Is It Time for Rutgers to Follow UConn’s Lead?
The Huskies have won eighteen games across the last two seasons as an FBS independent.
Rutgers joined the Big Ten in 2014. Since then, the Scarlet Knights have won zero games against ranked opponents. That’s over a decade of games since becoming a Power 4 football program with zero wins against a team ranked inside the AP Top 25. That’s a really long time for a fanbase to watch their team not win a big game. A really long time. It seems especially implausible with Rutgers in the Power 2.
Rutgers won eight games in their first season in the Big Ten in 2014 under former head coach Kyle Flood and hasn’t reached that eight-game threshold of victories since. It hasn’t been a disaster – Rutgers has gone bowling in two out of the last three seasons, but is that enough for the Scarlet Knight fanbase in 2026 and beyond? When you look at Rutgers’ 2026 football schedule, can you identify the most realistic path to ending their ranked-win drought? At Penn State on Nov. 21? USC at home in Week 3? Nebraska at home in Week 14? I don’t have the answer, but as every other fan of an NL East team not named the Atlanta Braves told themselves for much of the ‘90s and early 2000s, they can’t win the division every year, well, forever, right?
One of my favorite college football podcasts, CBS Sports’ Cover 3, co-host Bud Elliott has this saying when it comes to matters like Rutgers, Maryland, or Nebraska in the Big Ten. His phrase is, “Take the checks, take the losses.” He’s right, whether it’s about Arkansas or Mississippi State in the SEC or Rutgers or Maryland in the Big Ten. From 2006-2009, Rutgers won an average of nine games a year in the Big East. The school has not won nine games once since joining the Big Ten. The Hawgs and Bulldogs aren’t anywhere close to winning the SEC, just like the Scarlet Knights and Terrapins aren’t anywhere close to winning the Big Ten. With the Big Ten being more top-heavy than the SEC, the prospect of a Rutgers or Maryland ever breaking through seems even more improbable than an Arkansas or Mississippi State doing so. Sure, the four schools are in the Power 2, ostensibly a great place to be in college football, but would Rutgers and Maryland not have more fun playing football in the ACC, or Arkansas and Mississippi State playing football in the Big 12?
Before joining the Big East in 1991, the Scarlet Knights were an independent FBS program. They didn’t win big during that era of Rutgers football, but they did beat Penn State in 1988. In the 1970s, under Frank Burns, a former Rutgers quarterback himself, the Scarlet Knights won a lot, including an 11-0 season in which they finished ranked No. 17 in both the AP Poll and the Coaches Poll. A double-digit win season is plausible for Rutgers as an independent, but implausible as a Big Ten member.
Former UConn head football coach Jim Mora, now at Colorado State, had similar success coaching the independent Huskies the last few years. Mora took the Huskies to three bowl games in the last four years. He won nine games in back-to-back seasons. Fan attendance is going in the right direction. The last time UConn won nine games was under Randy Edsall, back in 2007, when they were still in the Big East. Then Edsall left, the school joined the AAC, and they wandered the wilderness for years and years. If you were to poll the average UConn fan about the last two seasons under Mora, the feedback should be overwhelmingly positive, right? They beat the ACC champions in late November. They beat Boston College on the road, and, well, they won nine games. UConn football over the last couple of seasons has been a great story. Rutgers could be a great story as an FBS independent, too.
If you’re a Rutgers fan, with over a decade of evidence now, how could you not want to be in UConn’s shoes, as an independent for football and in the Big East for basketball? That’d be the dream in 2026, right? A future football schedule that could include some combination of UConn, Delaware, Temple, Boston College, Syracuse, UMass, Pittsburgh, and maybe even Notre Dame would be a whole lot more interesting for a Rutgers football fan, right? You could go into most Saturdays with both the hope and the expectation of winning lots of football games. With the status quo, you hope you have Maryland and Purdue on the schedule. You hope, at some point, like Montreal Expos or Florida Marlins fans hoped in the early-to-mid-2000s, that this can’t go on forever. That the Braves can’t win the NL East every year, and Rutgers can’t lose to every ranked team they face every year. Everything ends at some point, but is that this year for Scarlet Knights football fans? I don’t know, but I do know that I have seen what UConn has done as an FBS independent program, and from the outside, it seems like a much better fan experience than being a Rutgers or Maryland in the Big Ten.