Rutgers Is Keeping Greg Schiano After a 2-7 Season: What Keli Zinn Actually Said
Rutgers is 2-7. Greg Schiano is coming back anyway.
Athletic director Keli Zinn announced Tuesday that Schiano will return as head coach for the 2027 season, confirming a decision ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported that morning. Zinn framed it as the long-term play while making clear she is not happy with the season.
What Zinn Said
“Our 2026 football season has fallen well below our expectations,” Zinn said in a school statement reported by the Associated Press. “Let me be very clear: this decision is not reflective of a lowering of standards or an indication that everything is fine.”
She also pointed to a plan. “Coach and I have met repeatedly to discuss the future and I am encouraged by the plan he has developed,” she said. Elsewhere she acknowledged the obvious: “I know our fans are tired of hearing about what Rutgers Football can become.”
Worth noting what she did not announce. Zinn talked about roster building and being more aggressive in the transfer portal. No coaching staff changes were announced by the school, and no Rutgers statement confirmed any. Anyone telling you a staff shakeup is coming is reading between lines Zinn did not draw.
The Buyout Is the Story
Firing Schiano now would have cost Rutgers somewhere around $18 million. ESPN put the figure at $18.6 million, the AP at roughly $18 million, USA Today at about $18.9 million. Clearing the entire staff would have run close to $28 million, per ESPN. The AP reported the buyout drops to roughly $11.7 million after 2027 and roughly $5.9 million after 2028.
His contract runs through the 2029 season at $6.75 million a year, and USA Today reported the buyout is structured at 76.875 cents on the dollar.
Compare that to Florida State, which fired Mike Norvell on Nov. 1 and swallowed a buyout of close to $50 million. Maryland fired Mike Locksley on Oct. 21. Those schools decided the money was worth eating. Rutgers decided it was not, and Zinn can call it a long-term decision all she wants, the ladder in that contract is doing a lot of the talking.
The Record He Is Returning On
Rutgers is 1-5 in the Big Ten, has lost three straight and was eliminated from bowl contention after a 31-10 loss at Wisconsin on Nov. 7. ESPN notes the Scarlet Knights rank 125th nationally in scoring defense, down from 115th last season.
Schiano, 60, is the winningest coach in program history at 101-115 across 18 seasons in two stints. He went 68-67 from 2001 to 2011 with six bowl trips in his last seven years. Since returning in 2020 he is 33-48, with 7-6 seasons in 2023 and 2024 surrounded by losing ones.
He was candid after Wisconsin. “It’s very disappointing,” Schiano said, per Brian Fonseca of NJ.com. “In my wildest expectations. I didn’t think we would find ourselves here, but maybe that wasn’t realistic on my part.” He also described a talent problem: “We have good players, but they’re not elite players.”
That is a head coach diagnosing a recruiting failure on his own watch, and the athletic department just handed him the offseason to fix it. Three games remain: Nebraska at home Saturday, Penn State on the road Nov. 21, Michigan State at home Nov. 28. Nebraska arrives having just fired its offensive coordinator. None of those results change anything now, which is its own kind of answer about how much this season was ever going to matter.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
