I believe the cynics on here are greatly underestimating the competitiveness of new jerseyans. IF rutgers had winning sports team it is quite possible you would see the atmosphere around rutgers athletics change dramatically, making things a lot easier down the road. The problem is we have no success to overcome apathy or cynicism about college sports being a money pit. Greg schiano ' s incremental ism did not create the kind of success we need, nor did it produce the kind of entertaining football people want to see. I've said it for years. NFL style rushing first offense, even when it works and it never does at rutgers, is boring to the general public and it's not the style of football that is going to get us over the hump.
Who do you want us to be?
- Thread starter vkj91
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But that goes to culture...which is 1 of my 5 prerequisites for success.
The atmosphere around the stadium on game day is amazing. Yet, if we had a homegame the same day as The Hunt, there will be a multi page thread worrying about attendance, atmosphere, etc.
Do you think that if there was a tractor pull or a rodeo in Lincoln on a game day there would be a 5 page thread kvetching about attendance? Do you think for a second someone would even CONSIDER scheduling a tractor pull in Lincoln on a gamde day?
As New Jersyeans we love the diversity of things to do. It's part of our DNA. However, it is not great for our program.
Someone in the Mets thread posted about a possible conflict between OSU night game and a Met play-off game. Those are real threats here. Those options are what limits our ability to fill the stadium we have every game. Those factors will limit an future expansion.
Of course all of these arguments are Chicken or Egg arguments. But systemic excellence doesn't start with a coaching hire. It starts with an institutional commitment to athletic excellence. It starts with an executive plan for excellence that is then shared with each department. We tried the route of the plan starting with the football coach and working up. It resurrected the program--to a consistent 7-8 win place. His name was Greg Schiano. Even someone as strong willed as Greg was only able to take it so far. That is the point. Until you have a institutional commitment to success, you will have middling results. No individual coaching hire transcends that.
Really? Because I'm pretty sure Louisville, TCU, Cincinatti, MSU, and Baylor all achieved equal success to Wisconsin recently (3 of them were in CUSA this millennium, 1 was arguably the worst BCS team in existence, and MSU was average). .
You are conflating on field success with everything else. You don't get the adoration of local media, big time boosters, state support, thousands of fans, etc by just existing. Rutgers is a LONG way from that, and certainly we are not anywhere near Wisconsin or Iowa or Nebraska in that regard. But what you are not understanding is that all of those come AFTER on field success. You do not need ANY of those to become a good football team. Does becoming a football team automatically grant you all of these nice perks? No, it does not, but it is the first step required to begin building up your base.
So, my point is we could easily become a Wisconsin/Iowa/Nebraska level in on the field performance with just the right coach (and this is true for a lot of schools actually). There are many examples of that right now and recently that prove this. The probability to lure a good coach is a combination of compensation and recruiting viability (as I said earlier, the only real 2 important things that determine on the field success). Rutgers will definitely have enough money to afford a good coach and is in a great recruiting area.
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Except if you look at one of my previous posts linking past UPI/AP polls, MSU was ranked in the Top 10 as far back as 1987. And oh yeah, they won a national championship in hoops with a game named Magic Johnson. The fanbase was huge and in place. Money was flowing. As was state support.
Cinci is ranked where exactly this year?
Any other 3-5 year cases you'd like to present in a discussion that has the words "consistent Top 10" program in it?
MSU has 8 B10 championships including titles won in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and 2010s.
MSu has finished ranked in the Top 20 at least 2x in every decade since the 1950s.
They lay claim to 6 national championships in football at least 3 unanimous (in the voting era, obviously).
You wanna try another program?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_State_Spartans_football
MSu has finished ranked in the Top 20 at least 2x in every decade since the 1950s.
They lay claim to 6 national championships in football at least 3 unanimous (in the voting era, obviously).
You wanna try another program?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_State_Spartans_football
Yeah, all that money flowing and yet they gave Dantonio a 1.1million per year contract. If only we could be so lucky!
Cinci was rolling until their coach got poached because Cinci was in a bum conference and had to compete with OSU and all the surrounding juggernauts for recruits every year - very difficult situation.
