A few years ago, when the NCAA decided to have officials include the jersey numbers of the offending parties in their penalty announcements, I remember asking a few Rutgers players if they minded. I know I asked Greg Schiano and if I remember correctly (it was a long time ago), he sort of waffled. He didn’t have a problem with the accountability, especially since announcing a name didn’t change whether a penalty occurred or not. But it’s also his nature to protect college kids and so he wasn’t wickedly excited about it either.

I bring this up because yesterday, I think Greg found himself in a similar competing-interests spot. If he’s in the business of molding men, does he hold an underachieving player publicly accountable? Or is it more important to shield a player from what can be tough public scorn and make apologies for why the player’s not met standards?

It’s no secret Rutgers’ offensive line has been a little slower out the gate than expected. Okay, a lot slower. The returning starting five (and maybe six) didn’t all hold their spots, a former defensive lineman (Desmond Wynn) is suddenly starting and feverishly working to get caught up and ostensible first round pick Anthony Davis came in to camp overweight.

We know this because Greg made a big deal out of it at the start of camp. We know this because he stuck AD with the second team for the start of camp (perhaps sacrificing the forging of chemistry for discipline) and we know this because AD took a lot of heat from fans when Rutgers opened the season with that clunker against Cincinnati. (I don’t care how good Cincinnati is or who Rutgers has looked decent against these last three weeks… that game should NOT have been that out of hand.)

Then, in yesterday’s press conference, and seemingly out of nowhere, Greg sounded a little regretful about all of it. The glaring – unfriendly – spotlight on AD, he said, is “not totally his fault. I think he was villainized a little bit, maybe by me.”

Huh?

“He had an issue this summer, a freak deal. He was playing basketball and someone poked him in the eye and there wasn’t a lot of time where he could go full out in training, because it is dangerous with the pressure in your eye,” Greg said. ”So that was part of why he came in heavy and not in quite the shape he was supposed to be in.”

Really?

So the kid has to be accountable and is therefore publicly called out for not being in shape. And people naturally start thinking he knows he’s out the door to the NFL, he has an ego problem and he isn’t committed to working hard. Only, now we find out that’s maybe not it at all.

Rutgers fans, remember how that one bad day suddenly turned Kenny Britt into an attitude problem? And how that alleged knock wouldn’t die?

I think this is a really hard spot for a coach to be in.

Ed. I’m afraid my point in highlighting all this was lost a little and so I want to elaborate some…  I’ve always admired the ways in which Greg Schiano expects his players to be men. From my first year on the beat, when the then-media relations director was wary of letting me into the open locker room every other beat writer went into, I remember Greg shrugging and saying that if these kids were in the NFL they’d have to be mature enough to have women around. Even as his mentor, Joe Paterno, regularly shields his players from the media, Greg hasn’t ever let a kid – say one who threw four picks to end a win streak or one who slapped a teammate - hide from reporters.

If AD came in out of shape, why should he get special allowances no other player did? But if he was hurt and that played a role in his being out of shape, do people outside the program need to know that too? Like I said, tough call. To call out or not to call out.