As long as the fanbase remains trapped in their Stockholm Syndrome mindset of "He's the best we can do; who else could we get?," he probably will work on his own terms. That was silly in 2019 and it's being exposed now, though, so can he maintain the illusion forever? As the "superleague" begins to take shape over the next decade, they're going to get pretty antsy about (totally justifiable) fears of being left behind if they can't establish some national football brand soon. The clock is ticking.
The Big Ten giftwrapped Rutgers a nine-win season this year, with no Ohio State, Michigan (who isn't very good, as it turns out), or Penn State on the schedule, and they don't seem poised to take advantage of it. With the foundations of the game in flux, the stakes are much higher than they were for them 15 years ago, and years and years of data show that Schiano is what he is: terrific at making a bottom-feeder respectable, but not very capable of making a respectable team very good. That very good and talented 2006 team can only be seen as an outlier, and beginning that next week, Schiano was just 17-21 in the rest of his Big East conference games before he left for the Bucs.
They are a Big Ten football program in a talent-rich state. There is an actual infrastructure there and plenty of advantages. It's not 1999 anymore. Are they Ohio State in terms of resources? No. But they're a very attractive situation for a coach who wants to lead a Big Ten program, but the base (and many within the university) are in some hopelessly devoted thrall to that middler.
www.nj.com