Again, you keep bringing up things which have no bearing on anything. You have to show me WHY and HOW all of this money and fan support is what allows these upper schools to hire a coach that we cant. How is it helping them win football games? And for the last time, I never said just a good coach would be needed to be a consistently top 10 team, but rather the path starts with a good coach. All of things you are saying Rutgers doesn't have begins to come as we get better. That's what happened at Baylor, that's what happened at Louisville, and it will happen at RU.
Sports fans here are very fickle. People fall off the wagon fairly easily -- there's just so many other things competing for our $$$ and attention that might give a better return than a fledgling college football program scratching for respectability.
However, this very phenomenon can definitely be used to our advantage. The tri-state loves a winner and when they find one, they double-down (again, see: 2006). If we could just put together 2 or 3 seasons of moderate success, I imagine we could easily rebuild any erosion and even smash the program's current high-water marks in terms of prestige, recruiting, attendance, and profitability.
However, this very phenomenon can definitely be used to our advantage. The tri-state loves a winner and when they find one, they double-down (again, see: 2006). If we could just put together 2 or 3 seasons of moderate success, I imagine we could easily rebuild any erosion and even smash the program's current high-water marks in terms of prestige, recruiting, attendance, and profitability.
And we won't have to compete with PSU, OSU, MIchigan and the SEC for recruits? Just because this cult of personality coach is going to create a wall around New Jersey?
lulz...
Cinci loses coaches to the NDs of the world for the same reason we would. It's a stepping stone job.
Why is it a stepping stone job? Because of the lack of a plan to address the 5 prerequisites for success.
But I like this game...let's pick another program that we're a better destination then. So far we have Nebraska and Michigan State.
Texas? Florida? I'll let you decide.
It is not accurate to say there is and has been no institutional commitment to football success at rutgers. It is inconsistent and half assed at times, depending on the president, but we do have some pretty nice facilities and some momentum. At this point a great coach would work wonders. If it were still 1990 and we had a depression era stadium with bushes it would be a different matter entirely.
Perhaps we have different definitions of institutional commitment.
I seem to recall our newly installed AD, making a move on her first major decision, and having the rug pulled out from under her very publicly, over what amounted to less than $2M.
Is thatt illustrative of a strong commitment to athletics to you? To let your new hire fail miserably in public?
Like I said, the commitment is variable but it's not as if our program is where it was 25 or even 15 years ago. We have assets that a great coach could build on.
Listen, someone donated $2 million for something as frivolous as a recruiting lounge not too long ago, and that after a stretch of success that most realistic people would call very mediocre. It's not far fetched to imagine that if rutgers really won something of value donations would greatly increase and presidents who did not support athletics would receive angry phone calls from important people. In some ways all it takes is a single great player, a la ray rice but these days more like a great qb, and the coach to recruit and develop said player.
Alright this is a waste of time. You clearly think we need all of these amazing factors in order to become a good team despite their being literally current existing examples that say otherwise. You keep twisting my words (find me where I said we are currently better than Nebraska or MSU), continually confuse cause and effect, and don't understand why Rutgers with similar resources as an Iowa or MSU would have a much higher ceiling.
And you've offered no plan to get us to a place of "similar resources" to Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin or MSU.
Every one of your thoughts ends with "the right coach can do it."
Your definition of resources is conference affiliation, geography and the right coach.
That is only part of the equation.
Anyone who understands big time football knows that.
I don't confuse cause and effect. The schools you cite as examples are either 1) wrong--MSU or 2) incomplete. The fact is that Cinci has seen every big coach it managed to land move on to a better situation (those resources I talk about). Baylor is too young in it's rise.
Can the right coach come in and win on a 7-8 win basis for a recruiting cycle (4-5 years)? Sure. Then their program will hit a ceiling--like Greg's did. Because the institutional momentum is great to overcome.
I have offered a plan, and it literally only requires getting a good coach. That gets on the field success. On the field success gets you resources over time. Getting the right coach does not require those resources initially (outside a coaching budget, which is a very small % of overall resources we are talking about).
Greg was not a good coach. He got us 7-8 wins in the crappiest BCS conference, he was a perennial mid tier team along with Pitt. He was the right coach at the right time who took us out of the doldrums to get us to where we are now, and I thank him for that. But he was never a good coach. Not to mention 7-8 wins in the B1G is significantly better(in terms of prestige and difficulty) than in the big east.
