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)
Saturday, October 13, 2018
Sunday, September 23, 2018
Dear Pat Hobbs, Chris Partridge Would Make Rutgers Football National Title Contenders
Go ahead, laugh all you want, just keep in mind the entire country is currently laughing at the laughing stock that Rutgers Football has become under Chris Ash. I don't even need to explain my reasoning any further on why Chris Ash was a disastrous hire for Rutgers, the results can be seen on the field, on the recruiting trail and by the demeanor of our players on the sideline.
Chris Partridge is everything that Chris Ash is not. He's a program builder, he's a master motivator, he's an ace recruiter, he's an aggressive in-game decision maker, and most importantly he will embrace the challenge that is Rutgers Football. For those of you who don't know Chris Partridge or for those of you (like Pat Hobbs) who are saying to yourself, "no more risks, we need a head coach with proven head coaching experience", hear me out.
In 2010, Chris Partridge took over a putrid Paramus Catholic program that was a perpetual bye week for the big 4 parochials in North Jersey (Bergen Catholic, Don Bosco, St. Joe's, and St. Peter's). By 2012, Paramus Catholic was the #1 team in NJ. He did this through building a culture that top recruits choosing high schools wanted to be apart of. Suddenly kids were choosing Paramus Catholic over schools like Bosco, Bergen Catholic, St. Joe's, St. Peter's, the list goes on. Now, the people who dislike Partridge always like to say, "well he cheated". No he didn't, stop bitching and whining. (They went from being door mats to this within 3 years) Paramus Catholic Football Entrance He built a program that kids wanted to come to and he played a style of football that kids loved and he didn't kiss the feet of the big 4 which every other Paramus Catholic coach had done since Campanile left over a decade prior (similar to how Ash bows down to Ohio St, Michigan, PSU and Michigan St). In the 2012 state championship, up 29-28 with Bergen Catholic inside the Paramus Catholic 5 yard-line with just 1:39 to play, Chris Partridge told his defense, "let them score and then we're going to march down the field and beat them". Bergen Catholic scored on the next play to take a 34-29 lead. Paramus Catholic got the ball back and guess what they did? They marched down the field and scored and won 37-34 in a legendary game. Do you think those kids bought into what their coach was selling them?
The similarities between the job Partridge undertook at Paramus Catholic and the task at hand for the next head football coach at Rutgers are nearly identical. Rutgers is in their own division with a big 4 that they've served as a perpetual bye week for under Ash in Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State and Penn State. Rutgers has not only not shown a pulse vs these teams under the soon to be prior regime but they've also gotten their asses handed to them on the recruiting trail by them as well. Something Paramus Catholic was accustomed to prior to the arrival of Chris Partridge. Now at this point, half the people reading this are saying to themselves, "LOL this guy is trying to compare the Big North to the Big Ten". Yes I am, yes I am. Guys like Chris Partridge don't fail.
Chris Partridge ironically for the past four years has been on staff in the very same Big Ten at Michigan where he currently serves as the safeties coach and special teams coordinator. In 2016 he was named national recruiter of the year by rivals.com and again in 2017 he was named national recruiter of the year by 247 sports for his accomplishments on the recruiting trail. Oh yeah, and this past off-season he turned down a coaching offer from Nick Saban at Alabama but don't worry, let's just keep listening to those in NJ football who think Partridge isn't ready for the spotlight. It's not like the guys Saban puts on his staff's ever go off and have success anyway. (For those not catching on I'm being sarcastic as Saban beat his former assistant Kirby Smart in the national title game last season). He is a guy who not only knows the NJ landscape and the unique job that is Rutgers, he has also now studied our conference foes for the past 4 years while at Michigan.
For those concerned with his lack of head coaching experience or even coordinator experience I simply would just ask you who are consistently the top 3 football program in America? The answer for most is Alabama, Clemson and Ohio State. What if I told you that Dabo Swinney not only had zero head coaching experience but was never even a coordinator prior to taking over at Clemson? What if I told you that Urban Meyer had never been more than a position coach prior to taking his first head coaching job? The fact of the matter is, in 2018 being the head football coach of a college program is about more than just X's and O's. It's about building a culture the recruits want to join, it's about managing people, it's about motivating players AND COACHES to be great, and last but not least, it's more about the Jimmy's and Joe's than the X's and O's. Pat, you'll be able to find plenty of coaches who will accept the Rutgers job for a quick pay day, but do they REALLY want the job or just the money? I believe Chris Partridge would want the job and more so the challenge.
It's time for us to stop looking for the safe hire who Barry Alvarez or Urban Meyer recommends to us. It's time to stop asking high school football coaches in NJ who they would like best. Let's start asking OURSELVES what's best for Rutgers? It's time for us to look ourselves in the mirror and, Pat, if we truly are looking to write one of the greatest stories in college athletics, it's time to start looking at Chris Partridge.
Monday, September 17, 2018
Who Does the Blame Fall on for Rutgers Football Ineptitude
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
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
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