Chris Ash gets Twitter vote of confidence from Rutgers AD

After a writer put him on a hot seat list, Rutgers coach Chris Ash got a vote of confidence from his athletic director.

As the 2018 college football season approaches, award watch lists and all kinds of preseason speculation has started to surface. That includes talk of what coaches are on the hot seat, and Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports put Chris Ash high on his list of coaches with their jobs potentially on the line this year.

Ash is entering his third season as head coach at Rutgers, with a 6-18 record as he has tried to build the program after the end of Kyle Flood’s tenure was marred by off-field issues. Going from two wins in Ash’s first year to four wins in his second season, and from zero to three Big Ten wins, qualifies as a couple small steps forward. The next step is bowl eligibility, even in the far tougher East Division of the Big Ten.

Dodd gave Ash a 4 on his 1-5 hot seat scale, signifying “start improving now.” Expectations for Rutgers football can’t be high, as everything in the program’s history outside of Greg Schiano’s tenure shows, so Ash probably has some time before legitimate hot seat talk should start.

On that note, Rutgers athletic director Pat Hobbs took issue with Ash’s place on Dodd’s list.

Ash’s roots are on the defensive side of the ball, most recently as Ohio State’s defensive coordinator in 2014 and 2015. The Scarlet Knights still have a long way to go defensively, but they improved year-over-year from 2016 to 2017 in scoring (just over nine points fewer per game), rush (just under 83 less yards per game) and total defense (around 52 less yards per game).

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An aggressive vote of confidence, via social media or another public forum, can be the death knell for a coach. But in this case Hobbs seemed to acknowledge the task Ash still has ahead of him, so a firing is not necessarily imminent if Rutgers goes 4-8 again this year.