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December 12, 2006
Eventually, I suppose, you really do see it all.
Turn on your TV, and here is Emmitt Smith ballroom dancing.
Open a magazine, and here is Dale Jr. pushing not just cologne, but French cologne.
Turn on your TV again, and here is someone reporting that the University of Miami is pitching serious woo at some guy for its vacant head coaching spot.
“No thanks,” the guy replies. “I believe I’ll stay at Rutgers.”
I guess I don’t have to tell you that not so long ago, this would have been like saying you’ll pass on the Lamborghini, the Pinto’s still got some quality miles in it.
Not so long ago, I was up in a press box looking down on the Scarlet Knights with the rest of America, and it was like watching a documentary on human sacrifice. The year was 1996, and Notre Dame was playing its last home game before Rockne’s house got a major upgrade. Gore, dismemberment and scenes of extreme violence ensued as Rutgers went down 62-0.
Miami at the time was a national power, and Rutgers was, um, not. In fact, in four overall meetings with Notre Dame through 2002, Rutgers has been outscored 197-17.
But then Greg Schiano arrived.
Under him, Rutgers went 7-5 in 2005, then went 10-2 this season, narrowly missing (or getting jobbed out of, depending on your viewpoint) a BCS berth.
And after Miami, which played for a national title as recently as 2002, imploded under Larry Coker this season, it dangled what is still one of the juiciest gigs in the game in front of Schiano.
And got stiffed.
Got stiffed for, um, Rutgers, for heaven’s sake. Got stiffed the way Alabama’s been stiffed by Rich Rodriguez of West Virginia – who originally said last week he’d come, then changed his mind – and also by the Ball Coach himself, Steve Spurrier, who rumor has it was offered everything but Bear Bryant’s private bourbon stash and said, nah, he believed he’d stay at South Carolina.
South Carolina, which is 3-10 lifetime against the Crimson Tide. South Carolina, which can spring an occasional George Rogers on you, but is nothing but a thousand miles of empty road when you stack it up against the religious artifact that is ’Bama football.
Those uniforms, red as arterial blood. The white numerals on the side of the helmets. The holy trinity of Bryant, Namath and Stabler.
Stiffed.
And, yeah, OK, Spurrier got another obscene pile out of the deal – South Carolina kicked his salary to a reported $1.75 million last week – and Schiano will no doubt follow suit. So you’d be right if you said this was at least a little about the money, and no surprise there.
But it’s also about something else.
First and foremost, it’s about what college football has become now in the era of restricted scholarships, of shifting allegiances and the superconferences grinding against one another’s interests like great tectonic plates. It’s about a not-so-subtle change in the landscape of the sport, the great programs still remaining great but with many more sharp-eyed pretenders lurking in the shadows, nibbling away at every conventional notion.
Which is to say: There are no jobs everyone automatically comes running for anymore.
Even Notre Dame got passed over last time by the hot ticket, Urban Meyer – and the time before that, it initially handed the job to the underwhelming if imaginative George O’Leary. Ara ascendant, he was not.
Nor was Pete Carroll – 33-31 as an NFL coach – John McKay reloaded, when USC came calling after Dennis Erickson, Mike Bellotti and Mike Riley all passed back in 2000. Notre Dame, USC, Alabama, Miami: No one drops everything for ’em anymore, if only because you don’t have to go to places like them to dream large anymore.
The scholarship limits have scattered the talent everywhere, and you see the result. Sure, Schiano could have gone to Miami, gotten fat on all that Florida talent and won big. But when you can stay at Rutgers, mine the rich New Jersey vein and win big there, why go elsewhere? Especially when elsewhere so often winds up being little more than a fancy tombstone with your name on it?
The great programs are great, but often as not they’re also cemeteries. Who needs to be a corpse-in-waiting at Alabama, which has gone through six coaches since the Bear? USC’s on its fourth coach since 1997. Notre Dame’s on its fourth since ’96.
Who needs that?
“We’re just scratching the surface here at Rutgers,” Schiano told The Associated Press, explaining why he does not, in fact, need that. “We’re going to do great things here.”
Great things at Rutgers: Yes, you do see it all, eventually.
Not just yet, though.
The Meineke Car Care Bowl, I notice, isn’t until Dec. 30.
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