It became official on Monday, but it was set in stone long before today.
Rutgers's baseball team -- 26-30 on the season, 13-17 in Big Ten play -- was not selected for the NCAA tournament, thereby making the Scarlet Knights the only Power 4 program not to reach the postseason in any of the six major sports we track here at FootballScoop: football, volleyball, men's and women's basketball, baseball, and softball.
Here was the 2025-26 report card in Piscataway:
-- Football: 5-7 overall, 2-7 in Big Ten play
-- Volleyball: 12-20, 3-17 Big Ten
-- Men's basketball: 14-20, 6-14 Big Ten
-- Women's basketball: 9-20, 1-17 Big Ten
-- Baseball: 26-30, 13-17 Big Ten
-- Softball: 27-27, 6-18 Big Ten
That's a collective 31-90 record in Big Ten play, good for a .344 winning percentage.
Rutgers leapt from the American Athletic Conference to the Big Ten not because of competitive reasons, of course, but financial ones. The Big Ten acquired the Knights in 2012 (officially joining in 2014) due to the school's proximity to the New York City cable TV market. Rutgers accepted because they had money problems. Roughly a decade and a half later, streaming's importance has overtaken cable -- BTN's distribution peaked at 75 million, with the last estimate placing the network in nearly 49 million homes. And despite joining the richest conference in college athletics, Rutgers's money problems have only gotten worse in the Big Ten.
The most recent budget showed a $47.2 million shortfall, bringing the athletics department's deficit to a record $78 million.
“You could make the argument that we do not have an expense problem,” newly-hired AD Keli Zinn told NJ.com in January. ”But we do in fact have a revenue problem and a pretty significant one."
Even still, it feels incredibly unlikely that Rutgers and the Big Ten would ever walk away from each other, even if both sides might benefit on the field. And the court. And the diamond.
In fairness to Rutgers, while football and basketball are big sports for any athletics department, just because we place an emphasis on volleyball and the diamond sports doesn't mean they necessarily do. A school based in New Jersey could care more about soccer, lacrosse, or field/ice hockey than baseball, softball or volleyball. So, how did they do in those sports?
Well, Rutgers does not offer ice hockey, so that's out. As for everything else:
-- Men's soccer: 8-6-3 overall, 3-5-2 Big Ten
-- Men's lacrosse: 8-7, 1-4
-- Women's field hockey: 9-9, 4-4
-- Women's soccer: 4-7-5, 2-7-2
-- Women's lacrosse: 11-9, 4-4
Women's lacrosse was bounced in the first round of the Big Ten tournament but did qualify for the NCAA Tournament as an at-large, knocking off Princeton 12-11 before falling to Maryland in the second round. While Rutgers was the only Power 4 school to go 0-for-6 in the sports we track, the Scarlet Knights did not go 0-for-the-entire-athletics-department. But if your argument is "Yeah, but what about women's lacrosse?," you've already lost.