Photo by: Marc Lebryk
Bowl Announcement Press Conference - 12/8/24
Dec 08 | Football
SCOTT LEIGHTMAN: Hello, everybody. Welcome to the 2024 Rate Bowl. I believe you should have recording privileges. We are thrilled for this year's game and we are excited to have a 3:30 p.m., local time, kickoff here in Arizona. For those of you from Arizona, we have been having kickoff times in the 7:00, 8:00 hour and given that we have Rutgers from the Eastern time zone, those games have started sometime around 10:30 at night. So now we are thrilled to offer our East Coast friends a 5:30 p.m. kickoff time. Pleased for the matchup we have with Rutgers from the Big Ten Conference and Kansas State from the Big 12 Conference, the Rate Bowl is Bowl Season's only Big Ten versus Big 12 Conference matchup, and we're proud about that one as well. So the Rutgers Scarlet Knights 7-5 this season, 4-5 in the Big Ten. Finished strong with wins in three of their last four games. This is the second time that Rutgers will be in the Rate Bowl. Once again, that is the Rate Bowl, not the Guaranteed Rate Bowl, for those of you who have been here before. So we're excited about that as well. Coach, you have an exciting offense led by your running back. But why don't you tell us about your team and the excitement level about coming back out to Arizona.
COACH SCHIANO: Glad to. I want to thank Erik [Moses] and everybody associated with the Rate Bowl. I know our program, our school, our state is really excited about coming out to the Valley of the Sun and playing a great opponent in Kansas State. It's just really special for us. As you said, we were there actually our first bowl game, my first time here and what a great experience our players had. So I can speak to it really from firsthand. Tomorrow morning in our team meeting, I will speak to it. And really, really excited. I think our team really had a very, very interesting season. It was a year really unlike any other I have ever been a part of over 37 years. We had some incredible amounts of injuries and really had to re-invent ourselves as a football team and had a little dip in the middle of the year, but came out of it stronger and a lot of guys playing that maybe otherwise wouldn't have played. You know what? Finished strong and now really excited. Our first time here it became custom for our fans to plan their Christmas holidays around our bowls, and then that kind of went away. But this is back-to-back bowl games for us now, and this is something that I think our fan base needs to get used to and we need to keep providing. Now to go out there and do a great job against a great opponent, and I'm looking forward to it.
SCOTT LEIGHTMAN: Thank you, Coach. Before we open it up for questions, we ask if you do want to ask a question, please raise your hand on the raise your hand function and have your camera visible in order to ask a question. This is our first time running a Zoom in quite a while, so please bear with us if we don't do it just as polished as we did back in 2020. After that 2005 appearance in the then-Insight Bowl, Rutgers had its only meeting against Kansas State in the 2006 Texas Bowl where Rutgers defeated Kansas State 37-10. We will now open it up for questions. So if anyone does have a question, please use the raise-your-hand function and we will call on you to go ahead and ask one. I'm sure someone has a question for Coach [Greg] Schiano.
Q. Coach, I wonder if you can just talk about several things -- [Kyle] Monangai's effectiveness this year and what he brings to the offense. And it looks to me like you are really a ground-first, play defense, run-the-clock, control-the-game kind of guy. Is that close?
COACH SCHIANO: Well, you know, Jack, that's a good question. I think, first, Kyle Monangai is a fabulous player. We've had a great time with him over the last five years. He's developed and become one of the best running backs, I believe, in the country and has done a lot for the Rutgers. And the thing you love as a head coach is he's an even better person than he is a football player. So he makes -- you know, he's a great example for our program. But as far as our nature of our offense and our defense, we kind of do what it takes to win. Later in the year we threw the ball more. I think Athan Kaliakmanis really came on. Our young receivers were forced into action and did a good job. We love to run the ball. We love to play defense. Kicking game is very important. So, yeah, we kind of do what it takes to win, but if we have our choice, we would like to be able to run the football. In our conference you have to be able to do that. The weather gets pretty bad at the end of the year, evidenced by our last game at Michigan State. It was a snow globe the entire day. But I'm excited. I think our offense is getting better and better. Kirk Ciarrocca provides tremendous leadership. It's his second year back so now the guys have been through it for a second cycle. I think they're just a unit on the rise.
Q. Just how did you guys manage to recover from a little bit of a skid earlier in the year? What did you say to help them through that or how did you guys go through that -- get through that?
