I posted a couple of months ago about there being mutual interest between Rutgers and Schiano, should Ash falter further and be fired. Nothing with respect to that statement has changed, as there's still strong mutual interest between Rutgers and Schiano, according to my sources. Doesn't mean he'll be hired, but he's absolutely a candidate.
With regard to Greg's interest, the source I've used over the past ~20 years has confirmed that Greg is quite interested in the position. Like any source, it's possible his info is wrong (even though it's first hand, but maybe Greg is just being cagey), but this source is very good friends with Greg from way back in their playing days together at Bucknell and was right when it came to Greg turning down Miami and Michigan.
Another source tells me several of RU's big boosters are pro-Schiano guys, which is no surprise to many who know these boosters. What I don't know is what Hobbs thinks. I can only hope that these boosters are able to convince him that Greg is the best choice - unless Hobbs pulls a rabbit out of the hat and is able to afford bringing in a gamechanger as head coach.
I wasn't intending to rehash my thoughts on why I think Greg is a top choice, but I will repost a few high level points on that (which I just said in another thread on Greg).
Most intelligent people will look at Greg's record and evaluate his 2005-2011 run, after rebuilding the program from the abyss (arguably a worse one than we're in now, since we had no program/facilities, like we do now), where we went 56-33/25-24 and won 5 of 6 bowl games played in 7 years. Including one magical season where we finished #12 in the country and one tragic one, where we went 4-8.
No, we didn't win a BE championship or beat WVU, but we were always in the hunt (in a BE that had slightly better Sagarin ratings than the B1G back then, over those years), but Greg built a good to very good program where there was nothing before, primarily due to his attention to detail, passion, recruiting prowess and ability to spot and develop underappreciated talent. His accomplishments were directly responsible for us getting the new stadium, better facilities, achieving a great APR, and eventually getting the B1G invite.
Lastly, I also think that many of the criticisms of Schiano (control freak, inability to delegate, overly harsh/demanding, etc.) have some validity and Schiano actually agreed with much of the criticism in the Thamel article in SI that came out after Schiano was fired from TB. In that article Schiano really showed some great self-assessment and introspection in sharing some of the things he didn't do well at in the NFL and in college and how his next head coaching gig would incorporate some changes, including a bunch of things he observed in his year after TB, visiting other teams.
Many of the things he discussed, if Greg addresses them as well as he articulated them, would likely address the concerns many have, IMO. Plus, he doesn't have to build the foundation of a program any more (facilities, stadium and academic support are all in place, although obviously facilities can't remain stagnant) and should be able to focus on recruiting and coaching talent.
The one thing I do wonder about is whether anyone has done an assessment of how much he changed his approach at OSU or if that isn't really a valid thing to assess, since he wasn't the head coach and had to defer to Meyer in many things. If we could truly have a "new and improved" Schiano, who was a bit less of an overly demanding micromanager (including actually trusting an OC), who also gave more freedom to his players and wasn't a jerk to people in the athletic department (and even NFL scouts), while still retaining his passion for recruiting, discipline and coaching/developing talent, then I think he'd very likely be the best choice.
Even getting the old Greg back might still be the best choice amongst the candidates we hear about, but I love the idea of a better version of Schiano. Perhaps we can do better than Greg, but we're more likely to do worse with most of the names being bandied about and I'd rather go with what we know than an unknown (unless we're talking crazy good candidates like Meyer, who I assume is not interested). We'll see, I guess.
https://www.si.com/2014/11/04/nfl-greg-schiano-year-off
