PISCATAWAY, N.J. -- Every time they talked on the telephone these past 10 years, Greg Schiano never failed to end a call with his old high school coach, Mike Miello, without wondering to him: "What about Rutgers? What's happening at Rutgers?" Schiano was on a rapid rise, turning into one of the hot, young head coaching candidates in the country. He had everything going for him. Most of all, he had a future.

	“	All around the state now, there's a feeling of 'Man, this is really going to happen here. Finally, it's going to happen.' But we haven't done anything yet. We've had some recruiting success, but we haven't done anything yet. ”
		— Rutgers coach Greg Schiano

Across a 10-year tour of traditional football powerhouses as an assistant -- Penn State to the Chicago Bears to the University of Miami -- his coaching peers couldn't understand Schiano's burning ambition to return to his graduate assistant roots, his Jersey home, and resurrect Rutgers.

"That's all I heard," Schiano says.

Well, he's done it. He's found his way home to his dream job and all those coaches over all those years, they probably think he's the craziest coach in the country.

What advice did his old boss, Joe Paterno, deliver him on taking this job? "I'll keep that between us," Schiano says. Which means, of course, Paterno told him he was crazy, too. At 34 years old, Schiano is the youngest Division I coach in the country. To be that at Rutgers, he must have a death wish. For all these years of chasing this job, that's the incessant static Schiano has had to here. Who dreams of a coaching graveyard? Who dreams of coaching where careers go to die?

"But you know who I didn't hear that from?" Schiano said. "The high school coaches in New Jersey."

No, they wanted Schiano. When Rutgers athletic director Bob Mulcahy was dabbling with Western Michigan's Gary Darnell, the most influential coaches in the state marched on his office, imploring him to hire a son of the state, the 34-year-old Miami defensive coordinator dying for the job.

They believed in the possibilities, too, and they're promising Schiano the support to lift Rutgers out of the ashes.

"All of us have our horror stories of the past at Rutgers," Miello said, "but those days are over."

Everything's on Schiano now. He talks ridiculously big -- Big East championships, bowl games, the works. In truth, mediocrity would be an upgrade over the endless embarrassments of Rutgers past. This was one of America's worst programs in the 1990's, the absolute worst. Even so, Schiano didn't spend his life angling for this job because he believed it had a chance to be ordinary.

After Butch Davis left for the NFL, Schiano could've had the Miami job. He could've stayed and had the Miami job. He swears there are no regrets, none. In his mind, Rutgers can be extraordinary. All he's done is bet his career on it. Of course, he would've never been synonymous with Miami football. Here, it'll always be Schiano and Rutgers. It'll always be the kid out of Wyckoff, N.J., returning home to accomplish one of the most improbable feats in college football: Revive Rutgers.

"Right now, we're establishing the work ethic, the system," he says. "Each year we have to get better and better players, until we reach a level where we're getting the best players in the country."

The best players in the country? Picking Rutgers? Well, it's started. It's happening. For the first time, New Jersey's best players gathered on campus in the spring, and met something that they never believed possible: a reason to stay home, a reason to play for Rutgers. The star running back out of Montclair, N.J., Rikki Cook, changed his mind on Virginia, and the big lineman out of Paterson, Davon Clark, passed on Penn State. They picked Rutgers. Mostly, they picked Greg Schiano.

Now, the commitments are coming faster and faster. They used to get the players in the Northeast and New Jersey that Penn State and Syracuse and Boston College had picked over, leaving Rutgers forever sifting over the bargain rack. Some are still leaving the state, but these days they're considering Rutgers, and that never used to happen.

"We're Rutgers, we're the state university," Schiano says. "We're supposed to get these players. We aren't going to get all of them -- although we're going to try -- but we're supposed to get these players. All around the state now, there's a feeling of 'Man, this is really going to happen here. Finally, it's going to happen.' But we haven't done anything yet. We've had some recruiting success, but we haven't done anything yet."

As University of Texas quarterback Chris Simms remembers, the old Rutgers coaching staff didn't bother to recruit him out of Northern New Jersey's Ramapo High School -- just conceding him to the big-time. No more. Before one of the nation's top high school linebackers, Berkeley Hutchinson of Long Branch, stopped to hear Schiano's sell in the spring, he insists Rutgers wasn't on his long list of 20 schools. After listening, he had the Scarlet Knights in a final five that included Penn State, Ohio State and Miami. Just two weeks ago, he offered his verbal to Rutgers.

"He's such a powerful speaker," Hutchinson says. "When he spoke he just got under your skin, saying, 'We're going to do this,' and 'We're going to do that.' It was that positive attitude that made me commit to Rutgers."

"After hearing Coach Schiano speak, I thought everyone in the room should have verbally committed to Rutgers. Hopefully during my time at Rutgers we will be competing for a national championship."

Between here and there, they'll take respectability at Rutgers. They'll take relevance. Hell, they'll settle for hope. After all, it's been a long, long time.

Adrian Wojnarowski is a sports columnist for The Record (N.J.) and a regular contributor to ESPN.com.