COACH SCHIANO: I don't think there's anything I said. We had -- like I said, unprecedented. I have been doing this 37 years. I have never seen the likes of it, the number of people that we had, not only injuries, but season-ending injuries, surgeries. Coupled with the normal injuries that happen in a physical game of football, we had season-ending injuries that really put us in a position that we weren't expecting or prepared for. A lot of young guys stepped up. They gained valuable experience and when I say re-invented ourselves, that's just what happened. Coming into the season, we had a defense I thought was going to be special. And then in training camp, we lose our alpha. Mo Toure was not only one of our best players, but he was the leader. He was the man and then we had to adjust. Then we lost some other guys and we had to continue to adjust. We lost our leading sacker, Wesley Bailey, from the previous two years. So as things kept changing, we had to adjust. And when it hit the offense as well, then it was hard to win games for a little bit. I think we did. I think we re-invented ourselves. The number one thing we were able to do was stick together. The big thing here is playing for each other. I really believe if you get a group of men that are unselfish and play for each other, you will figure it out eventually. That's kind of how our season went. Sure, you can live in the what-if world, but we don't do it. I don't live in the past, and I don't live in the future. I try to live right now, and that's what I encourage our team to do. So we are so excited about coming out there to the Rate Bowl. I think our young players now have gained valuable experience and are going to do a good job.
Q. Greg, do you have a sense of the seniors, particular Kyle [Monangai] and Hollin [Pierce], guys who might have NFL aspirations, if they will be playing in this bowl game? Have you had those conversations? And do you know which one of those guys will be playing?
COACH SCHIANO: Those are good questions, Brian, and I don't have any information on that yet things. All those things are fluid. We have a couple of fluid situations right now. Coach [Joe] Harasymiak left to take the head coaching job at the University of Massachusetts. So we have adjustments going on staff-wise. We have the annual who is going to play, who is not going to play deal in the bowl game stuff. So we are working through all of that. Again, a younger me probably would have fretted over that. After doing it so many years, you just figure out where you are and then you got to figure out how to do it best. We are right in the middle of doing that. This whole past weekend has been that, and we'll continue until we kind of figure out how we're going to approach this thing. But it's coming quick. '26 will be here before we know it.
Q. Going off that, have you decided who will be calling plays defensively in the bowl game? And do you hope that you might have a DC in place by the time the bowl game comes around?
COACH SCHIANO: No, I don't have any answers for that right now. As I said, it's an incredibly fluid process; and we are in the infant stage of it. So, again, you have seen me in the past. Sometimes it's immediate, the moves I make with staff; and sometimes you guys think I'm not going to do anything. I just do what the situation called for in my opinion. So I am not going to predetermine it. We have plenty of good coaches here that can call the defense, and we have -- more importantly, we have plenty of good players that can go play the defense.
Q. Greg, congratulations. Last year -- obviously, everybody knows how important the practices are. But last year you had a number of young players that helped you win that bowl game. Is that something that also now is the new part of college football, you got to put young players in those bowl games?
COACH SCHIANO: There's no doubt. It's a great question. You remember last year, when that interception, the key interception in that game against Miami, it was a true freshman that makes a big, big play in that game and I love that. I love the early stages of the bowl preparation where we just have young players out there getting valuable experience. And then every once in a while, one of them really pops. They have been sitting in the incubator during the season, maybe getting a little second or third-team reps but not getting a lot of game and then all of a sudden in the bowl game, they get pushed into action. Then you get to start to see really who you have, who you recruited, and that, to me, is one the fun parts of college football.
Q. I know you mentioned going back to the bowl game that you were first part of, right, the Insight Bowl. What is the significance of that and -- I guess just what is the significance of that?
COACH SCHIANO: Well, that's a good question, Patrick. I think -- I don't know if there's any significance other than I love the place. I mean, I love the -- I love the city. I love the area, and I love the people who are involved with the bowl game. I mean, they are just -- they do such a great job for their teams, for the families. Still Rutgers people talk so fondly about our time there that week. So I'm looking forward to as many Rutgers people as we can get out there and come from the country, our alums that are spread out over the Southwest and the West Coast. Hopefully they can join us. Just looking forward to having a great experience. Again, we are playing a really, really good football team that I have the utmost respect. Coach [Chris] Klieman, I have never really competed with him, but I followed his teams as a fan. All those national championships he won at North Dakota State and then what he's been able to do at Kansas State. Just as a head coach who goes home after our games and loves to watch college football, I've caught some of their games and really, really good football team that plays the way that I love. I love the way they play.
Q. So for some of the guys on this team, this is their first postseason game. How important do you think bowl games are for the development of not just the younger players but all the players?
