For the past year now I've shared my concerns about the state of Rutgers Football on premium message boards like Rivals, 247, and Scout. I've done so behind a paywall hoping to keep these concerns away from the eyes of recruits who Rutgers needed to land to have anything that resembled success. This weekend was the final straw for me though, enough is enough and it's time for the fair weather Rutgers fan/alum to know about what is going on behind the scenes and who is to blame.
Let me first say, before I begin placing blame on some people in the rest of this blog post, these are all things that I would say to them man to man and if they read this and would like to meet with me, I'd truly appreciate the opportunity so we can begin to understand each others view on things. I truly believe we could get together in a collaborative manner and find solutions to problems that are causing our football program to unfortunately become a national laughing stock
1) President Robert Barchi: First and foremost, I didn't follow the medical school merger nearly as closely as I follow our schools sports programs but from everything I heard, you did a tremendous job and I thank you for that. But that is where the problem begins. As an alum and as a resident of NJ, the face of a school is just as much athletics as it is it's academic prowess. In fact, most would agree that athletics are more the face of a school than academics and this is where your shortcomings begin. The average NJ resident hears more about Rutgers athletics than Rutgers academics and it's time you realize that you're completely and totally disregarding your most marketable asset, the football program.
You have to start treating our athletics like a business. I can't exactly blame your ignorance considering you've never been around big time athletics in all of your career prior to landing at Rutgers. But this is big business and the football program is arguably the biggest marketable asset that you have to work with. Now you might say to yourself, "we're more concerned about academics than athletics". Well what if I told you that study after study shows a direct correlation between athletic success and quality of students at college's? In fact, according to the Southern Economic Journal, they state that if you're a top 20 football program or a top 16 basketball program, in any given year you will see close to a 10% increase in student applications in turn raise the quality of the accepted student's profile. I am not sure how many applications were received last year but what if that number increased by 10%? How much more would be collected in application fees and how would the quality of applicant change? Now, you may be saying to yourself, "well we're Rutgers, how are we going to become a top 20 football program". Well, the way to do that is to begin investing in your football program and it starts at the top with the head coach. It's well known within my circles that you put the Kibosh on paying Pat Narduzzi (who had head coaching experience and was a pretty safe choice) $2.5-$3 million per year to come to Rutgers in December 2015, only to hire Chris Ash (with zero head coaching experience) and pay him on average $2.2 million per year over 5 years. Even if another coach like Dan Mullen wanted $4 million dollars per year, you have to start thinking about return on investment, this is a business after all.
Our first year in the Big Ten under Kyle Flood we averaged nearly 50,000 fans per game. If we just make a simple assumption that the average price of those 50,000 fans is $50 each between tickets, concessions, parking, etc, that is $2,500,000 in revenue per game, with 7 home games that is $17,500,000 in revenue from ticket/concession/parking sales. Now last season finished up with an average of just shy of 40,000 paid stubs per game, a number that has been on a steady decline since Chris Ash took over due to a variety of reasons. That's 10,000 less paid fans per game multiple that 7x for 7 home games and that's 70,000 less fans per year. In other words it's a loss in revenue of $3,500,000 from where we were our first year in the big ten and this year that fan attendance number is going to be even lower. That all stems from the fact that you wanted to pinch pennies on your most marketable asset while on a $4 billion dollar budget. This is common sense stuff, if spending an extra $500,000 brings me an extra $3,500,000 to the bottom line, grab me a wheel barrel, actually make it a brinks truck and show me where to back it up. My issue here Dr. Barchi is that this is something that a 5th grader would be able to tell you, I just for the life of me cannot understand how you can be so blind to it. Now, firing Chris Ash at the end of this season is something that even I know would seem to be an extremely tough pill to swallow given the buyout numbers but my question is, if you treat this like a business, can you really afford not to fire Chris Ash after this season if we dip to 1-11/2-10/3-9 and we're averaging less than 30,000 paid stubs per game? Because that is what is about to happen because myself who I consider to be one of the biggest diehard RU football fans gave away my season tickets today for free, I just cannot bring myself to supporting a Chris Ash lead program knowing what I know. The buyout would pay for itself as Ash's new job's salary would off-set about one-third to one-half of the buyout figure and we would have a huge boost in ticket revenue due to a rejuvenated fan base. No one would circle the wagons of the fans quite like Greg Schiano but we can talk about that at another time. All I ask of you at this time Dr. Barchi is to please begin treating athletics like the business that it is and stop acting as if athletics mean nothing to the schools academic success as these days students applying to schools aren't only just applying for academics, they're applying for the experience and athletics plays a huge role in that. If the Rutgers football team did not experience the success it had under Greg Schiano from 2005-2009, as a 2009 high school senior I would not have even considered applying to Rutgers.
Pat Hobbs:
First and foremost, I believe that you are the best athletic director that our University has ever had. What you have accomplished in your first three years on the job is more than any prior athletic director has accomplished in their entire career. You are transforming our campus and truly have the best interests of our student-athletes in mind with every move you make. You have a lifetime pass from me and I place zero blame on you for the way Chris Ash is running the program, you were basically given five days to hire a head football coach so I can't blame you for that mistake. The only mistake I question you on is giving Chris Ash an extension and saddling us with what optics wise looks like a huge buyout but as mentioned above, the buyout would really pay for itself and then some between increase in student applications and increased attendance. My guess is the extension came when Ash made one of his excuses that he was having trouble recruiting because coaches were using the fact he only had X years left on his deal against him on the recruiting trail. I follow recruiting and the program enough to know that simply was not true, it's just a matter of Chris Ash not being competent on the recruiting trail and that is now about to get worse because the last message he was trying to sell was, "progress", but when you lose by 41 to Kansas, all of that goes out the window. He's a lame duck coach, you, me, and every recruit in America knows that. If moves aren't made to expedite getting him out of the door, then a TRUE 3-4 year rebuild will be left behind when the next coach takes over a truly bare cupboard. I also recognize the only possible coach you could fire him for after 3 years would be Greg Schiano. Because if we decide to hire Greg Schiano we wouldn't have to worry about hiring another football coach for the next decade or two as Greg would likely make this his last coaching stop. If we were to try to hire anyone else the candidate pool would be slim because they'd be asking themselves, "do I really want to go there after they just canned a guy after 3 years?". Make no mistake though, Chris Ash is not going to reach remote success here for reasons that I will lay out next and it's better to act sooner rather than later on this. Whether it be after this season and bringing back a man, Greg Schiano, who would make Rutgers football respectable again, bring discipline, academic success, coaching and recruiting to a program that is severely lacking the aforementioned or after the 2019 season, bringing in a young offensive mind who can recruit his butt off and knows x's and o's.
