turned down an invitation to the Independence Bowl.”

Hering said the administration urged the players to vote against the trip because the school would have lost money.

“I think a lot of guys regretted that,” he added.

Hering remembered how the Scarlet Knights took a 10-0 lead on an Arizona State team that featured John Mickler, who later played for the New York Giants; Mark Malone, a quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers; Gerald Riggs, a running back for the Super Bowl-winning Washington Redskins; and Al Harris, an All-Pro who played for the Philadelphia Eagles.

“We had created a turnover and were down at Arizona State’s 4-yard-line just before the first half ended,” Hering said. “But we fumbled and they scored at the end of the half to make it 10-7. I truly believe that if we had scored and led 17-0 at halftime, we would have won.”

Since 1978, the Scarlet Knights have had only six winning seasons. They went 0-11 in 1997 and 1-11 in 2002. They were shut out 11 times from 1990 to 2001.

“The program was kind of a joke,” Neill said.

“Rutgers had become kind of the safety school,” Hering said. “That is, the good players in the state would go to Rutgers if Penn State or Boston College or Notre Dame or Pitt or Syracuse wouldn’t take them. Then we’d have to go play those teams with their rejects. It wasn’t a map for success.”

Now in his fourth year, Schiano admitted to having some doubts in 2002 after the 1-11 effort.

“After the season, I had to sit down and think about things,” he said. “Was it impossible? Were all the people who told me not to take the job right? I really had to do some soul-searching. I asked myself, ‘Is this bigger than me?’ Ultimately I decided no. I believed in the university and myself. I just realized that the talent we had was a little worse than I had thought when I arrived.”

Schiano, 39, received a seven-year contract extension last week, although his record is only 12-34.

“One of our problems was impatience,” said Mulcahy. “We kept changing coaches when they weren’t the problem. The problems were much deeper -- a lack of tradition and facilities. We couldn’t immediately change the lack of tradition, but we could do something about the facilities.”

Mulcahy became athletic director in 1998, after having spent 19 years as president and chief executive officer of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, which runs the Meadowlands. At Rutgers Mulcahy has overseen the modernization of the Louis Brown Athletic Center, where the basketball teams play, and the expansion of the Hale Center, which Schiano now calls “the best college training facility in the country.”

“The patience comes when you’re sitting in the stands being booed, when your family hears you being booed, when you hear the program being made the butt of jokes,” Mulcahy said. “But you have to trust in yourself and I could find no reason why this program didn’t do better other than lack of commitment from on top. And we have the commitment now.”

When Rutgers arrived in Phoenix last week, Schiano was asked about a story that he had, typed up and in his desk, a bowl itinerary, a detailed daily schedule for a yet-to-be-invented Rutgers bowl team.

“Well, I had a folder,” Schiano said. “I wouldn’t say it was a to-the-dot itinerary. But from all the programs I’ve been a part of as an assistant coach, I kept close track and tried to take extra notes with the goal of someday being a head coach and someday taking a team to a bowl game. So all of that is great and it’s nice to have a template to work off of.”

And Schiano is quick to note that his team isn’t a college football power yet. The Scarlet Knights lost two of their last three games by a combined score of 101-37, including a 56-5 mess at Louisville.

“We’ve had our ups and downs,” said Neill, who was recently named to the All-Big East first team. “We’re not a college football power. But I truly don’t believe it will be another 28 years before we go to a bowl game again. I think more kids like me in the state will give us a look. I want my history to just be the start here.”

Or, as Hering said, “I’ll be really disappointed if I’m getting calls 30 years from now asking about Rutgers’ first of only two bowl games. We’re better than that.”