National Signing Day 2012: Signing Class a Turning Point for Rutgers Football

When Greg Schiano left for the NFL and a job with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the recruiting class he built could have easily toppled and fell, leaving Rutgers with little to build upon.

Instead, they finished with the best recruiting class in the school's history, one that marks a serious turning point for a program that not long ago was getting beaten up and its lunch money stolen by the bigger football schools.

Consider the following, from Tom Luicci of The Star-Ledger:

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“You don’t pick a school for a coach,” Don Bosco Prep defensive lineman Darius Hamilton said.

New head coach Kyle Flood echoed that sentiment as he reviewed the 18 players who signed letters of intent today, though in slightly different terms.

“If you’re recruiting good people and you deal with them honestly, you can get through any situation,” said Flood, a Rutgers assistant since 2005 before his promotion to the top job. “That is what we were able to do with this recruiting class.”

"

Hamilton is a 5-star recruit, considered the second-best defensive end prospect in the country and the headliner of this class. His words echoed a powerful sentiment: I came here to play for Rutgers, not for Schiano. I chose this program, not that man.

That's a huge step for the evolution of college football in New Jersey.

According to Rivals.com, Rutgers landed the 23rd-best recruiting class in the nation. They nabbed "five of The Star-Ledger’s top 10 players in the state and 10 of the top 25."

What's more, they did so when many questioned whether or not this recruiting class would fall apart after Schiano departed for the NFL.

If it had, it would have been a huge step back for the program that had established a stronghold in the state of New Jersey.

Instead, it stayed together and proved something—Rutgers football is now a brand kids in the Garden State and beyond can get excited about. Make no mistake, Schiano didn't take the appeal of Rutgers with him when he went to Tampa Bay.

Rutgers football has arrived on the national stage. If this incoming class is any indication, the Scarlet Knights don't plan on going back to football irrelevance anytime soon.

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