Chris Ash: The act is getting old. From the day you came here it was one excuse after another, it was as if you came here planning to fail and just wanted to let the administration know up front that you'd need to buy yourself some time. You under promised on what you thought you'd deliver and you've somehow managed to under deliver. You came in here and acted as if Rutgers Football was some dog crap program that needed to be ripped down to the studs. You got rid of the chop, you alienated former players (not all but some), you told boosters and fans behind closed doors that the program had no talent and that you needed this, this and that to succeed. And then you got this, this and that in the form of a new practice facility, a new weight room, new nutrition program and soon to be a new $4 million dollar locker room.
You keep trying to sell, "progress" claiming how from year 1 to year 2 we improved. But let's not forget that we got substantially worse from 2015 to 2016 after losing just one player to the NFL. Who I feel the worst for is the kids who pour their hearts, souls, blood, sweat, tears, and time into this program only for you to walk in the door and essentially to them they suck, tell them they're no good, and any time something goes wrong, you go to the media post game and say things like, this might be a 4, 5, or 6 year rebuild. In other words, you're telling the media you'll need 4, 5, or 6 years because you want the blame to go on the talent that was left behind to you and you think you need to bring in new talent. Well, I got news for you, the talent that was left behind to you is better than the talent you're bringing in. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure these things out. If we want to look at an objective measure, Kyle Flood's median class ranking according to rivals.com is better than your median class ranking. So if we want to just use an objective measurement, with your lack of recruiting prowess, there's not more talent walking in that door as long as you're "leading" this program. Stop blaming Kyle Flood for all of your problems, it's getting old.
How about you take some of the blame and start coaching better on game day, motivating our kids better, preparing our team for the game, stop using a bullshit excuse that you need more time and MAYBE just MAYBE it would be a good idea to speak even just a couple words to your true freshman quarterback when he's going through a tough time and having a rough game. I sat directly behind the offensive bench section 22 in Kansas this weekend and 1) you didn't say a single word to Art the entire game. You're the head coach, talk to your players. 2) how little coaching I witnessed going on, on the sidelines was frightening. Coaches were rarely talking to players, players weren't talking to other players, no one was trying to figure out what was going on. It was just a whole bunch of poor body language and lack of energy. The only one who seemed to give a shit and try to get the guys up was Tariq Cole but outside of him the sideline looked like a funeral and that falls squarely on your shoulders. It was very obvious watching the players on the sideline that they don't believe in you. Talk to the guys, motivate them, encourage them. Energy and enthusiasm goes a long way towards success. And in order to have success you HAVE TO start putting players in positions to succeed.
You cannot continue to run your same base quarters defense with press man coverage and a 3 or 4 man rush nearly every play. The scheme itself in contradictory in it's nature. What is the point in playing press man coverage on the outside if you're not generating pressure? It's asking an awful lot of our db's to play man coverage for 5+ seconds against division 1 athletes while the quarterback sits back there waiting for a receiver to get open because you're doing nothing to generate pressure. Your use of Kemoko Turay is the perfect example. In 2016 you wouldn't play one of the best god given pass rushers in America because you thought he wasn't smart enough to learn your scheme. If he wasn't smart enough to know how to drop into pass coverage why not only put him in when he's going to be rushing off the edge? Kemoko is god given, his abilities to bend around the edge cannot be taught and he was completely and totally misused and while he was drafted in the 2nd round, that's because NFL scouts realized that, holy crap, this kid gets more qb pressures per pass rush than Brad Chubb, but why did he only have 3.5 sacks at Rutgers this year? The simple answer is he was completely misused. A team that relies on the front 4 to bring pressure was dropping our Jack into pass coverage regularly. Much like I see Elorm Lumor and Mike Tverdov being dropped into pass coverage now. It simply doesn't make sense. And for the sake of Avery Young, can you please not let Anthony Johnson of Buffalo to continue to lineup on Avery's side of the field this week and let him get embarrassed by an all-american? He's a true freshman, change something up, let a 5th year senior like Wharton follow Johnson around, roll coverage to that side, bring pressure from that side and clog up throwing lanes and force their qb to roll the opposite way but putting Avery into press man coverage against Johnson is an absolute recipe for disaster and a true disservice to a good kid.
It is clear that you are in way over your head as a head coach of a college football program. Some of your coaching hires have been questionable at best, your game day coaching and lack of aggressiveness leaves a lot to be desired (please never punt again inside the opponents 40 when it's 4th and less than 7. Statisticians would laugh at you if you look at the numbers), your inability to recruit not only NJ but in general will never allow you to succeed here, and last but not least your inability to connect with your players and motivate them and encourage them sets your ceiling where our programs floor should be. Not everyone is cut out to be a Chief, it's perfectly fine being an Indian and maybe it's time to re-consider some things.
Kyle Kovats
Class of 2013
