OrangeMan or (The Unexpected Sadness of Coaching Searches)

The past few nights, some time around 4 am, I have stumbled to this desktop, or gotten on my tablet, and opened twitter.  Instead of scrolling through to see what the random celebrities, wrestling personas, and sportswriters I follow have to say, I immediately search the following phrase- "Syracuse Coach".  I do this because, after a 4-8 season, my alma mater Syracuse University fired their football coach Scott Shafer.  It was time for him to go.  The football team, while putting in some great efforts in losses to much better teams like Clemson and LSU, once again failed to qualify for bowl eligibility.  There were other problems as well.  Shafer let QB Eric Dungey play when he may have had a concussion, and at best was beat up pretty bad.  Shafer started lashing out at the media, which you can really only get away with when you have the clout of winning behind you, like Nick Saban.  Shafer, having gone 3-9 and 4-8 the past two years, had none of that.  So, new AD Mark Coyle decided to go in a different direction.  I have no problem with that.  Shafer wasn't winning, and wasn't his guy.  We move on.

So what now? What comes next?  That is where the problem starts.

Since I arrived on Syracuse's campus as a bearded freshman in the late summer of 2004, there have been two constants about Orange sports- The basketball team is pretty damn good, and the football team is pretty damn bad.  I got to suffer through the Greg Robinson era.  I felt the pain when Doug Marrone, who looked like he had turned Cuse back into a perennial bowl contender, left to coach the Buffalo Bills, leaving Shafer behind to coach.  I have seen attendance drop, and every ACC football team other than Wake Forest use us as a doormat.  Long story short, the Syracuse football head coaching position isn't what it used to be.  The previous decade has made placed us firmly in the bottom third of Power 5 conference coaching position.  How can we attract a good candidate?

It doesn't help, of course, that 15 schools needed a new head coach, whether by firing or retiring.  So, the powers that be decided to take a proactive approach and fly to meet candidates even before Syracuse's last game of the season.  The man to get, according to everyone with an opinion, was Oregon offensive coordinator Scott Frost.  He is one of the masterminds behind the high-octane offense that put Nike U on the map, and has learned from two of the better college coaches in Chip Kelly and Mark Helfrich.  How amazing would that offense be in the weather-controlled environment of the Carrier Dome?  He was an obvious choice.  So Coyle went.  He met.  He offered $1.2 million a year, roughly what Shafer was paid.  And then Frost took the opening at 0-12 UCF.

0-12.

Winless.

He chose them over Jim Brown's alma mater. Over Donovan McNabb's alma mater.  Over the school that made Chandler Jones, Art Monk, Marvin Harrison, Larry Csonka, Ernie Davis, Floyd Little, and Dwight Freeney, among many others.

That is how far Syracuse has sunk.  We can't even be a stepping stone for a super-ambitious young coach.  I say stepping stone because there is no chance Frost stays at UCF for long.  He is simply biding his time until his alma mater, Nebraska, decides to fire their head coach.  That, by the way, may not be long since this is the school that fired Bo Pelini, and all he did was win at least 9 games a year every year.

So what now?  What comes next?  The problem continues.

Now that we know we lost out on Coyle's main guy, alumni are starting to get nervous.  What if we can't get any good candidate?  What if we end up with some retread old coach like Greg Schiano?  Sure, he was good at Rutgers after a while, but his epic failure in the NFL must have hurt his appeal a bit.

What if the next best option takes a different job?  Apparently Ohio State co-defensive coordinator Chris Ash may be the next man up.  There is also Bowling Green head coach Dino Babers, who would bring that same spread offense to the Dome, but would bring some head coaching experience as well.  Babers was rumored to have locked up the UCF job, but after denying he took it (he wanted to concentrate on his team playing in the MAC championship game this Friday) had it taken away.  Either one of those might be attractive names to Syracuse.  They may also be attractive names to Rutgers. Or UVA. Or Minnesota.

Syracuse fans are hurt right now.  We are the jilted lover.  The guy we thought we loved, the rough, hard-nosed type that the players all loved, turned out to not be that great of a coach.  Then, the hot new guy we fell in love with at first sight (His name is Frost, for Christ's sake.  How perfect would that be at Cuse?) spurned us for some Florida bimbo he will leave in a little bit anyway for a more familiar Midwestern love.  We are afraid that we won't find the right coach for us.  We are even more afraid that there just isn't a coach for us at all.  We might be doomed to wander the landscape of college football alone, without someone to nurture the program back to prominence.  If Ash or Babers isn't the pick, take other jobs, and we have to dive even deeper into the potential head coaches pool, we may be inconsolable.  Meanwhile, at prime recruiting time, those young men are seeing us get rejected and thinking, "Why should I go there?  No one likes them anyway."

Syracuse football will have a head coach next season.  It may be the 7th choice.  It may be the 2nd choice.  We know it won't be the 1st.  As great as Syracuse sports have been so far this year (men'ss and women's basketball both ranked, National Champions in field hockey and men's cross country), this massive cloud hanging over the football program just blocks all that beautiful sun.  Its a cloud that will not go away until we have a new coach the players, administration, alumni and fans can be excited about and proud of.

So what now?  What comes next?  The problem has to end eventually.

Until then, we'll be crying in the corner listening to Adele.