The pause lasted a second. Maybe two. Greg Schiano was thanking everyone in the Rutgers universe at his introductory press conference when the time had come to address the elephant in the room. He looked to his left at the athletic director who, for much of this bizarre process, felt more like an adversary than an ally to making this reunion happen.

“Pat Hobbs,” he said.

Then came that pause. Was it really just a second? Or was it an hour? It was just enough time to wonder what the newly minted football coach was going to say now with this entire fan base -- the entire Big Ten, really -- watching this unfold.

Then he smiled.

“Watch out for us together,” Schiano said as he pointed his left index finger at the AD. “We are going to make this thing special and I can’t wait to do it with you. So shoulder to shoulder, as (Board of Governors member Greg) Brown said, shoulder-to-shoulder, here we go. I can’t wait to do it.”

You could almost feel the auditorium at the team’s football headquarters exhale. Schiano hasn’t won a game yet in his return, but on day one, someone should submit an application for the Nobel Peace Prize. He didn’t just win the press conference on day after his eight-year, $32-million deal was approved. He publicly mended a fence with the second most important person in the Rutgers athletic department.

Will it last?

This, of course, is anyone’s guess. Both men did their best to ignore the flawed search that resulted in the right decision on Day 1 of their new partnership. They talked about working toward a common goal in Piscataway, about rebuilding this program together. Hobbs even talked about getting dinner each year on Nov. 30, a date that -- four years ago -- was also his Rutgers work anniversary.

It all seemed very normal if you didn’t know what happened behind the scenes. That, of course, is the problem. Everybody knows what happened. Hobbs wanted to hire someone else from the start. Negotiations blew up in spectacular fashion. It took a full-stop fan revolt and intervention from the governor himself to apply a defibrillator to this thing.

Again: The right thing happened. The right coach was hired. Nobody is going to forget the long, strange two months that unfolded to get to this point, but nobody seemed to care, either, as Schiano was giving a run-through-the-wall introductory speech that was so intense even I found my fist balled tightly around my pencil as he spoke.

Now the cameras go away, and so do the hundreds of fans who said yes to an invitation-only meet and greet that one attendee described Schiano’s arrival “like Jesus Christ and Bruce Springsteen” had walked into the room. Now they’ll get to work.

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The Hobbs-Schiano marriage doesn’t have to fail. But Hobbs not only has to develop trust with his new coach, he needs to repair fractured relationships with several major boosters who lost faith in him over a two-month-span that saw him make one mistake after another. The Rutgers faculty council followed in the footsteps of several lawmakers and demanded that he be fired.

“His wounds are all self-inflicted,” is the harsh assessment from one booster. “He’s lost the fan base, the donor base, the New Jersey high school coaches, maybe the governor. He’s destroyed all the good will from all the good things he’s done. Can he regain that? I don’t see how.”

His first step: Get back to fundraising. Schiano’s contract states that the coach and the AD must raise $75 million toward an estimated $150-million football facility before Rutgers commits to building it. (This, by the way, is the most Rutgers thing ever: “Hey, you want a building that quite literally every other program in the Big Ten has? Well, YOU find the money.”)

Schiano is a results-driven guy. If Hobbs can help him get that $75 million before kickoff next season -- and, if you think that’s ambitious, just look around big-time college programs and get back to me -- it’ll send a message that this partnership is more than just lip service.

“We’re in alignment. Everything he believes that we need to accomplish for this program, I believe,” Hobbs said. “I know he’s got a list of people he said that were ready to step up. I have got a list of people who said they were ready to step up. We’re going to compare our lists, and I think the Rutgers faithful is going to be there for us.”

Well, that faithful is certainly going to be there for one of them. Hobbs will have to attach himself to his coach’s coattails now, because there is no doubt who holds all the cards as the dynamic in Piscataway shifted this week.

The TV cameras off. The press conference is over. The behind-the-scenes drama in Piscataway, though, is just getting started.

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Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevePoliti. Find NJ.com on Facebook.