Rutgers Football Head Coach Greg Schiano talks 2025 Big Ten Media Days
Rutgers Football Head Coach Greg Schiano spoke with reporters on Tuesday afternoon as Big Ten Football Media Days kicked off out in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Check out everything that Schiano had to say below in the video and/or the transcript provided.
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Full Greg Schiano Press Conference Transcript
Coach Schiano will be next to speak to the media here in Vegas.
A couple of changes here with co-defensive coordinators and adding 18 transfers in the offseason to try to help returning quarterback, Athan Kaliakmanis. Thank you all for coming out and covering us. First, I want to thank Commissioner Petitti for everything he does for our league.
This has been the most transformational time in college athletics, maybe in the history of college athletics, and I feel very confident in our leader and how he handles our business as a conference. I’d also like to welcome our president. We have a new president, William Tate, who has come to join us from LSU and was very excited about that, had a chance to meet with him.
He had a chance to address our football team, and it was great. I can’t wait to work together with him. I want to thank our board chair, Amy Towers, for her tireless work in making sure that we have a president who’s going to do a great job for our university.
Today we bring three great representatives of our football program, Athan Kaliakmanis, our quarterback, who’s transferred in and has become literally the leader of our program, and this is definitely his football team. Wide receiver Ian Strong, who I think has just grown consistently since he arrived, and this will be his third season with us and is, I think, an excellent football player and a great young man. And then linebacker DJ Djabome, who is from Canada, came down.
It’s a great story. DJ came down to go to one of our football camps and drove down from upstate New York and didn’t have a hotel room, so he, his coach, and two teammates slept in a car in late July. He went through our camp and did a great job.
We offered him. We brought his family down on a visit immediately, and he started with us in training camp a couple weeks later. And now to be standing here at Big Ten Media Days and DJ representing us, it’s a great, great story.
An excellent football player and an even better young man. So those guys, thrilled to bring them out here to represent our team and our program. I’d also like to thank our coaching staff.
Really, I’m indebted to them. They do an unbelievable job. Kirk Ciarrocca, our offensive coordinator, who’s now going into his third season, has done an unbelievable job leading our offensive staff.
And I’d like to welcome Robb Smith back to Rutgers. He and Zach Sparber will be co-coordinators on defense and have done a great job getting everybody up to speed this spring and summer. And then Eddie Allen, who handles our special teams, does a great job.
So leading our staff and them leading our players. Also, in this new day of college football, I’d like to recognize, we have two assistant GMs. Assistant GM for finance is Jordan Wolkstein, who’s done an incredible job putting all the financial end of things together.
And then our assistant GM for personnel, Eric Josephs, who’s been in that role with personnel since we arrived but now has additional responsibilities. So I can’t thank them enough. Again, after all the changes that are going on in college football, it still comes down to a few things, right? Getting prepared, being tough, and then going putting it on tape.
And that’s what this team, I think, has done a great job of doing so far this offseason and summer. And I can’t wait to coach them. This will be my 37th year coaching.
I’ve never been more excited about doing it. I feel like I did when I was 25 and can’t wait to get this thing underway. So with that, I’ll open it up for any questions.
Thank you, Coach. On your right side, second row. Good morning, Coach.
Coach Schiano, Rutgers returned to bowl contention in 2024 with disciplined defense and ball security principles with just two fumbles and seven interceptions all season. With some returning starters and a sharper focus on creating takeaways, what specific areas are you targeting this offseason to push the program from good to constantly elite?
Well, that’s a great question, and for sure, the ball is the program at our place.
So there’s a huge amount of emphasis on that. We came back to Rutgers, and this will be our sixth season back. We were dead last, and we could hardly see it from there.
So it was a tough start, but we’ve kind of just step by step climbed our way to the middle of the league, but I didn’t come back to do that. I came back to win the championship, and that may sound funny to some that have followed college football, but that’s what we’re going to do. I can’t tell you when that’s going to happen, but that’s why we’re back.
I have the staff to do it. We’re constantly getting better and better players, and we’re constantly growing as a program. Our fan base is growing.
All the things that you need to climb the ladder, and that’s what we do. We just come in every day and try to get a little bit better. Can’t have any backslides.
Morning, Coach. Just obviously rebuilding the program. You talked last year about winning the state back and recruiting. Obviously, the transfer portal is a huge factor. Losing guys, you lose your all-time. One of your best rushers in school history to the NFL. So how did you kind of navigate NIL and the portal and all those different things to fill the roster you have right now?
Well, that’s another great question, because it’s certainly been the focus of college football, right? NIL, revenue share, all those things. It still comes down to finding the right fit for your program. What is fit? Fit is culture.
Fit is athletic ability. Fit is student athlete. What kind of student? Can he fit in? Can he do the work at Rutgers in the classroom? And that’s always going to be our primary focus.
Do I wish we had some more money when the NIL stuff was going on? Absolutely. Who doesn’t? But at the end of the day, players and families are going to entrust us with their sons. If they know they’re going to be treated well, they’re going to develop, not only on the field but off the field, and that’s what we can promise.
I can’t tell them if they’re going to start. I always tell players, you know, where do you see me? Well, a year from now, I see you being the guy that’s on our team. And if I’m promising someone else at that time that they can come in and start, how does that make you feel? I tell them, you come in here and earn it at Rutgers.
That’s what you need to do. Everything is earned. Nothing is given.
And I think we have a bunch of guys, a team full of those guys, that understand that and that do that every day. We have to be very, very careful. When we go into the portal at a place like Rutgers, you need to make sure your culture is the driving force.
So if we’re going to bring a guy in from the transfer portal, not only does he have to be able to help us right now, but he has to be a cultural fit. Because if you’re recruiting the good players in the transfer portal, they’re going to help you. But if they help you and they’re not a cultural fit, they’re going to lead people in the wrong direction, and we can’t have that.
So I think our staff and the people I mentioned, Eric Josephs, Jordan Wolkstein, and our whole coaching staff have done a great job identifying the players that are a great fit for our football program. And I feel very confident in the guys we got in the portal. I feel really good about the guys we’ve recruited, and I feel really, really good about the guys that are in our program.
So you being a veteran coach, being around for years, like you said, what’s your thoughts on college football with the salary cap, with the revenue sharing and everything? What’s your thoughts on that?
Look, I think college football’s in a great place, and I know a lot of people like to moan and groan about things that are different. We need to just let things settle down and figure out if what we’ve done, what the court system has done, is it going to allow us to kind of find a level where we can go out and perform, where we can go out and have the kind of teams and programs and leagues that we want to have.
I think tweaking things too early, let’s see how it works out right now. We did a lot. Let’s settle down and see how this works.All those things are great and they need to be taken care of. I have believed that players should be paid.
I always felt it was an injustice that players didn’t receive some form of compensation, whether it was a stipend or whatever it would be. I’m thrilled where we are right now. I think that there needs to be some fine-tuning but not major changes right now.
Let’s see if this will work. And if it doesn’t, then a couple years from now, let’s change it then. But I do.
I think college football is still incredibly popular. The fans love it. The players love it.
The coaches love it. And I can’t wait to get started. Coach Greg Schiano, thank you so much for your time.
Okay, thank you guys.
