Syracuse should be mediocre- not pathetic

By: Sean Quinn

This is hardly what Dr. Daryl Gross had in mind in his first season as Syracuse’s athletic director. He probably expected the losses to the Virginia’s and Florida State’s of college football, but neither he nor anyone predicted the worst season in SU football history.The Orange, winless in its first five conference games for the first time ever, are on its way to its first one-win season in more tan 55 years.  At 1-7 overall, the Cuse is likely to become the first team in school history to record 10 losses.  SU hosts South Florida in two weeks, then travels to Notre Dame and Louisville.  The latter two games are almost sure losses and the USF game doesn’t provide much hope after the Orange fell at home to a less than mediocre Cincinnati team.

The game against the Bearcats on Saturday proved how bad SU truly is.  Cuse ran for just 52 yards on 40 carries against a defensive line that started three true freshmen.  The passing game, ranked in the bottom 15 in the country, couldn’t even musert 20 points against a Cinci team that had been outscored 124-60 on the road.

The game, though, was probably the best conference showing SU has had all season.  Before blowing a comfortable lead to Pittsburgh last week, the Orange were trounced by Rutgers at home and shut-out for three and a half quarters by a Connecticut team that hasn’t even been in Division I long enough to take off its diaper.  The Huskies back-up quarterback generated more points, 26, than Cuse has done against any respectable opponent this season.

Cuse shouldn’t be a top 25 team this season.  They probably shouldn’t be a top three team in the conference.  And they probably shouldn’t be a bowl team.  But to be winless in this conference, the worst BCS conference in the country and perhaps the most pitiful array of teams grouped together in recent history is unacceptable.  The Big East isn’t just pathetic, it’s as weak as Paris Hilton’s mind.  SU shouldn’t be a national powerhouse by any means, but it should at least be competitive in a conference that has just one ranked team.  

First-year head coach Greg Robinson may have thought he was just one year away from turning this program around.  He is now, though, just one year away from being fired.

His West Coast scheme has been just awful.  Middle school dances see better offensive moves than Robinson’s boys.  Granted, he adopted a run-first and option-operated pool of players from Paul Pasqualoni and he is working with a depleted wide receiving corps that saw just one player with a catch before this season, but they should still be better than last in the conference.  They have a very talented, speedy back in Damien Rhodes, who could be a third-round pick in April’s draft if he had gone to a different school.  Instead he is not even close to averaging 100 yards per game.  Robinson also returns two quarterbacks who shared the workload last season, along with three returning offensive linemen.  With this experience, converting less than 20 percent of third-downs is intolerable, no matter what system you are playing.

And you have to question the style of offense.  Should Syracuse be playing a run-and-gun offense and take advantage of the speed of the turf?  Or at least return to the roots of an option attack that propelled Pasqualoni to be the winningest coach in Big East history.

You can only cut the guy so much slack.  Let’s not forget that this is still Syracuse football, it’s not Rutgers, it’s not Connecticut and it’s not Buffalo.  Right now, though, that’s how the Orange is perceived nationally.  This is a storied program with as many famous players and NFL Hall of Famer’s as any school on the East Coast.

Robinson should get just one more year to prove his worth.  SU has gone 40-40 overall since the departure of Donovan McNabb in 1998, including a 21-25 record in the Big East.  The attendance in the Carrier Dome compared to that year has dropped by 7,000 fans.  Gross has made efforts to spread the Orange pride across the east but the only thing that will help is talent – something SU hasn’t seen much of since McNabb and Dwight Freeney.

Last season’s No. 1 recruit was quarterback Joe Fields.  He was just the 15th best quarterback, ranked by Rivals.com – in the state of Texas.

Robinson needs to have the best recruiting class in the Big East next season or he is out.  He has adopted a West Coast offense that may take more than just two years to pan out but he doesn’t have that much time.  SU faithful deserve to be not only winning every year but to be challenging for the Big East crown in a less than stellar conference.