Ok last Rutgers thing but I have to repost this:
I had to check again for myself, but Schiano's career record at Rutgers was 68-67. His Big East Conference record was 28-48. That means that FORTY of his wins or roughtly 60% came against non-conference opponents.
And Here are his 40 OOC wins (I've bolded BCS conference opponents and italicized FCS opponents):
Buffalo (4)
Navy (6)
Army (7)
Mich. St.
Kent. St.
Vanderbilt
Villanova
North Carolina
Illinois
Ohio (2)
Howard (2)
Kansas St.
Norfolk St. (2)
Ball St.
Morgan St.
NC St.
Florida Intl. (2)
Maryland
Texas Southern
UCF
NC Central
Iowa St.
It's actually unbelievable when you look at the numbers. 15 wins against FCS opponents and Army, which is basically an FCS team. 14 wins against Navy and MAC opponents. He's a guy with a .500 record with 43% of his wins coming against FCS, MAC, or service academy opponents. And that is the smoke and mirrors that is Rutgers.
And not a single victory during his entire tenure over a traditional power college team - the Texas, USC, Miami, FSU, Ohio St, Notre Dame's of the world. Then again, you have to schedule them to have an opportunity to beat them.:noidea:
Ok so here is Syracuse over the same period:
Auburn
Kansas St. (2)
UCF (3)
ECU
Rhode Island (2)
North Carolina
Toledo (2)
Notre Dame (2)
Buffalo (3)
Cincinnati
Illinois
Miami OH
Wyoming
Northeastern
Northwestern
Maine (2)
Akron (2)
Colgate
Wake Forest
Tulane
We had 30 OOC wins over the same period, and were 53-80 over that stretch. 6 were vs. FCS opponents and we did not lose to any FCS opponents. We did not play the service academies over that period. 8 of our wins came against MAC opponents, exactly the same as Rutgers during that period. If we played 17 games over the same period vs FCS opponents and Army like Rutgers did, I'm pretty confident we would have had at a minimum 10 more wins. That would put us at 63-70 with 23 conference wins during a very down period for the program, versus 68-67 with 28 conference wins during their "power" years. Even taking the results as they are, we still had 1 more win over a BCS level program during that period, including Auburn and 2 over Notre Dame.
I give Schiano a lot of credit, Rutgers was an absolute abomination prior to him arriving. But what I have posted in this thread are the exact reasons why the Syracuse fan base has such a hard time understanding the hype around that program.
And remember this is our performance during one of our lowest periods over the past 50 years vs the Apex