Background and career
Gregory Edward Schiano (born June 1, 1966) is an American football coach. He is currently the head football coach at Rutgers University, a position he held from 2001 to 2011 and resumed before the 2020 season. Schiano has the most wins in program history as head football coach of the Rutgers Scarlet Knights football team. He also served as the head coach for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the National Football League (NFL) from 2012 to 2013.
Schiano was born and grew up in Wyckoff, New Jersey, and attended Ramapo High School. He then attended Bucknell University, where he was a member of Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, and graduated in 1988 with a B.S. in business administration. Despite being a 190-pound linebacker in high school, Bucknell assistant Joe Susan felt he was a perfect fit for the defense. Susan would later join Schiano at Rutgers.
Playing at linebacker, Schiano was a three-year letterman at Bucknell. In his junior year, he led the team with 114 tackles and was named to the All-Conference team. In his senior year, he was named team captain and was named to the Sporting News Pre-season All-America Team.
Schiano began his coaching career in 1988 as an assistant coach at Ramapo High School for the Raiders football team. In 1989, he served as a graduate assistant at Rutgers. In 1990, he took the same position at Penn State. He later served as the defensive backfield coach there from 1991 to 1995. From 1996 to 1998, Schiano was an assistant coach in the NFL with the Chicago Bears. For his first two seasons there, he was a defensive assistant, and then was promoted in his third and final season with the Bears to defensive backfield coach.
Schiano served as defensive coordinator for the University of Miami Hurricanes from 1999 to 2000. In 1999, Miami finished the year ranked 12th in the NCAA's Division I-A in points allowed per game (17.2), and in 2000 moved up to 5th (15.5 points allowed per game). His brief 18-month stint at Miami and his roots in New Jersey made him a candidate for his next position as head coach at Rutgers University. While at the University of Miami, Schiano coached NFL Pro Bowlers Dan Morgan, Jonathan Vilma, and Ed Reed.
On December 1, 2000, Schiano accepted the head coaching position at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. He was given the task of turning around a struggling program that had been without a bowl game appearance since the 1978 Garden State Bowl, and had just four winning seasons since 1980. Although Schiano was producing solid recruiting classes, especially by Rutgers standards, the Scarlet Knights struggled to losing records in his first four seasons as head coach. It was believed coming into the 2005 season that Schiano was on the hot seat and would need to take Rutgers to a bowl game to keep his job.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
