Rutgers could end longest drought in college football this season

When the Scarlet Knights brought back Greg Schiano as head coach, a significant turnaround was needed. The program hadn’t won a bowl game since 2014 and only had one winning season in the last decade. Schiano was the coach who gave Rutgers its best football seasons in recent memory, and his return signaled hope for a program drowning in one of the toughest conferences in college football.

In his first season, Schiano snapped the bowl game drought with a 7-6 season that ended with a Pinstripe Bowl victory over the Miami Hurricanes—the team's first bowl win since 2014. With that checked off the list, Rutgers has another significant hurdle to try and climb this season: being ranked.

Rutgers has the longest drought in all of Power Five regarding weeks gone unranked in the Associated Press top 25 polls. The Scarlet Knights have not been ranked in the AP Top 25 since the final week of the regular season in 2012, where the Scarlet Knights finished 22nd. That is 182 weeks and counting, the Scarlet Knights have gone unranked. The head coach the last time the program was ranked? Greg Schiano.

With one of the best running backs in the conference, Kyle Monangai and senior transfer quarterback Athan Kalakmanis coming over from Minnesota, who although struggled last season with the Gophers, showed promise in the spring, the Scarlet Knights are a sleeper team to make some serious noise in the Big Ten. Having a schedule that avoids all of Oregon, Ohio State, Michigan, and Penn State, the Knights could rattle off some wins this season and find themselves cracking the top 25 for the first time since 2012. If Schiano can end both major droughts for the program in back-to-back seasons, the school might just be able to make some noise in the Big Ten in the coming years with him at the helm.