So here is how I see it. Outside of the very best coaches (Urban, Harbaugh, Saban, Kelly, etc etc), you do not need to have the things you mentioned in order to get a coach who can produce good results on the field. Not the best results, but good results. All we need at Rutgers right now to grow is good results. This growth will allow time to accumulate additional fans, support, donors, etc. By the time we reach a wall with whoever our next coach is, we will be in a much better place. And if we get lucky enough to hire a great coach (and by that I mean an up and comer who happens to become extremely good), his chances of staying are high due to recruiting grounds and the money we would absolutely pay him.
Slight correction.
When I first started watching college football as a kid, CBS used to do a scoreboard show in the late afternoon. A guy sat at a desk in front of an actual scoreboard that had little plaques of all the game match-ups with the scores next to them. Zero electronics. The camera would pan to each score as the guy read it.
Baylor was good, then.
Instutional commitment...been preaching those words on this board for a decade
To add
Baylor has played in 21 bowl games in their history. First bowl game was 1948. They've played in at least 2 bowl games in every decade from the 1950s to the 2010s, except the 2000s. They've won 9 conference titles, produced 14 consensus All-Americans and a Heisman winner.
Guess what? That makes RUGT wrong again...
somewhere, Wrongville, the capital city in the state of Wrong, is looking for it's Chief of Wrong....
you should apply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baylor_Bears_football#Bowl_games
In a few years, our share of the B1G money will be 15-20 million more per year than we make right now. I'd say that putting even just 3 million of that (hah, "just" 3,000,000) towards coaching staff salaries would allow us to hire and hold onto a very good coaching staff. (I mean 3 million more than we pay now, for a total of 5 million or so.) I know a lot of that increased conference revenue will be used to reduce our subsidy - as it should.
To paraphrase George C. Scott as Patton: New Jersey loves a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Winning games on the field for a sustained stretch will do more than anything else could to address the five questions hudson posed:
1. Strong state support (in the case of public schools, spending public money this means the legislature). (<------ The toughest one to change at Rutgers IMO)
2. Strong local media support (<--- The bandwagon filled up in 2006 and the RU1000 drifted away. Win, and this will go away.)
3. A deep pocketed donor base. (<---Win and more people will donate, and will donate more. We are woefully behind the programs we aspire to be.)
4. An administration committed to BIG TIME athletics. (<--- Just needs to be willing to invest more of that B1G revenue to coaching and facilities across the board. The subsidy gap is because our ticket sales and donations dollars lag behind others, as well as not having the full B1G checks yet.)
5. An alumni base willing to let a few arrests, a few academic improprieties and assorted off the field chicanery slide. (<--- Define "a few" and "slide". If we're talking Criminoles/80s Miami and Oklahoma, it's not going to happen.)
We beat Michigan State in 2004 and it was not a fluke. Dantonio was hired for 1.1 million in 2007. He's done a great job there, no doubt. With the right hire we can do similar great things.
To paraphrase George C. Scott as Patton: New Jersey loves a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Winning games on the field for a sustained stretch will do more than anything else could to address the five questions hudson posed:
1. Strong state support (in the case of public schools, spending public money this means the legislature). (<------ The toughest one to change at Rutgers IMO)
2. Strong local media support (<--- The bandwagon filled up in 2006 and the RU1000 drifted away. Win, and this will go away.)
3. A deep pocketed donor base. (<---Win and more people will donate, and will donate more. We are woefully behind the programs we aspire to be.)
4. An administration committed to BIG TIME athletics. (<--- Just needs to be willing to invest more of that B1G revenue to coaching and facilities across the board. The subsidy gap is because our ticket sales and donations dollars lag behind others, as well as not having the full B1G checks yet.)
5. An alumni base willing to let a few arrests, a few academic improprieties and assorted off the field chicanery slide. (<--- Define "a few" and "slide". If we're talking Criminoles/80s Miami and Oklahoma, it's not going to happen.)
We beat Michigan State in 2004 and it was not a fluke. Dantonio was hired for 1.1 million in 2007. He's done a great job there, no doubt. With the right hire we can do similar great things.
It's kind of ironic to see posters who are trying their pessimistic best to argue that "new jersey" will never get behind rutgers athletics argue that this is because of a defeatist or eat - their -own mentality that can't be overcome. I suppose you could say they're proving their own point.
I don't have a "defeatist" attitude about anything.
