Over the past year, with zero luck, I’ve tried my best to get in touch with Pat Hobbs regarding my concerns regarding Chris Ash which began @Nebraska in September 2017. Pat, if you remember the night before the game you had an event for boosters at Barry’s where you rented out the back room. I introduced myself to you that night and told you that I thought you were doing a great job, it was a quick convo and understandably so, you probably still have no idea who I am.
I am writing this open letter because I’d like to meet with you for 20 minutes to share my thoughts, concerns and solutions for Rutgers Football with you. In return, I will stroke a check for $5,000 to meet with you and $10,000 if you can get President Barchi to attend as well. This money can be applied towards any effort you choose, whether it be Coach Ash’s buyout or the B1G Build Fund. I fully recognize $5,000/$10,000 is barely a splash in the bucket of what you need to raise but I think we will be able to have a productive conversation regarding the future success of the program. Rather than pay 6-figures to a hack of a consulting company who looks for head coaches, I’m willing to pay you to just listen to me.
I’m not even going to try to convince you that Chris Ash needs to go, that is blatantly obvious to anyone and everyone. Listen, you made a mistake hiring him in the first place and then furthermore negotiating an awful contract (where he had zero leverage) that would auto extend him after any kind of ncaa decision to levy any form of “sanctions”, which were basically none. It sucks to admit you made a mistake, trust me I’m as hard headed as they come, no one likes admitting they made a mistake but lets focus on fixing this thing moving forward.
The question now is, where do we go from here? The first step is to stop giving a shit what people think about Rutgers Football and what outsiders will say if you make move X or Y. It’s time to make a decision that is best for RUTGERS. It’s time to stop asking people like Barry Alvarez and Urban Meyer for their recommendations. It’s time to stop giving a shit what guys like Steve Politi will write about a decision you make. It is time to start making decisions that are best for RUTGERS.
Let’s start with what will happen if Chris Ash is NOT fired. First and foremost from a financial perspective you will lose at a bare minimum, half of your season ticket base, (and I’m being conservative when I say half) you will lose donations that will go well into the millions of dollars and last but not least our student athletes who put their blood, sweat and tears into representing this school will continue to get embarrassed weekly in the fall as their coach continues to put them in positions to fail. I totally understand that Bob Barchi doesn’t know the first basics on business and that he might not be able to see that you can pay a coach a $2.5-$3 million dollar buyout per year and wind up ahead after accounting for the losses in revenue due to downed ticket sales, parking, concessions, donations, student applications, etc. But you played a role in us being in this dire situation and it’s your job to convince Barchi that we MUST make a change now. You’re on the clock.
Now, who are the qualified candidates to take over this job and make Rutgers a perennial contender. I don’t necessarily mean a national title contender (although I think the right hire can get us to the final 4/CFP every once in a while) but rather what I mean is a program where the alumni can be proud, where the fans can walk into the stadium and say to themselves, “hey ya never know”, and just in general avoid being a national embarrassment. Here are the 5 REALISTIC candidates to do just that.
5) Lance Leipold, Buffalo Head Coach: Started as a head coach at D3 Wisconsin-Whitewater where he won 6 D3 National Championships between 2007-2014. Since taking over Buffalo he has continued to grow the program, to where for the first time in program history, they received top 25 votes this season.
Pros: He has had success at every stop and his teams have improved every year.
Cons: He’s in his mid 50’s, has no track record at the p5 level. Would he be able to recruit talent to Rutgers to compete in the big ten?
4) Butch Jones: The former Tennessee, Cincinnati and Central Michigan head coach as well as Rutgers graduate assistant in the early 90’s is currently serving as an analyst at Alabama under Nick Saban after being fired by Tennessee in 2017 for not meeting their fan bases expectations. Butch is known as an offensive minded coach and a good recruiter. His last 3 full recruiting classes at Tennessee ranked 17, 14 and 4 overall nationally.
Pros: Offensive mind, prior head coaching experience at 3 separate stops, good recruiter, spent a couple years at Rutgers.
Cons: Just got fired at Tennessee, players lacked discipline in his last couple years thhere and he’d probably have to overcome the fact that he was fired at his last coaching stop.
