It’s almost Bowl Season for the 2020-21 season, and the NCAA did away this year with the requirement that a team must be at least .500 to be eligible for a bowl game (or in some cases 5-7 depending on APR scores).
Rutgers is 3-5 after eight games and it has one more left.
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A week and a half ago, Scarlet Knights head coach Greg Schiano said he hadn’t given any thought about the possibility of accepting a bid to play in an extra contest given the COVID-19 pandemic that has taken over and changed daily routines and how the teams go about their week.
“I have been so, so busy that I haven't given that any thought and that's not a cop out,” Schiano said recently. “I should have thought of it, but I literally have not. I thought being a head coach was a challenging or demanding job in my first go-around. In this COVID mess, it's like nothing I've ever seen.
“But to even think about something else, like I want to see us get to Saturday. If you look at the number of games that continue to be canceled and postponed. It's a bad answer, but I don't know. Really I haven't thought it through. I saw the Pinstripe Bowl was cancelled. It's the local one. So I don't know. I think everybody can see where the country is.”
And what does Schiano think now with one more game against Nebraska at home on Friday at 4:00 p.m. to go?
Not much has changed, though the team is aiming for a record four Big Ten Conference wins in one season, which its never accomplished since it joined the league in 2014.
“I haven't gone there yet. To me, this Nebraska game is everything. We have a chance to win four Big Ten games. That hasn't been done here ever. We're shooting for something,” Schiano said Monday. “And, as you mentioned, with a situation where you play nine straight and do in a situation where we didn't have any non-conference games, I think everyone in our program understands this is a chance for something special. I know we're not talking about raising a trophy, but we are talking about doing something that's never been done before. And those are all steps that we like to take, and it's going to take every single bit of effort.”
Projections wise, ESPN’s Mark Schlabach has Rutgers playing in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl at Chase Field in Phoenix Arizona against old Big East nemesis West Virginia on Dec. 26.
That’s all, for now, but should Rutgers beat Nebraska at home on late Friday afternoon, that will change. Pitt, Boston College, Virginia, and Stanford have opted out already, too.
The first bowl game, Tropical Smoothie Cafe Frisco Bowl, takes place on Saturday. Rutgers hasn’t been to a bowl since 2014 in its first year in the Big Ten when it trounced North Carolina in the Quick Lane Bowl in Detroit.
During his first tenure with the Scarlet Knights, Schiano was 5-1 in bowl games with wins in the Texas Bowl, International Bowl, PapaJohns.com Bowl, St. Petersburg Bowl, and the Pinstripe Bowl. All-time, the Scarlet Knights are 6-4 in bowls.
“That was a very physical game,” Schiano said of this past weekend. “As I told you I've never been out on the field that many times checking on injured players. Nine straight weeks, it's taken its toll. We have to muster it up here.”
Follow Chris Nalwasky on Twitter @ChrisWasky.
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