COACH SCHIANO: I think it's important for a lot of things. I think it's important for the development of younger players. I think it's important as a reward for the players for a job well done during the season. And we work hard, but I make sure it's a reward. The day bowl games become a burden to players, you are not going to get a lot of guys who want to go to bowl games. We work hard, but then we let them have fun. Ultimately, the competitive nature of our program is that we do everything to win. So it will be an awesome challenge because Kansas State is a really, really good football team. But as I said, I'm looking forward to it, and can't wait to get out there.
Q. Coach, K-State and Rutgers haven't played since '06, but you were actually the coach at Rutgers back then. What was it like playing against them in the bowl game? And do you have any recollections from that far back?
COACH SCHIANO: It was a long time ago. I had a lot of crossovers with K-State in the years after that. I actually have a coach on my staff who was on that other staff, Dave Brock, our wide receivers coach. So, yeah, there's been a lot of crossovers. My quarterback when I was in Tampa, he was -- Josh Freeman, and he was the quarterback when we played them in that bowl game here at Rutgers. So it seems like my life, my football career, has crossed paths a lot of different ways with Kansas State. I've watched them -- like I just got done saying, I watched them play as a fan sometimes when I would catch them on TV and just love the way they play. It's a team that I like to watch because they remind me of the way we play, not necessarily schematically but just how hard their kids and they do it the right way.
Q. Greg, you mentioned this earlier, but the older players who obviously are getting this opportunity to go back to a bowl game. And we talked during the year about the resiliency that they show and how proud you are of them. What does this mean to you to see them go through this and get this opportunity?
COACH SCHIANO: It means a lot. These are the guys who took a chance on us. We recruited that first class within 11 days and there was no proof that anything good was going to happen here, other than what we had done the first time when we were here. Things had really deteriorated and for them to take a chance on us at that time and now five years later, they are the senior class that kind of led this program out of the darkness again. It's a player-led program. I rely on them so much. Guys like Kyle Monangai and Hollin Pierce, you go down the list, those guys just provide such leadership on a daily basis that I'm thrilled for them to have this opportunity and thrilled for our program, our fan base, our school. These are special. Some people talk about with the advent of the College Football Playoff, bowl games don't mean as much. Don't tell our guys that. It means a lot to us. Hopefully, someday we are in that College Football Playoff. But this is our College Football Playoff. We get a one-game playoff, and it's called the Rate Bowl. So we are very excited.
Q. You talked a lot about -- during the bye week stripping things down to the studs and that led to the turn-around. How do you balance keeping up with the development with the same things that you were doing while also trying to stack on some new things for the development purposes of some of the younger guys?
COACH SCHIANO: Yeah, I don't know how many new things. You make game-plan adjustments, little tweaks here and tweaks there to take care of issues or take advantage of something you think might be a situation where you can gain an advantage. But at this stage, you are not really putting in a whole lot of new stuff. What you are trying to do is make sure, especially in the early part of this prep, fundamental development of our younger players. They get a chance. It's a mini spring practice. We know we are going to have spring practice, but the early part of bowl prep is a mini spring practice to get our guys great work. Our older guys who are beat up, they will be doing work but not at the level they are accustomed to during the season. When we get into install and game-plan preparation, then they will go back full bore. But right now it will be the younger guys. And I'm looking forward to that, because I love those periods where you can really teach. There's no -- you are not doing it against the particular opponent. You are just doing fundamental development. And to me, that's the -- that's the basis of coaching, the very, very bottom floor of it, and I love that.
SCOTT LEIGHTMAN: Coach, thank you for your time. Before we move on to Coach [Chris] Klieman, is there anything you would like to add in final thoughts?
COACH SCHIANO: I'm really excited. I really do, I look forward to the preparation and I look forward to getting out to Arizona and really having a great, great experience out there with the game. And we have some work to do before we get there, right? Academically, we have got a lot of challenges ahead of us, final exams and all of that stuff. But we've got a responsible group, a mature group. They will take care of business, and then we'll go out there and have a great experience. So this is going to be a great month, but we have got a lot of work to do. Again, excited to be competing with Kansas State. Coach Klieman does such a great job, and their program does such a great job, that I just think -- excited about it.
SCOTT LEIGHTMAN: Coach, thank you very much for your time. Really appreciate. Enjoy rest of your December and holidays, and we'll see you out here on December 22nd.
