“Well, that was fun. 2020, right? There you have it.”
Those were the first words Greg Schiano said at his virtual postgame press conference on Saturday after Rutgers defeated Maryland, 27-24, in overtime, and since it’s impossible to convey the tone of someone’s voice when you’re typing his words, let’s just say that the head coach didn’t look like a man who even knew the definition of “fun.”
He looked like someone who had finished the New York Marathon after spraining his ankle in the fourth mile -- his hair drenched with sweat, his voice low and hoarse, his entire visage a flashing billboard that broadcasted a need for 14 uninterrupted hours of sleep.
And then, with his next few sentences, he explained why.
“When we started this week, this was a really fatigued team,” Schiano said. “And I don’t just mean physically fatigued, because they are. Emotionally. Not seeing their families. And like our whole country is experiencing now as things get worse and worse, there’s fear.”
Three of his players, Schiano revealed, had lost loved ones during the week. Two of them, he said, lost a relative to COVID-19. Rutgers had invested so much time and effort in keeping the coronavirus from wrecking its season -- and had done it far more successfully than even some powerhouse programs in college football.
But the pandemic itself is undefeated. Isolating the players and coaches from the virus is different from keeping it from impacting their lives, and clearly, it has. For a handful, it has touched them in a deeply personal and devastating way.
For everyone else, it has stretched their physical and emotional strength to its limits -- no differently than it has for you and your family. And that’s worth remembering when measuring what these Scarlet Knights, who at 3-5 have matched their program record for Big Ten wins in a season, have achieved during these difficult few weeks.
The biggest win isn’t a win at all. It’s just surviving.
“This whole week ends up being a good life lesson for our entire football team,” Schiano said. “It was, in every way possible, we needed each other this week. It was one of those tremendous efforts that was more than a three-and-a-half-hour football game.”
We have not spent nearly enough time talking about what these players have endured beyond the few hours we see them on our TV sets, and in some ways, that’s understandable. The Big Ten football season, after its controversial postponement this summer, arrived eight weeks ago as a welcome distraction to the mental grind of our own lives.
The chance for normalcy? To complain about play calling and fourth-down decisions? I was among the many people who thought it was crazy to play college football in pandemic, but once the games started, I welcomed the weekly distraction.
It was fun. It was normal.
But for the participants?
They’ve had to isolate themselves from their friends and families, with nothing resembling a normal college experience, just for the chance to keep playing. They can’t hug their parents after a win, much less celebrate with other students.
They have seen the price other programs have paid for breaking from their protocols. Michigan. Ohio State. Indiana. The list of teams that didn’t get through the season without a COVID interruption is far longer than the teams that have. Rutgers made it through eight games without an outbreak, and that’s far more impressive than any single win.
“These guys made a decision to sacrifice for one another, and that’s the lesson,” Schiano said. “When you do something for other people and you put them in front of yourself, look at what can happen. I’m proud of them.”
Schiano spent much of this afternoon running onto the field to check on an injured player. Part of that was the undisciplined -- that’s a nice way of saying dirty -- play of the Terrapins, including one alligator roll that took out Rutgers starting quarterback Noah Vedral that the Big Ten needs to review next week for further discipline.
Mostly, though, this was just the wear and tear of playing eight league games in as many weeks. Schiano knew his team was running out of gas in the days leading up to this one, but he hoped that emotion would carry them through one more game. And it did.
“It’s a wake up call for what’s really out there,” defensive tackle Mike Tverdov said when asked about COVID-19 touching his teammates. “People might think they’re invincible but they’re not. It just goes to show how quickly you can lose a loved one. We cherish every moment we have together and we’re just thankful for each other.”
This has been an exhausting, challenging three months for everyone inside this program -- and in ways that outsiders might never understand. Rutgers has one more game on the schedule, what the Big Ten laughably labeled a “bonus” game before the season.
It almost seems impossible that this group would have enough left in the tank, emotionally or physically, for one more game.
“I’m not going to worry about that right now,” Schiano said. “I’m going to get on this bus and fall asleep, because I’m shot.”
Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a subscription.
Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com.
The Link LonkDecember 13, 2020 at 09:10PM
https://www.nj.com/rutgersfootball/2020/12/forget-beating-maryland-rutgers-biggest-win-surviving-and-thriving-in-a-pandemic-politi.html
Forget beating Maryland. Rutgers’ biggest win? Surviving, and thriving, in a pandemic | Politi - NJ.com
https://news.google.com/search?q=forget&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
No comments:
Post a Comment