Syracuse football fans haven't had much to cheer about recently, aside from a Pinstripe Bowl victory, over a middle of the pack Big 12 team in December 2010. There really has been nothing to cheer about since the days of Dwight Freeney and the master game manager, R.J. Anderson. Many Syracuse fans, myself included, had grown tired of the P and D show of the late '90's and early '00's. Those teams had a lot of talent, but seemed to under-perform on an annual basis. In 1998 Syracuse had enough talent to be a top 10 team yet lost four games, despite winning the Big East.
When Dr. Daryl Gross was hired as the new Athletic Director at Syracuse University he immediately told fans to "get a life," oh wait that wasn't him... Dr. Gross instead was very noncommittal about the future of Coach Paul Pasqualoni. After a few weeks Dr. Gross fired Coach P and made a "splash" and hired the highly sought after Greg Robinson (this is sarcasm). Despite the relatively lukewarm feeling about Robinson, Syracuse fans became excited because the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence and Robinson looked like Kentucky Bluegrass.
This was beginning of the Dark Ages of Syracuse football. We went from a 6-6 bowl team (granted we got smoked in the Champs Bowl by Georgia Tech) to a 1-10 team the very next season. ONE AND TEN!!! Are you kidding me? A blind, tailless monkey could have led that team to more than ONE win! We weren't swimming in talent, but we had enough talent to win three or four games if managed correctly. For some reason a lot of Syracuse fans gave Robinson a pass. "It takes a while to get your own type of players on the team." "It takes a while to teach the players a new system." "It takes a while for the incredibly inexperienced assistant coaches he hired to understand their new jobs."
Greg Robinson followed up his stellar 1-10 first season with seasons of 4 wins, 2 wins and 3 wins. Robinson may very well have been able to recruit higher rated high school players (at least according to the "experts" at Rivals and Scout), but he didn't know how to coach these higher rated players. He didn't know how to develop these guys using discipline and teaching. His laissez-faire methods of running a program rarely held players responsible for their actions on or off the field. To call Robinson's time at Syracuse a disaster is being kind to disasters. His time at Syracuse was like the Titanic sinking or the Hindenburg burning. It should be noted that as a high school coach I had the opportunity to meet and chat with Coach Robinson on multiple occasions and he seemed like a really nice guy.
During these Dark Ages our fired Coach Paul Pasqualoni was instrumental in the development of several All Pro players while coaching for the Dallas Cowboys. Coach P may have had trouble recruiting top level talent and may have run a boring offense, but he did know how to use players and take advantage of their individual talents most of the time.
Dr. Gross and Coach Doug Marrone are now trying to rebuild something that was torn down the moment Paul Pasqualoni was fired and Greg Robinson was hired. Would Syracuse have won only ten games from 2005-08 if Coach P was retained? Would Doug Marrone be stuck trying to fight the perception of Syracuse as a lower tier team in the worst BCS conference? Would fans be getting excited about every three star recruit? I tend to believe Ray Rice who was committed to Syracuse at the time of Coach P's firing would have had a big impact on our program.
I have really liked most of Dr. Gross's decisions. He has helped build the athletic facilities and really helped build some of the programs that were ignored. Softball, field hockey and women's basketball have had a great deal of success under Dr. Gross. However, with one rash decision (the firing of Coach Pasqualoni) he knocked the football program down quite a few notches. Considering football is the cash cow and basically runs athletic programs, I bet that Dr. Gross looks back on his first big move at Syracuse and questions what could have been. Coach Pasqualoni may have needed to go, but there should have been a better replacement plan in place.
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