Rutgers head coach Greg Schiano was a program builder at Rutgers before becoming the head coach at the NFL level with the Tampa Bay Buccanneers.
While things didn’t go so well in Tampa, one doesn’t turn around a historically challenged program like Rutgers and become a coach at the game’s highest level without being one of the best in the business.
After being let go in the Florida sunshine, Schiano traded the Bucs for the Bucks when he joined good friend Urban Meyer’s staff in Columbus as defensive coordinator. He spent three years there and then was welcomed back to Piscataway when Ryn Day took over at OSU, the place where he originally made a name for himself.
If you ever wondered what Schiano’s time at Ohio State meant to him, wonder no longer. According to what our friends at Rutgers Wire uncovered, Schiano believes his time in the Scarlet and Gray made him better in his profession.
“It was really good for me to go back and be an assistant coach after being a head coach for so many years,” Schiano said last week on ‘Next Up’ with host Adam Breneman, according to Rutgers Wire.
“It’s very different. And it really forced me to – is what I believed really true, or did I forget what it really is like? And the answer was yes and no. So a lot of it is true. And some of it I really forgot what it was like, and there were things Urban did – (he did) a great job Ohio State, obviously look at the record. Obviously, there are certain things that he did that I didn’t agree with. But as I talked to our staff about, it’s all about vertical alignment.”
The best of any profession use those around them to learn and add to the good things they already do and it sounds and feels like Schiano has done that at every stop, including the one in Columbus, Ohio.
Contact/Follow us @BuckeyesWire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Ohio State news, notes, and opinion. Follow Phil Harrison on Twitter.