When the Big Ten announced its plans to annex Rutgers, it was almost as if you could hear the collective groan of the Midwesterners all the way in Piscataway.
The widespread belief was that the Scarlet Knights would dilute an already weak conference and that folks across the heartland — you know, like Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana and so on and so forth — don’t have much in common with New Jerseyans.
After all, when you ask Mr. and Mrs. Smith who raise cows and grow corn in Nebraska, their perception of the East Coast — and especially Jersey — is probably this.
As it turns out, Rutgers isn’t so bad — not on the football field anyway. And midway through the season, the Scarlet Knights (5-1) are hardly the reason the conference is looked at as circus of mediocrity.
Before the team toppled Michigan to notch its first-ever Big Ten win, head coach Kyle Flood told reporters: "Having grown up in this part of the country, people say it's a pro sports area. Well, I would agree with you, but I would tell you that the people in this part of the country love going to an event — and Big Ten football is an event. And it's something that the people in this part of the country — New York, New Jersey metropolitan area — are going to embrace that. I think we saw that the first time around, and I think we are going to see it again this week, and I expect it to be an every‑time event."
And when Rutgers plays Ohio State in Columbus Saturday, expect it to be just that: an event. Whether the Scarlet Knights are fit to be on the same stage, though, remains to be seen.
A Brief Overview
Historically, Rutgers isn’t college football royalty, but it’s held its own over the last decade: Since 2004, the Scarlet Knights are 73-51. Of course, those kind of numbers aren't reflective of an elite program, but Rutgers isn’t the doormat people made it out to be when the Big Ten announced plans to add the school two years ago.
This season, the Scarlet Knights have been somewhat of a pleasant surprise. They're 5-1 and would be undefeated if not for a meltdown against Penn State earlier this season.
Whether or not they're any good remains another question. Rutgers' best win is a tossup between the unraveling Wolverines and a 2-5 Washington State team. Playing Ohio State, undoubtedly, will be its biggest challenge thus far.
As far as numbers go, Rutgers is pretty pedestrian for a team with one loss. On offense, the Scarlet Knights average 30 points (71st nationally) and 427 yards (57th nationally). On defense, they're giving up 22 points (43rd nationally) and 397 yards (69th nationally).
Behind Rutgers' most-recent success — a three-game winning streak since that loss to the Nittany Lions — is senior quarterback Gary Nova, who seems to get better better each week. He's completed 62 percent of his passes for 1,601 yards and 13 touchdowns, but seven interceptions mean he's mistake-prone. That could be costly against an Ohio State pass defense looking to make another statement after shutting down Maryland two weekends ago. On the flip side, Nova's got the kind of arm that's given the Buckeyes trouble in the past.
Who in the Blue Hell is Kyle Flood?
If there's one person synonymous with Rutgers, its former head coach Greg Schiano, who guided the Scarlet Knights for a decade (2001-2011) and inserted the program into the national spotlight. In 2006, Schiano gave Rutgers arguably its best season in school history: the Scarlet Knights went 11-2, beat Kansas State first their first-ever bowl win and finished 12th in both the AP and coaches polls. An upset of then-No. 3 Louisville at home became one of the year's iconic images.
Five years later, Schiano, whom Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer calls a friend, stepped down to coach the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers. To fill the void, the Scarlet Knights turned to offensive line coach and assistant head coach Kyle Flood to carry the flag into a new era.
Flood, who served as an assistant under Schiano since 2005, led Rutgers to a Big East title in his first season at the helm in 2012. Last year, though, the Scarlet Knights took three leaps backwards and finished 6-7.
In a somewhat bizarre turn of events, Flood was given a two-year contract extension earlier this season.
Why Does Everyone Seem to Hate Julie Hermann?
Hmmm, where to start?
Hermann, Rutgers' embattled athletic director, suffers from foot-in-mouth syndrome. From the looks of it, it's incurable.
Most recently, before the Scarlet Knights played Penn State in early September, Hermann made a joke about the infamous child sex abuse scandal involving Jerry Sandusky during a private meeting.
Before that, Hermann told a class full of journalism students how she relished the idea of the Star-Ledger, New Jersey's largest newspaper, going out of business around the same time the outlet, you know, had to lay off nearly 170 employees.
There was also that time where Rutgers rescinded an invitation to Eric LeGrand, a former Scarlet Knights football player who was paralyzed during a kickoff in 2010, to speak at graduation last May. After what it called a "miscommunication," the school ultimately let him address the graduates. This really wasn't Hermann's fault, but she was the one who called LeGrand in the first place.
Heck, Hermann's hiring in and of itself was a bit of a fiasco after she denied the existence of a video regarding a pregnancy discrimination lawsuit when she was the women's volleyball coach at Tennessee in the mid-1990s.