COACH SCHIANO: All right, guys. One thing before I get off if we could, because we had just a horrible tragedy here in New Jersey. Brad Cunningham who was part of my first recruiting class way back in 2000, he and Coach [Lamar] McKnight, who was a very popular head coach in New Jersey, they had a tragic, tragic car accident. Those two and four others were killed in a really bad accident. I just want to send our thoughts and prayers from Rutgers and from our football program. They are friends. Brad Cunningham is one of us. So to your families and everybody involved in Hudson County and Hudson Catholic Football, our thoughts and prayers are with you. Anything we can do, we are with you. Thank you guys.
SCOTT LEIGHTMAN: Thank you, Coach. We appreciate that very much.
COACH SCHIANO: Glad to. I want to thank Erik [Moses] and everybody associated with the Rate Bowl. I know our program, our school, our state is really excited about coming out to the Valley of the Sun and playing a great opponent in Kansas State. It's just really special for us. As you said, we were there actually our first bowl game, my first time here and what a great experience our players had. So I can speak to it really from firsthand. Tomorrow morning in our team meeting, I will speak to it. And really, really excited. I think our team really had a very, very interesting season. It was a year really unlike any other I have ever been a part of over 37 years. We had some incredible amounts of injuries and really had to re-invent ourselves as a football team and had a little dip in the middle of the year, but came out of it stronger and a lot of guys playing that maybe otherwise wouldn't have played. You know what? Finished strong and now really excited. Our first time here it became custom for our fans to plan their Christmas holidays around our bowls, and then that kind of went away. But this is back-to-back bowl games for us now, and this is something that I think our fan base needs to get used to and we need to keep providing. Now to go out there and do a great job against a great opponent, and I'm looking forward to it.
SCOTT LEIGHTMAN: Thank you, Coach. Before we open it up for questions, we ask if you do want to ask a question, please raise your hand on the raise your hand function and have your camera visible in order to ask a question. This is our first time running a Zoom in quite a while, so please bear with us if we don't do it just as polished as we did back in 2020. After that 2005 appearance in the then-Insight Bowl, Rutgers had its only meeting against Kansas State in the 2006 Texas Bowl where Rutgers defeated Kansas State 37-10. We will now open it up for questions. So if anyone does have a question, please use the raise-your-hand function and we will call on you to go ahead and ask one. I'm sure someone has a question for Coach [Greg] Schiano.
Q. Coach, I wonder if you can just talk about several things -- [Kyle] Monangai's effectiveness this year and what he brings to the offense. And it looks to me like you are really a ground-first, play defense, run-the-clock, control-the-game kind of guy. Is that close?
COACH SCHIANO: Well, you know, Jack, that's a good question. I think, first, Kyle Monangai is a fabulous player. We've had a great time with him over the last five years. He's developed and become one of the best running backs, I believe, in the country and has done a lot for the Rutgers. And the thing you love as a head coach is he's an even better person than he is a football player. So he makes -- you know, he's a great example for our program. But as far as our nature of our offense and our defense, we kind of do what it takes to win. Later in the year we threw the ball more. I think Athan Kaliakmanis really came on. Our young receivers were forced into action and did a good job. We love to run the ball. We love to play defense. Kicking game is very important. So, yeah, we kind of do what it takes to win, but if we have our choice, we would like to be able to run the football. In our conference you have to be able to do that. The weather gets pretty bad at the end of the year, evidenced by our last game at Michigan State. It was a snow globe the entire day. But I'm excited. I think our offense is getting better and better. Kirk Ciarrocca provides tremendous leadership. It's his second year back so now the guys have been through it for a second cycle. I think they're just a unit on the rise.
Q. Just how did you guys manage to recover from a little bit of a skid earlier in the year? What did you say to help them through that or how did you guys go through that -- get through that?
COACH SCHIANO: I don't think there's anything I said. We had -- like I said, unprecedented. I have been doing this 37 years. I have never seen the likes of it, the number of people that we had, not only injuries, but season-ending injuries, surgeries. Coupled with the normal injuries that happen in a physical game of football, we had season-ending injuries that really put us in a position that we weren't expecting or prepared for. A lot of young guys stepped up. They gained valuable experience and when I say re-invented ourselves, that's just what happened. Coming into the season, we had a defense I thought was going to be special. And then in training camp, we lose our alpha. Mo Toure was not only one of our best players, but he was the leader. He was the man and then we had to adjust. Then we lost some other guys and we had to continue to adjust. We lost our leading sacker, Wesley Bailey, from the previous two years. So as things kept changing, we had to adjust. And when it hit the offense as well, then it was hard to win games for a little bit. I think we did. I think we re-invented ourselves. The number one thing we were able to do was stick together. The big thing here is playing for each other. I really believe if you get a group of men that are unselfish and play for each other, you will figure it out eventually. That's kind of how our season went. Sure, you can live in the what-if world, but we don't do it. I don't live in the past, and I don't live in the future. I try to live right now, and that's what I encourage our team to do. So we are so excited about coming out there to the Rate Bowl. I think our young players now have gained valuable experience and are going to do a good job.
