Rutgers football prediction vs UMass in 2026 season opener
Here’s how Rutgers football writer Chris Iseman thinks the opener against UMass will unfold.
PISCATAWAY – As Rutgers football prepared to open up its 2026 season, athletic director Keli Zinn addressed the current state of the department just more than a year into her tenure.
The verdict?
A lot of improvements have been made.
There’s still a lot of room for more.
An athletics department that was severely behind in resources, especially in the Big Ten and especially since the NIL era began, has taken the steps to rectify the problem, generating corporate partnerships and increasing revenue.
The result has been coaches throughout the department having larger budgets to compete in an increasingly challenging landscape, in an increasingly challenging conference.
Still, it’s not enough yet.
“I would not say they have what they need to compete for a Big Ten championship,” Zinn said in a meeting with a group of local reporters. “I would say they have what they need to compete much more effectively and at a higher level than what we’ve seen in the past. For us to get to a resource level where we’re talking about championships – we can probably pull out in the future a sport here or there, depending on the trajectory we see and what type of investment can exist there. But as a whole, and as a department, we made, again, a good sizable move forward. We’ve got another big step to take.”
That last piece is key.
Because programs around the Big Ten are also raising their revenues and generating more NIL support.
Rutgers is chasing a target that’s constantly moving.
That’s especially true for football, where coach Greg Schiano ever since he’s returned has been forced to build rosters with nowhere near the type of financial ability that his Big Ten peers have.
That’s started to change over the past year – but the program still is a long way from where many, or even most, of its opponents stand.
“We are not in the top tier of support within the Big Ten,” Zinn said. “But that’s okay, right? We didn’t seek to be. And instead, we kind of look at it in thirds. You’ve got the top third of the league, with that top six, and you’ve got that middle tier, and then you’ve got that bottom third. We sat really at the basement of that bottom third. We’ve been able to move ourselves from an investment perspective quite a bit north of that. But now we’re going to seek to make another step forward in the future.”
Zinn said this football season, she’s looking for improvement from last season’s 5-7 campaign.
But that isn’t necessarily tied to a specific record, Zinn said.
“You’re not going to see me get in the habit of speaking publicly about specific expectations when you get into wins and losses,” Zinn said. “Greg and I are on the exact same page with this. I want what he wants and he wants what I want, and that is in its simplest form is to improve what we saw from last year.”
Zinn also said that renovations and upgrades to SHI Stadium could begin within the next year, with the plan to unveil the finished product in time for the 2029 season.
She would not specify what those changes would be since there are still layers of institutional approval that need to be confirmed before the work begins.
Upgrades to Jersey Mike’s Arena remain a possibility, but those would be much more costly, Zinn said. The department is still exploring how to maximize the return on any investment made.
As far as an indoor practice facility goes, right now that’s not in the works.
The practice bubble will remain the indoor option, at least for now.
“But what’s great about it is you don’t have deficiencies there to train and develop,” Zinn said. “You’re not talking about a field that is less than regulation. It may not be real pretty, but it’s adequate to fully develop talent here, and to do so in a way where that infrastructure is not standing in the way of us being really competitive.”