Greg Schiano will not be remembered as one of the great college football coaches of our time. However, the raw numbers will never do justice to the caliber of coaching Schiano has given to the Rutgers team which faces USC this Saturday. This is true even in light of Rutgers' horrendous start to the 2026 season, which has Schiano on the hot seat.
The raw stats show that entering this 2026 season, Greg Schiano was 99-108 at Rutgers in 17 seasons. Those numbers suggest mediocrity and below-average performances. To be sure, a number of dreary seasons have been part of Schiano's overall profile. However, one must understand that Schiano has twice taken over the program when it was at the bottom of the heap in college football. Rutgers is not a quick-fix
program. Schiano had to patiently build the Scarlet Knights before he was able to win games.
If you take the first four seasons of his initial Rutgers tour (2001-2004) and then the first season of his second RU tenure, Schiano had to eat a lot of losses in those transition periods. The total record in those five seasons: 15-40. Schiano had to lose before he had a real chance to win. You can do the math and see that once Schiano got Rutgers off the ground (twice, not once), he went 84-68 in the other 12 seasons on the job in Piscataway, an average of seven wins per season. The overall win-loss record is under .500, but Schiano has done quite a lot of winning at a place where it is very hard to win. Rutgers is in the Northeast, with the program overshadowed by pro sports teams in a densely urban area where the sports marketplace is crowded and competitive. 99-108 in 17 seasons seems bad until you consider everything Greg Schiano has had to deal with at Rutgers. He's no Pete Carroll, but the man can coach, and Lincoln Riley better be ready for him on Saturday.
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This article originally appeared on Trojans Wire: Greg Schiano coaching track record is not easy to define at Rutgers