Q. Greg, do you have a sense of the seniors, particular Kyle [Monangai] and Hollin [Pierce], guys who might have NFL aspirations, if they will be playing in this bowl game? Have you had those conversations? And do you know which one of those guys will be playing?
COACH SCHIANO: Those are good questions, Brian, and I don't have any information on that yet things. All those things are fluid. We have a couple of fluid situations right now. Coach [Joe] Harasymiak left to take the head coaching job at the University of Massachusetts. So we have adjustments going on staff-wise. We have the annual who is going to play, who is not going to play deal in the bowl game stuff. So we are working through all of that. Again, a younger me probably would have fretted over that. After doing it so many years, you just figure out where you are and then you got to figure out how to do it best. We are right in the middle of doing that. This whole past weekend has been that, and we'll continue until we kind of figure out how we're going to approach this thing. But it's coming quick. '26 will be here before we know it.
Q. Going off that, have you decided who will be calling plays defensively in the bowl game? And do you hope that you might have a DC in place by the time the bowl game comes around?
COACH SCHIANO: No, I don't have any answers for that right now. As I said, it's an incredibly fluid process; and we are in the infant stage of it. So, again, you have seen me in the past. Sometimes it's immediate, the moves I make with staff; and sometimes you guys think I'm not going to do anything. I just do what the situation called for in my opinion. So I am not going to predetermine it. We have plenty of good coaches here that can call the defense, and we have -- more importantly, we have plenty of good players that can go play the defense.
Q. Greg, congratulations. Last year -- obviously, everybody knows how important the practices are. But last year you had a number of young players that helped you win that bowl game. Is that something that also now is the new part of college football, you got to put young players in those bowl games?
COACH SCHIANO: There's no doubt. It's a great question. You remember last year, when that interception, the key interception in that game against Miami, it was a true freshman that makes a big, big play in that game and I love that. I love the early stages of the bowl preparation where we just have young players out there getting valuable experience. And then every once in a while, one of them really pops. They have been sitting in the incubator during the season, maybe getting a little second or third-team reps but not getting a lot of game and then all of a sudden in the bowl game, they get pushed into action. Then you get to start to see really who you have, who you recruited, and that, to me, is one the fun parts of college football.
Q. I know you mentioned going back to the bowl game that you were first part of, right, the Insight Bowl. What is the significance of that and -- I guess just what is the significance of that?
COACH SCHIANO: Well, that's a good question, Patrick. I think -- I don't know if there's any significance other than I love the place. I mean, I love the -- I love the city. I love the area, and I love the people who are involved with the bowl game. I mean, they are just -- they do such a great job for their teams, for the families. Still Rutgers people talk so fondly about our time there that week. So I'm looking forward to as many Rutgers people as we can get out there and come from the country, our alums that are spread out over the Southwest and the West Coast. Hopefully they can join us. Just looking forward to having a great experience. Again, we are playing a really, really good football team that I have the utmost respect. Coach [Chris] Klieman, I have never really competed with him, but I followed his teams as a fan. All those national championships he won at North Dakota State and then what he's been able to do at Kansas State. Just as a head coach who goes home after our games and loves to watch college football, I've caught some of their games and really, really good football team that plays the way that I love. I love the way they play.
Q. So for some of the guys on this team, this is their first postseason game. How important do you think bowl games are for the development of not just the younger players but all the players?
COACH SCHIANO: I think it's important for a lot of things. I think it's important for the development of younger players. I think it's important as a reward for the players for a job well done during the season. And we work hard, but I make sure it's a reward. The day bowl games become a burden to players, you are not going to get a lot of guys who want to go to bowl games. We work hard, but then we let them have fun. Ultimately, the competitive nature of our program is that we do everything to win. So it will be an awesome challenge because Kansas State is a really, really good football team. But as I said, I'm looking forward to it, and can't wait to get out there.
Q. Coach, K-State and Rutgers haven't played since '06, but you were actually the coach at Rutgers back then. What was it like playing against them in the bowl game? And do you have any recollections from that far back?
