Rutgers vs. Iowa State: Greg Schiano Deserves More Credit Than He Gets

With its 27-13 win over Iowa State in the Pinstripe Bowl on Friday, Rutgers wrapped up its fifth consecutive bowl win.

It's an impressive feat, one that just about every other college football program in the country would love to boast about. The Scarlet Knights should be proud.

Asking the Scarlet Knights to be proud of their accomplishment isn't asking a whole heck of a lot. Before Rutgers got hot and started this five-bowl win streak, the program had only ever gone to two bowls in well over a century of existence.

One was in 1978, and the other didn't come until 2005, when the Scarlet Knights lost the Insight Bowl to Arizona State.

That was Greg Schiano's fifth year on the job, and the fact that he had gotten his team to a bowl game at all was something of a novelty. Schiano led the Scarlet Knights to a 7-5 record in the 2005 season, but his record in the previous four seasons combined was 12-34.

Was Rutgers' 2005 season just a fluke?

Six years and five straight bowl wins later, it's clear that Rutgers' 2005 season was, in fact, just the beginning.

And for that, you really can't give Schiano enough credit. He's taken one of the most irrelevant college football programs in history and turned it into something just shy of a powerhouse.

Naturally, a lot of this is owed to Schiano's recruiting abilities. If you consult Rivals.com, you'll see that Rutgers' recruiting classes have consistently matched up with its comrades in the Big East every year since 2002. Relative to the competition, Schiano has brought in top talent.

The only thing Schiano hasn't been able to do is get Rutgers to a BCS bowl game, though he came pretty close in 2006. But while he can look up in envy at programs like West Virginia and Cincinnati, those schools can envy Rutgers for its consistency over the last seven years. Compared to some of the other programs in the Big East, Rutgers has been a rock.

It's therefore no wonder that Schiano's name inevitably pops up whenever there's a vacant head coaching position. Last year, it was Miami. In 2011, it was Penn State.

For the record, Schiano told Bill King of 247Sports back in November that he had no interested in taking the Penn State job.

"I'm only interested in one job, and that's the one I have right now," said Schiano.

It's no wonder. The job he has is pretty sweet. As long as he keeps doing what he's doing, he's going to keep winning.

That's more than you can say about 90 percent of the coaches and 90 percent of the programs throughout the rest of the country.