Greg Schiano’s time at Ohio State has helped shape his rebuild of Rutgers football
PISCATAWAY, N.J. — When Greg Schiano arrived for the first time, the Rutgers football head coach brought a lot of the philosophies and mindsets from his time as part of the coaching staff at Miami. Now in his reboot at Rutgers, Schiano has brought some of the things learned from his time spent as defensive coordinator and associate head coach at Ohio State.
On Saturday, the rebuilding Rutgers (3-1, 0-1 Big Ten) program will play at No. 3 Ohio State (4-0, 1-0 Big Ten) at 3:30 PM ET (BTN).
Two decades ago when Schiano arrived at Rutgers the first time, he was coming from a Miami program that was hot and exciting. Now in his return to Rutgers, Schiano is bringing some of the cache from an Ohio State program that is a juggernaut in recruiting and consistently in the College Football Playoff.
“Anytime you’re in a program that successful, there’s certain things you like, right?” Schiano said on Wednesday. “So there’s so much that goes into running a program everything from what you do on an itinerary to how you run a power play, and everything in between, right?
That institutional knowledge from Miami was important the first go-around. It isn’t any different with the Buckeyes now.
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Schiano had to teach Rutgers how to travel, how to condition and how even to recruit during his first stint On the Banks.
Now it is a different world, Schiano admits. Recruiting is such a big part of rebuilding a program and the Rutgers back-end staff has been built-up the past three years to compete in the toughest division in college football.
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Schiano has a close relationship with Urban Meyer, whom he worked with at the Buckeyes. The two would frequently bounce ideas off each other prior to Schiano’s stint at Ohio State.
This helped refine and shape his outlook on how to rebuild a program.
“So there’s things that I learned – I think, you know, Urban’s a good friend. So we were always exchanging information on major issues. But I don’t think until you’re in a program living behind the curtain, do you see everything and so I got to see everything the way they did it,” Schiano said.
“Some of the stuff we borrowed and some wasn’t for us. When you get to the point in your career where I am and you’ve done it for so long, you usually don’t go wholesale change on anything. What you do is you take your best from (there) and you see how you can blend it into your program to make what you’re doing better. We made a few changes, just overall that I think the times have changed since the first time I was here. We didn’t really have social media and all that stuff back then.”
Schiano then discussed what a telephone cord was and a rotary phone, much to the amazement of the Daily Targum’s beat reporters.
