Ryan Dunleavy

Staff writer

NEW YORK - Rutgers football might not have to make a third appearance in the Pinstripe Bowl to play another game at Yankee Stadium.

Standing behind home plate at the home of the 27-time World Series champions before throwing out a first pitch Tuesday night, Rutgers athletics director Pat Hobbs said he is open to the possibility of moving a football home game to the Bronx.

“We want to look at maybe bringing a game here and announcing that sometime down the road,” Hobbs said. “I would love to. We’ll work on it, and hopefully we can work that out. It would be great.”

READ: Chris Ash and his wife compete over first pitches

In the late 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, Rutgers often scheduled major opponents at Giants Stadium rather than on campus, but the practice ended under former coach Greg Schiano save for a 2010 game against Army at MetLife Stadium.

Rutgers’ Big Ten home schedule is dotted with opponents that make a strong drawing card, including Penn State and Michigan in even years and Ohio State and Michigan State in odd years.

Rutgers has played three games at Yankee Stadium since 2011.

“We were up in the suites earlier,” said Rutgers first-year coach Chris Ash, who threw out a first pitch alongside Hobbs, “and they kind of explained the configuration of the stadium for a football game, and it looked like it would be a really neat setup. It looks like from the suite, anyway, if you were in cold weather in the fall or in December, that would be a pretty good place to watch a game.”

READ: How did Rutgers athletics fare in Year 2 of Big Ten?

Schiano was opposed to the idea of forfeiting home-field advantage by allowing larger visiting fan bases to score more tickets in an outsized venue. Talks of a nonconference series with Notre Dame broke down in 2008 because Rutgers refused to play its home game at Giants Stadium.

But the second Yankee Stadium’s capacity is almost identical to that of High Point Solutions Stadium (52,454).

The number of Rutgers fans willing to make the 75-minute trek from Piscataway conceivably would limit the tickets available to the visitors. Rutgers was able to successfully guard against an invasion of opposing fans on its campus the first time through the Big Ten scheduling cycle.

READ: Davon Jacobs to transfer after Rutgers coaching change

Yankee Stadium hosted a Rutgers-Army game in 2011 — Army was the home team — and was supposed to again last season, but the game was moved to West Point, New York.

Rutgers beat Iowa State in the 2011 Pinstripe Bowl and lost to Notre Dame in the 2013 Pinstripe Bowl. A Rutgers billboard hangs on the facade of the second deck in left field at Yankee Stadium, and the block “R” lines right-field foul territory padding along with all the Big Ten logos.

Proximity to New York City and its top media market made Rutgers attractive to the Big Ten during conference expansion.

Ash, who previously coached at places where college football rules the sports landscape including Ohio State, Arkansas, Wisconsin and Iowa State, isn’t deterred by the idea that New York is considered a pro sports market.

“I think there is an extreme amount of interest out there already about Rutgers football,” Ash said. “It’s like anything else. What do fans want to cheer? They want to cheer a very good product. They want to cheer a baseball team, a football team, a basketball team that they know is going to be competitive every team out they go out. That’s our challenge: to build a football team that everybody is extremely excited about and they want to be a part of.”

Staff Writer Ryan Dunleavy: rdunleavy@gannettnj.com