I base an analysis and projection on history and the status of things on the ground.
People who agree with me can point to the entire documented history of Rutgers Athletics.
People who disagree point to "potential" and "the right hire" and "I think I can...I think I can."
Visualization without a plan is a wish...
But who would've thought in 1999 that it was possible for us to have a 54,000 seat stadium and be in the big ten? We HAVE made progress, however halting at times. More progress is possible.
To some degree you could even argue that progress is inevitable because however much some people in high places might want to turn back the clock being in the big ten has changed that forever. There are now expectations that were not there before, and those expectations will force our administrators however reluctantly and shabbily to play along.
Fair enough...
when you reckon Chicago holds our feet to the fire to "play along?" Cause sitting in Central Jersey, it's hard to argue against same old Rutgers...
Will you agree that winning 7-8 games in the B1G East will look different than say the same record in the Big East/AAC?
Because I'm guessing one of those 7-8 (and sometimes more) wins will be against a team we want to be. Somebody will notice. Maybe more than few will notice...
Baylor wasn't even a member of the BIG12 until 1996. here's their record since before Briles:
1996 Reedy 4–7 1–7 6th South
Dave Roberts (Big 12) (1997–1998)
1997 Roberts 2–9 1–7 6th South
1998 Roberts 2–9 1–7 6th South
Kevin Steele (Big 12) (1999–2002)
1999 Steele 1–10 0–8 6th South
2000 Steele 2–9 0–8 6th South
2001 Steele 3–8 0–8 6th South
2002 Steele 3–9 1–7 6th South
Guy Morriss (Big 12) (2003–2007)
2003 Morriss 3–9 1–7 6th South
2004 Morriss 3–8 1–7 6th South
2005 Morriss 5–6 2–6 5th South
2006 Morriss 4–8 3–5 T-5th South
2007 Morriss 3–9
That's 40 - 101. You can look up their attendance numbers since I am done doing research for you, but they were equally pitiful.
So wow, they went to crappy bowl games by being in a crappy conference. You dont even know what you are arguing against anymore. Nothing you have listed about Baylor disproves anything I have said.
Did baylor have big boosters before Briles? NO.
Did baylor have a history of success in an actual BCS conference before Briles? NO.
Did baylor have a bunch of fans before Briles? NO.
Did baylor have any sort of huge recruiting advantage but just had a string of bad coaches before Briles? NO.
Did baylor spend a lot of money on Briles? NO.
So what in god's earth are you on about? You are just posting a mish mash of information that completely deviates from your original point. Baylor was a grade-A turd in the 12 years before Briles came and didn't fulfill any one of your '5 bullet points of success'. then they got the right coach, and off to the races.
Honestly, I am just completely mystified at how we are still arguing this. You are truly probably the only person on the planet who thinks Baylor was good before Briles got there. By that logic, Rutgers had some good runs in the 70s - clearly we have always been good!
One of my wife's roommates at RU, 30 years ago, was a Baylor transfer.
One of the things that she reported was that while attending football games at Baylor technically wasn't "mandatory" for all students, the school strongly encouraged it - to the point that on gameday, ALL student services and activities were shut down. Library, laundry rooms, campus centers, everything. The only thing that WAS open was the stadium.
One of the things that she reported was that while attending football games at Baylor technically wasn't "mandatory" for all students, the school strongly encouraged it - to the point that on gameday, ALL student services and activities were shut down. Library, laundry rooms, campus centers, everything. The only thing that WAS open was the stadium.
Baylor played in the Gator, Sugar, Cotton, Orange and Bluebonnet bowls in their history. The did this when there were barely enough bowls for the Top 30 to get an invite.
The point is that Baylor has a football history. They were a bowl team in the late 90s. They went dark for a decade. Briles has now brought them back.
It is becoming painfully obvious that you have no sense of history.
Thus far, you've thrown out Baylor and MSU as two examples of programs that recently hired the "right coach" and were "off the races." The actual facts illustrate two programs that have multi decade long success, with some periods of cyclical downturn.
If you make the statement that Baylor football didn't exist prior to Briles, you are either being purposely disingenuous or blatantly stupid.
If you argue that MSU Football begins with Dantoni, and ignore the fact that they played in the Rose Bowl and won several B10 titles and oh, had a guy named Nick Saban as their coach, then you are ignoring history to make your point. And doing a poor job of it.
