So maybe Kyle Flood can exchange notes with Penn State’s Bill O’Brien about what it’s like to take over a major college football program when hardly anybody knows who you are.
Flood, who just a few days ago was a little known offensive assistant, has suddenly been catapulted into the college football spotlight, as he was on Tuesday afternoon introduced as the new head coach at Rutgers. Flood replaces Greg Schiano, who stunned Scarlet Knights fans by accepting the head coaching job with the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers last week.
Schiano’s departure, coming as it did on the eve of National Signing Day, left Rutgers administrators scrambling to find a replacement. And after reportedly courting both Steve Addazio of Temple and Mario Cristobal of Florida International, they settled on Flood, who has served as a Rutgers assistant for the past seven seasons. He has a strong record as both an offensive line coach and a recruiter, but his hiring is likely to be greeted with groans among the Scarlet Knight faithful, who perhaps justifiably had expected “somebody better,” or at the very least, somebody known outside of the state of New Jersey.
In that respect, Flood’s situation is similar to that recently endured by O’Brien, who was hired by Penn State after an extremely lengthy coaching search and was welcomed with only lukewarm (at best) reception in Happy Valley. A “home-run hire,” he was certainly not. Nor was he a household name. Just like Flood.
Anyway, that’s all irrelevant now. And now that Flood has officially been handed the reins of the Rutgers program, his first challenge will be to hold together a recruiting class that had been rattled by Schiano’s departure. His next will be to take the Rutgers program beyond where Schiano could; specifically, I’m sure Scarlet Knights’ fans would like to actually win the Big East title. Which, by the way, is something that Schiano never managed.
Photo: Starting next season, Rutgers will be charging out the tunnel behind Kyle Flood, not Greg Schiano.
