Since taking over as Rutgers Athletics Director three years ago, Pat Hobbs has made it a point to refrain from commenting on the state of any of his programs until after a season.

It took Hobbs about 15 minutes to evaluate the football season -- and the future of Chris Ash -- after the Scarlet Knights culminated their 1-11 campaign with a 14-10 loss to Michigan State on Saturday evening.

Following Ash's post-game press conference, Hobbs sent a text to a select group of reporters that confirmed his embattled third-year coach will be returning.

The statement read:

"I so appreciate the effort of our young men these last few weeks. They never quit and that's a testament to their character and the efforts of our coaches. This has been a difficult and disappointing year for our football program. We must and will do better. We have a great core of young talent and will recruit hard in the offseason. We've made significant investments and will continue to do the things necessary to bring the desired success to the Scarlet Knight faithful. I expect that under Chris' continued leadership we will see significant improvement next season and ask for everyone's continued support.''

NJ Advance Media on Monday first reported that Ash would return for a fourth season barring an unforeseen circumstance unrelated to the Scarlet Knights' season finale against Michigan State.

"Unless something changes in the next five days,'' a top university official told NJ Advance Media, "there's no way Ash isn't coming back.''

Hobbs confirmed it with a vote of confidence for Ash, whose record stands at 7-29 after three seasons at Rutgers.

Ash has four seasons remaining on a five-year deal that was extended after last year's 4-8 campaign. The university was obligated to give Ash two more years on the contract as a result of the NCAA violations committed by the previous coaching regime.

He is guaranteed $9.8 million for the remainder of the term, which ends after the 2022 season.

Ash is set to earn $2.3 million next season. That salary ranks 13th among coaches in the 14-team Big Ten, according to the USA TODAY salaries database.

"We're going to focus on the positive things. That's it,'' Ash said after the Scarlet Knights' loss to Michigan State. "The noise on the outside, I get it. I'm not naive to that. I've been doing this long enough, I get it. Again, our job is to block it out, and our job is to build on the positive things and develop our players. We're going to go recruit, we're going to go develop. We're going to look at everything we need to do to try to improve. There were a lot of positive things here at the end of the season.''

Keith Sargeant may be reached at ksargeant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @KSargeantNJ. Find NJ.com Rutgers Football on Facebook.