You keep saying that the "right coach" can take a program from A to Q...A being irrelevant. Yet, you can't produce an actual example of it happening. Every program you've thrown out thus far, has about a 60 year body of work of bowl games, ranked teams and All-Americans.
Get it yet?
You are using a Field of Dreams argument. The right coach can build it and they will come.
PROVE IT.
Show us a case where the right coach built it without institutional commitment and the program has endured lasting success.
No, because you don't get it.
History means nothing by itself. If it did, Syracuse and Pitt would be top dogs right now. Hell, we played the first collegiate game, why aren't we amazing?
History is only relevant if it actually garnered you fandom and support for TODAY. So Baylor has some history, clearly it didn't mean shit for them because they were one of the worst bcs teams in terms of support and results before briles.
I honestly think that you're the one not getting it, and you're circling the drain, here.
Nobody said history means anything by itself. If it did, then Rutgers, Princeton and Columbia would be perennial national champs.
I think @ruhudsonfan's request is perfectly reasonable. You're saying that nothing other than a great coach can catapult a team from basically nowhere into the stratosphere of college football. I'd like you to cite an example. To his point, you've offered MSU and Baylor and would be wrong on both counts, since those teams are historically successful.
Jesus dude I never said that. I said the right coach could get us 90% of the way there in terms of on field success. That brings with it all the things that are then needed to continue progressing. How is that so hard to understand?
Ruhudson laid out some arbitrary list of things a school needs, to which i replied you need none of those to get to a wisconsin level of on field results. The results come first, then the support. I listed Baylor as an example because despite their so called history, they had absolutely NONE of the bullet points he listed as requirements before doing well recently. Their history did not help them one iota in terms of his list.
So why even mention history?
Hudson, for kids growing up today, all of that Baylor success before RGIII is ancient history. They were not a bowl team in the late 90s. Here are Baylor's bowls in the '90s:
1991 Copper Bowl (lost to Indiana 24-0). They were 8-3.
1992 John Hancock Bowl (Sun Bowl stadium - beat Arizona 20-15). They were 6-5 and beat a 6-4-1 Arizona team.
1994 Alamo Bowl (lost to Washington State 10-3). They were 7-4.
Do you think kids growing up in Texas in the 2000s were dreaming of playing for Baylor, because they played in the 1951 Orange Bowl, the 1956 SugarBowl, or the 1974 and 1980 Cotton Bowl? C'mon, man.
When was the last time they were ranked at the end of the season before 2011? 1986: several years before anyone on that 2011 team was born. They were dark for almost 25 years. Far more than a decade. It's about the same amount of time Rutgers wandered in the wilderness between the stated step up to big time football and our Insight Bowl berth in 2005.
Baylor's record all time against the big dog Big 12 teams:
Texas: 26-74-4
Oklahoma: 3-21
Nebraska: 1-11
Texas A&M: 31-68-9
Just so we are clear, you are asserting that despite the fact that:
- Baylor had an average attendance of 33,000 the year before Briles came (we were averaging 10,000 more)
- Played in a similar sized stadium as us at the time
- Had zero outside big name boosters before Briles
- Lived in a completely remote and undesirable portion of texas
- Had poor recruiting
- Were a combined 40-101 in the Big 12
That they are now winning not solely because of the right hire with Briles, but because they had history decades ago?
oy vey indeed, as this has to be some of the most pants on head potato logic I think I have ever seen in my entire life.
If you think a coach is the SOLE reason Baylor is winning and not an institutional commitment to winning, I'll continue to assert you're clueless.
What does institutional support even mean? You are throwing around these terms without attaching any meaning to them. He wasn't paid highly, so I am honestly flabbergasted as to what else the institution could have done in this context. Please enlighten me, what did the instituional support do to help him win that rutgers has shown it will not or cannot do?
I'm still not getting where we have no institutional commitment or community commitment to winning. How did we get a stadium expansion? Luxury boxes? A recruiting lounge? A coach flying around in a helicopter? You can argue that institutional commitment is variable and that community involvement is sketchy but you can't argue it doesn't exist and never will. In fact you can argue that it's just waiting for a real reason to explode. FFS our previous coach was given a helicopter to fly around in and he never even won a big east championships. People are dying to have a bandwagon to climb on.
