Greg Schiano to Stay at Rutgers

Greg Schiano to Stay at Rutgers

A couple of years ago the Big East college tackle football conference was eviscerated by the defections of perennial national champion contender Miami, recent and mid-term power Virginia Tech, and perennially respectable and big market Boston College. The Atlantic Coast Conference, the recipient of the defectors largesse, was supposed to become a "Super Conference," while the Big East, sarcastically dubbed the "Big Least" was expected to survive on a technicality or dissolve.

Then Larry Coker ran out of Butch Davis' recruits and his own career assistant coach's ability finally caught up with the program. Last year concluded with a humiliating bowl-game slaughter by L.S.U. and this year U.M. lurched to a 6-6 record and a birth in the Micron P.C. Bowl or something like that.

Virginia Tech has regressed since joining the A.C.C. and Boston College has merely maintained it's status as a top-20-25 team. So this year the A.C.C.'s automatic B.C.S. birth goes to the football factory of Wake Forest. Officials at the Orange Bowl have been observed drinking heavily.

Completely unpredictably, the Big Least has arisen Phoenix-like. The West Virginia "Products of Incestuous Relations" beat S.E.C. champion Georgia in last year's Sugar Bowl at UGA's Georgia Dome home away from home.

Rutgers had a miracle season and barely missed out on a B.C.S. bowl in a triple-overtime loss at Incestuous Relations stadium. Head Coach Greg Schiano won the Coach of the Year award. Since he had left the Miami program as an assistant to take the head job at the State University of New Jersey it was thought that Coach Schiano would naturally gravitate back to U.M. after the firing of Coach Coker. Instead Coach Schiano announced today that there's nowhere he'd rather be than Piscataway and took himself out of candidacy for the Miami job.

A program and ultimately a conference's success rides on the quality of its coaches. The Big East had already lost Cincinnati's Mark Dantonio to Michigan State of the Big Eleven. It could not afford to lose Schiano to a "better" job and cannot affort to lose U.S.F. coach Jim Leavitt to Miami or some other "better" job. If it does, it is in danger of becoming the Mid-American Conference, a minor league known only for its incubation of coaches such as Ara Parsegian, Woody Hayes, Bo Schembechler, and most recently Urban Meyer.

What a break for Rutgers, if it lasts. The latest report has it that Schiano shrewdly has bought time, money, and prestige for the job he really wants, as head coach of Penn State once Joe Paterno retires. If so, that is the next test of the Big East's credibility. I am Benjamin Harris.