Pat Hobbs's philosophy on building programs in Big Ten

This year marks the fifth anniversary of the induction of Rutgers into the Big Ten, a move that put the University’s athletes right in the middle of a storied power five conference, forcing its programs to adapt to the competitively volatile landscape of America’s premier college sports. 

Since the announcement in 2012, the move has come under scrutiny by local and national media outlets including SBnation.com and NJ Advance Media. The conference realignment has been cited as a means to use Rutgers as leverage to negotiate lucrative media contracts, without any legitimate means for the school’s programs to be competitive. 

The University’s inaugural year in 2014 would be the first of a 13-year transitioning-in period in which the school would share a field with all of its conference foes, but only receive a portion of the money in comparison to the other member schools. One year after that inauguration, the University would also be looking for a new athletic director after the firing of Julie Hermann. 

Enter Pat Hobbs, a former tax lawyer and college basketball enthusiast. In 2015 University President Robert L. Barchi handed Hobbs the keys to the castle at Rutgers after 24 years at Seton Hall. Hobbs was given the task to lead the department through arguably it's most important period in history... with the lowest budget in the conference.

“We’ve always been a great university, a great academic university … but when you start associating your name with the likes of the folks in the Big Ten, now our peer group is what we would think are the great publics of the country,” Hobbs said. “It’s so hard to predict 2027 and where we will be … but we want to get there sooner than that. We want to be a program that’s competing for championships across our sports.”

Hobbs and the department’s limited resources are a unique disadvantage in the Big Ten. Among the conference’s 14 members, Rutgers receives the lowest distribution of league revenue. This has, until now, limited investment that can be made on facilities and staff payroll compared to its conference rivals, two assets that are essential to player recruitment.

The lifeblood to sustaining success in college sports is recruitment. The decisions of blue chip prospects across New Jersey and the country at large that get scholarship offers from multiple D1 schools are ultimately the decisions that shape the landscape of college sports: Who wins, who loses and who can boast about sending players to the pros. So why would they choose Rutgers?

“It starts with your coaches. I hire coaches who are committed to doing things the right way, to building the right culture, to bringing in students with character and integrity and at times there are going to be misjudgments in that,” Hobbs said. “It’s not just about talent. It’s about character and integrity, and I think character and integrity wins over talent every time.”

At Seton Hall, Hobbs made the coaching hires of Tommy Amaker and Kevin Willard to lead the program’s men’s basketball team. Between the tenure of those two coaches, Seton Hall made the NCAA tournament four times. 

Now, three years after hiring Steve Pikiell to lead the Rutgers men’s basketball team, Hobbs has been rewarded with many of the same qualities that went into his hiring decisions at Seton Hall. This year in particular the Knights have already crossed a number of historic milestones off since joining the Big Ten. With a core of underclassmen leading the way, the belief is that there are bright days ahead for Rutgers basketball. 

“Steve is someone I followed a very long time before I hired him. He’s a guy who builds programs the right way and he creates a culture around the program which we can all be proud of," Hobbs said. "I know our students and our student section can see it and they embrace it."

Hobbs also made the hiring of football head coach Chris Ash in December of 2015, and made the decision to extend his contract two years later through 2022. When the extension was announced following a 4-8 season, Hobbs stated that he had “100-percent confidence in Chris Ash,” according to NJ Advance Media. 

One year after that statement the Knights wrapped up the program’s worst season since 2002. 

“None of us were happy with the win-loss record, nobody wants to go 1-11… but we had 32 freshmen and sophomores on the field,” Hobbs said. “You think about a typical football program, you need 5 or 6 recruiting classes in order to get your program moving forward and Chris has really only had three recruiting classes.”

Rutgers football is a program that doesn't get the opportunity to even sniff the country’s top high school recruits each year. On top of that it, like many programs in D1, endures a high number of decommits during recruiting season. Most famously as of late, Saquon Barkley who was originally slated to play at Rutgers in 2015, decomitted to join Penn State. 

Hobbs is not bothered by the decommits citing it as a normal part of any college football program. Ash didn’t sign any recruits in the country’s top 10 this year, but a transfer class highlighted by New Jersey natives: linebacker Drew Singleton from Michigan, and quarterback Johnny Langan from Boston College will join the Knights after a failed season. 

“The premier programs in this country are not gonna stop recruiting in New Jersey … but as we go forward and as we build success I think we’re gonna see more and more young folks who want to stay home and compete for the Scarlet Knights,” Hobbs said. 

This past off-season has also seen a number of new coaching hires including the poaching of defensive co-ordinator Andy Buh from Maryland. Buh worked on the same Wisconsin staff with Ash back in 2012 when the Badgers reached their third consecutive Rose Bowl, an accomplishment that Hobbs has set as a personal aspiration, for the program's future. 

“We may be able to scale a small mountain in Colorado in a couple days, but it takes weeks to climb Everest. Well, it's the same thing in football — when you’re trying to scale the mountain that we are in football it takes some more time,” Hobbs said.

Only time will tell if Hobbs’s patience and faith will pay off in the punishing landscape of college football, but fans and students can be sure of one constant: Chris Ash will be at the helm until at least 2022. 

The success of the athletic department and its contributions to the University at large will be highly dependent on the two big revenue sports in football and men’s basketball as Rutgers moves closer to the 2027 full-transition. The Daily Targum will be closely monitoring if the former lawyer from Essex County can turn Rutgers into a national powerhouse, at the lowest budget in the Big Ten.