Rutgers coach Greg Schiano completed his team’s scouting report of Nebraska heading into the season finale before going about his final order of business.
Schiano canvassed two floors of the hotel for a bed check, the typical routine for a college football head coach requiring their players to get a good night’s sleep on the eve of a game.
But as he went around room-to-room Schiano grew concerned about what he was seeing.
No, it wasn’t a rash of players sneaking out and missing curfew.
It was what a good percentage of his players were doing as he knocked on their doors to peak in and say goodnight.
“I bed checked the guys and we have 74 (players) at the hotel and literally a quarter of them were working on finals when I went to put them to bed at 11,’’ Schiano said. “Papers that were due at midnight, or finals that were due at 11:59.’’
Roughly 24 hours later, the Scarlet Knights had lost 28-21 to the Cornhuskers, a disappointing end to a 3-6 season that surpassed most fans’ reasonable expectations. Afterward, Schiano told the anecdote as a way of explaining the toll the unprecedented 9-games-in-9-weeks Big Ten campaign had taken on his players.
It wasn’t that they had endured the physical pain that comes with playing football games against elite competition without a break for nearly 2 1/2 months straight. They were mentally exhausted too, Schiano said.
“That’s part of being a college football player, right?’’ he said.
And because of the way his players persevered through the adversity — or chopped, in Schiano vernacular — the Scarlet Knights accomplished more than a program-record-tying three Big Ten wins this season.
“The thing that gets lost in a lot of people, because when you tune in to the college game then you tune in to pro game it’s very similar, (is) the difference is that these kids have to do a full academic load in a really competitive academic institution,’’ Schiano said. “And that’s where it gets tricky. That’s what I’m most impressed with, the way that they’re able to handle the different areas in their life and then have this COVID-19 sacrifice that they’re making. It’s hard enough to be a student-athlete, period. I’m really proud of our guys.’’
Schiano pointed to a recent announcement from the Big Ten that Rutgers had 46 players on the Academic All-Big Ten team. To be eligible for the distinction, non-freshmen students must carry a cumulative grade-point-average of 3.0 or higher.
Last year, Rutgers had 33 players make the list. Schiano’s first squad topped it by a touchdown and two field goals.
“We had more than 40 guys on the academic All-Big Ten team, which is the most we’ve ever had,’’ Schiano said. “That, to me, is awesome. I know I’m here to win games. But we’re here for a heck of a lot more than that. That’s why it’s college football. And for our kids to be able to do that as a group, I’m really pleased and proud of them.’’
The acknowledgment from the Big Ten capped an impressive first full-calendar year for the Rutgers football program on the academic front.
NJ Advance Media reported in August the Rutgers football program posted a 3.1 GPA for the spring semester and had a 3.09 cumulative GPA following the 2019-20 academic year. The 3.1 term GPA marked a record for the football program since Rutgers began tracking team GPA at the turn of the century and the 3.09 cumulative GPA also marked a record since 2000, the NJ Advance Media report revealed.
“Our academic-support people and our player-development staff, all of them did an incredible job of, No. 1, acclimating them to the online classes and then, No. 2, getting our tutoring program up virtually as fast as we could,’’ Schiano told NJ Advance Media in August. “And then the third thing was coming up with a mechanism to monitor them and make sure everybody was doing what they were supposed to do. So other than the fact that we didn’t walk into buildings and into classrooms, the guys didn’t miss a beat on anything.
“And most importantly it’s the hard work of the players. They really buckled down and did their work, which is commendable.’’
With the majority of Rutgers’ classes going virtual after the university shuttered most of its classrooms this fall, the players endured most of the same challenges since September.
Oh, and they had a football season to battle through as well.
“Academically a lot of people forget their world changed,’’ Schiano said last week during a video press conference to wrap up his first season back as the Scarlet Knights head coach. “They’re not sitting in classrooms with people. They’re sitting like we are right now (on a videoconference). I was really pleased with the way our team went after it academically. They really did grind and did what they had to do, and I’m anxious to see our results.’’
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