3) Joe Moorhead, Mississippi State Head Coach. The former Penn State offensive coordinator and PA native spent years at Fordham as their head football coach before taking the OC job with Penn State where they experienced tremendous offensive success under his tutelage. Many credit penn state’s rise to relevance post Sandusky to Moorhead. But why is he realistic? 1) he’s making $2.7 mill/yr, so not something we cant afford. 2) He lives in Starkville, Mississippi right now. Dan Mullen said while he was coach there just about the only thing his wife could do was online shop. Apparently it’s a crappy place to live with next to zero quality of life.
Pros: great offensive mind, prior head coaching experience, local ties, could sell what he did at penn state to recruits, recruiting well at Miss State.
Cons: can’t think of any
2) Greg Schiano, Ohio State Defensive Coordinator. The most successful head coach in Rutgers history has had a lot of people thinking what if? What if he never left for Tampa? What if Bill Bellicheck didn’t push Tampa to hire him? Where would our program be today if he never left? I think the popular answer is that we’d be a perrenial top 25 program at this point. Greg’s last year he hauled in a top 25 nationally ranked recruiting class while selling kids on the failing big east. Greg took the program from the Terry Shea era (which I was 5-9 years old for but I’m hearing it’s basically the same thing as the ash era) to unprecedented bowl success. Going to 6 bowl games in 7 years and winning 5 of them, top 10 national rankings, you name it and he’s probably the only one to have done it at Rutgers.
Pros: knows NJ, most successful Rutgers Football coach ever, great recruiter, great motivator, great defensive mind, runs a tight ship.
Cons: does he have the energy and enthusiasm that he had a decade or more ago? (Well, watching him going crazy during the Ohio State vs. Minnesota game today, I’d say yes)
1) Chris Partridge, Michigan Safties Coach and Special Teams Coordinator. The former Paramus Catholic head coach that took the program from doormat to #1 team in the state has been at Michigan coaching the linebackers and now safeties for the past 4 years. In 2016 and 2017 he was named national recruiter of the year by 247 sports and rivals.com for his recruiting abilities to land top prospects. He is an extremely motivated guy who has his sights set on becoming a head football coach at the college football level, going as far to turn down an assistant coaching offer from Nick Saban (I thinkkkkk Nick Saban has a pretty damn good track record of hiring assistants) this past off-season as he waits for a head coaching offer. He has also learned directly under Don Brown, who many consider to be the top defensive coordinator in America. I personally think he has the highest ceiling of any coach we can hire. I’m sure you’ve met people in your life where everything they touch turns to gold and they’ll stop at nothing to succeed, that is Chris Partridge. He’s the type of guy who’s reputation and legacy means more to him than money. He WANTS to be here and could be a 30-year hire. He is going to be a head coach somewhere very soon, I just hope it is here, at Rutgers and we don’t look back 5 years down the road and say to ourselves, “how the hell did we drop the ball and not hire that guy”. And for full disclosure, I have no personal relationship with Partridge, in fact, he has me blocked on twitter after he took any NJ recruit he wanted with him from NJ to Michigan and I tweeted some not so nice things at him.
Pros: Knows NJ, top recruiter in America, young hungry coach who has proven to be able to take programs from dormats to champs by recruiting and creating a culture kids want to be apart of, experience dealing with administration, boosters, etc, albeit at the high school level but being a Big North head coach I would argue provides more experience to be an FBS head coach than simply being an FBS coordinator.
Cons: no fbs head coaching experience, never been a DC/OC at the college level (neither were Urban Meyer or Dabo Swinney before getting their first head coaching jobs), dealing with the criticism of firing a head coach (ash) who just failed who had zero head coaching experience and hiring another guy with zero fbs head coaching experience, some people think high school coaches in NJ dont like him but thats BS, we can discuss that later when we meet.
If you’ve made it this far, I thank you for reading this and please email me at your earliest convenience to arrange a day and time for us to meet and discuss this further. As you’ve said Pat, we are looking to write the biggest success story in the history college athletics, the pen is in your hand, the next chapter is blank, what do you want it to read?
Kyle Kovats
Class of 2013
KyleKovats@Gmail.com (please email me from AD@ScarletKnights.com so I know it is you)
