3 Teams That'll Pillage Rutgers' Recruiting Class as Greg Schiano Goes to Tampa

The Rutgers football program appears to be on the rise. In four out of the last five years, they've won at least eight games and won all four bowl games that they appeared in. You could give a lot of credit to head coach Greg Schiano, who really turned the program around and brought in solid recruiting classes.

Now Schinao has left the Rutgers program to take on the new task of coaching the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

You can never really blame a guy for wanting to take on a new challenge. After all, he led the program to a ton of success and gave the program 11 solid years. But Rutgers does have a good recruiting class, and with national signing day approaching, they're in serious danger of losing some of their top recruits.

Here are a few teams that could take advantage of Schiano leaving.

Miami Hurricanes

Miami has one of the deepest recruiting classes in the country, and they are looking to add more. One of the Rutgers' top recruits, wide receiver Leonte Carroo, is actually scheduled to visit the university real soon.

Offensive tackle J.J. Denman also has an offer from Miami, and he's the most likely to leave. He originally committed to schools like Penn State and Wisconsin before decommitting from both. He decided to join Rutgers because it was the school his father went to and he felt comfortable with the coaching staff. I wonder if he feels the same today. Here's a few things he said about why he left Wisconsin.

“The staff that is at Wisconsin now isn’t the staff I committed to,” Denman said. “I was like, ‘all right, I’ll go look around.'"

You could now say the same about Rutgers.

Nebraska Cornhuskers

Rutgers currently has a top 20 linebacker in Quanzell Lambert, who visited Nebraska back in October. It was actually the second program he took a trip to before visiting Rutgers back in December. He liked the trip a lot and may consider switching his commitment if he doesn't like the coaching change. Here's a few things he said about his trip.

"

I got a chance to talk with Coach Bo Pelini and also with the Athletic Director, Tom Osborne. Coach Pelini was straight forward with me and was honest with me about how I fit in with their program. Tom Osborne told me what is expected of players and how the program is run. He said that being a student-athlete is a hard thing to do, but they are going to help me on the field and in the classroom.

"

Lambert also visited Iowa back in October.

Pittsburgh Panthers

Pittsburgh may be a big play in this whole mess. It's not that far away from Rutgers, they have a new respected head coach in Paul Chryst and several players were interested in the program from the very beginning.

Running back Desmond Peoples actually attended camp at Pittsburgh, and offensive tackle J.J. Denman made his official visit out there earlier this month. And nearly every top recruit on this team has an offer from the Panthers, including Brandon Arcidiacono, Leonte Carroo, Quanzell Lambert and Chris Muller.

Pittsburgh has one of the better recruiting classes already in the Big East, and it could get even better in the next week or two.

Randy Chambers is a B/R Featured Columnist that covers college football and the NFL. You can contact him @Randy_Chambers or [e-mail]