COACH SCHIANO: It was a long time ago. I had a lot of crossovers with K-State in the years after that. I actually have a coach on my staff who was on that other staff, Dave Brock, our wide receivers coach. So, yeah, there's been a lot of crossovers. My quarterback when I was in Tampa, he was -- Josh Freeman, and he was the quarterback when we played them in that bowl game here at Rutgers. So it seems like my life, my football career, has crossed paths a lot of different ways with Kansas State. I've watched them -- like I just got done saying, I watched them play as a fan sometimes when I would catch them on TV and just love the way they play. It's a team that I like to watch because they remind me of the way we play, not necessarily schematically but just how hard their kids and they do it the right way.
Q. Greg, you mentioned this earlier, but the older players who obviously are getting this opportunity to go back to a bowl game. And we talked during the year about the resiliency that they show and how proud you are of them. What does this mean to you to see them go through this and get this opportunity?
COACH SCHIANO: It means a lot. These are the guys who took a chance on us. We recruited that first class within 11 days and there was no proof that anything good was going to happen here, other than what we had done the first time when we were here. Things had really deteriorated and for them to take a chance on us at that time and now five years later, they are the senior class that kind of led this program out of the darkness again. It's a player-led program. I rely on them so much. Guys like Kyle Monangai and Hollin Pierce, you go down the list, those guys just provide such leadership on a daily basis that I'm thrilled for them to have this opportunity and thrilled for our program, our fan base, our school. These are special. Some people talk about with the advent of the College Football Playoff, bowl games don't mean as much. Don't tell our guys that. It means a lot to us. Hopefully, someday we are in that College Football Playoff. But this is our College Football Playoff. We get a one-game playoff, and it's called the Rate Bowl. So we are very excited.
Q. You talked a lot about -- during the bye week stripping things down to the studs and that led to the turn-around. How do you balance keeping up with the development with the same things that you were doing while also trying to stack on some new things for the development purposes of some of the younger guys?
COACH SCHIANO: Yeah, I don't know how many new things. You make game-plan adjustments, little tweaks here and tweaks there to take care of issues or take advantage of something you think might be a situation where you can gain an advantage. But at this stage, you are not really putting in a whole lot of new stuff. What you are trying to do is make sure, especially in the early part of this prep, fundamental development of our younger players. They get a chance. It's a mini spring practice. We know we are going to have spring practice, but the early part of bowl prep is a mini spring practice to get our guys great work. Our older guys who are beat up, they will be doing work but not at the level they are accustomed to during the season. When we get into install and game-plan preparation, then they will go back full bore. But right now it will be the younger guys. And I'm looking forward to that, because I love those periods where you can really teach. There's no -- you are not doing it against the particular opponent. You are just doing fundamental development. And to me, that's the -- that's the basis of coaching, the very, very bottom floor of it, and I love that.
SCOTT LEIGHTMAN: Coach, thank you for your time. Before we move on to Coach [Chris] Klieman, is there anything you would like to add in final thoughts?
COACH SCHIANO: I'm really excited. I really do, I look forward to the preparation and I look forward to getting out to Arizona and really having a great, great experience out there with the game. And we have some work to do before we get there, right? Academically, we have got a lot of challenges ahead of us, final exams and all of that stuff. But we've got a responsible group, a mature group. They will take care of business, and then we'll go out there and have a great experience. So this is going to be a great month, but we have got a lot of work to do. Again, excited to be competing with Kansas State. Coach Klieman does such a great job, and their program does such a great job, that I just think -- excited about it.
SCOTT LEIGHTMAN: Coach, thank you very much for your time. Really appreciate. Enjoy rest of your December and holidays, and we'll see you out here on December 22nd.
COACH SCHIANO: All right, guys. One thing before I get off if we could, because we had just a horrible tragedy here in New Jersey. Brad Cunningham who was part of my first recruiting class way back in 2000, he and Coach [Lamar] McKnight, who was a very popular head coach in New Jersey, they had a tragic, tragic car accident. Those two and four others were killed in a really bad accident. I just want to send our thoughts and prayers from Rutgers and from our football program. They are friends. Brad Cunningham is one of us. So to your families and everybody involved in Hudson County and Hudson Catholic Football, our thoughts and prayers are with you. Anything we can do, we are with you. Thank you guys.
SCOTT LEIGHTMAN: Thank you, Coach. We appreciate that very much.
Players Mentioned
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Head Coach Greg Schiano Game Week Press Conference - Penn State
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