He's trying to build it, but they are not coming...

How many teams do you really think are ranked in both sports?

Current top 25(bball) — Final AP poll top 25(football)

michigan
mich st
wisconsin
Florida St

I’m not jealous of any of those schools. How about anyone else?

Bottom line, you can’t compare SU to the bigger schools. Getting a top 25 class isn’t going to happen at least till they get to the ACC. Even then, it is tough. SU isn’t a power in football anymore. The landscape has changed and the money isn’t there compared to the huge state schools. There are so many better places to go, that Syracuse is a tough sell. When you can’t get 30K in the dome how do you sell that to 100k in other places.

Football and basketball are not even comparable. Hoops you need a couple players to be competitive where as football you need tons of studs and a good set of backups. Plus the NE is basketball first. The other day, OTL (I know, gag) had a nice comparison about why the SE is so much better. They do football different down south and Syracuse will always struggle until they can recruit 5 star players in the NE. Right now, most 5 star players are somewhere other than the NE. Marrone getting some Georgia players is a huge sign of things to come.

Finally, who do you want as coach? Sorry, none of the big names are coming. Urban is a good coach, but he would never come to SU because he knows he would do no better than Marrone. That’s just reality. The big coaches go to big schools because it is easy to get the players and they have unlimited budgets. Look at Peterson at Boise. That guy struggles to match the SU recruiting class and they are BCS top 10. When he leaves, there won’t be any big names looking for his job.

Bottom line, Marrone is right because he cares about one thing: Orange. When he has a couple of winning seasons, he is not jumping to the NFL. That is the road to success. A dedicated coach who wants to be Orange and not just biding his time till a real job comes along.

That is all it takes. I mean was Stanford really relevant until Andrew Luck came along? Jim harbaugh went to that program and started building it up, but he needed that one big recruit. Thats the only problem I see with Marrone, he hasn’t gotten that one gem to build a program a foundation with.

We have a beautiful stadium and campus, – as a football stadium the dome is old, and small
a devoted head coach, – so do lots of teams

a dominating basketball program – means nothing for football

and a smart, energetic and passionate fan base. – when we are good. Attendance has been poor in the down years, especially in football when people want the weekends to use the last few nice days of the year for other things than games against Akron.

In addition, Syracuse University is arguably one of the best communication schools in the country, if not THE best. – not many football players care about that during recruiting

Throw in the 30 year old facilities and we have all the pieces circa 1985, but not 2011.

How much attention do you think Rivals pays to their rankings outside the top 25? They don’t spend more than a few minutes deciding between Ranks 30 and 90. In fact, it is probably based solely on total number of stars or some other random spread sheet sorting exercise. comparing rank 57 in 2011 to 51 in 2012 says nothing and that is putting it kindly.

It is also wrong to talk about the impact of recruiting classes for this year’s football team. These guys will have an impact in 2014, not 2012. Just as Last year’s class will have an impact next year.

If I were to really try and put together a big issue with this team it is that Marrone has suffered a ton of injuries and players lost to discipline/off the field stuff. He clearly holds these guys to a high character standard, but we don’t know about the physical standard.

I worry that Marrone works these guys like NFL players rather than like the lightly recruited Div. 1 players that he has been dealing with the last 3 years. I think some guys are responding to that and reaching the next level in terms of potential, but I also think a lot of guys are overwhelmed and he’s simply asking for more than they are physically able to give. The result has been injuries, wearing down at the end of the season, and inconsistency. Marrone may need to pull a Tom Coughlin and develop a better ability to read the players he has, rather than try to force that player into the mold that he has envisioned for them.

All due respect, but my MIL moved in with us about 3months ago (health reasons). This is someone who consistently focuses on the negative aspects of every situation. If I won the lottery, she’d complain about taxes.
Look, whats the fricken’ trend here- is it up or down? If its up, then I can’t understand the angst of the OP.
Also, if I see another SU message board post referencing Rutgers, I’m gonna hurl! Call me old school, but Rutgers has never been a “rival” in my eyes, & that’s not me whistling past the graveyard either. Schiano brought them respectability, he was a great recruiter. But I’ll never understand why so many SU fans continue to ride their jocks, like they’re our traditional rivals or something! Its pathetic, & SU fans need to stop it….it makes US look like insecure douches! End rant.

We’re still having this discussion a year from now I start to get nervous.

I think the quality of recruits is improving. Forget the star stuff. We don’t have the program where we are going to draw the country’s best recruits. Ours need time to develop and over the course of several years the players improve. I think we’ll see a step change in the performance of the freshman and sophs from last year. If he is recruiting the right athlete to develop in the system we’ll be fine. It just takes time. Next year is really the measuring stick for me.

Syracuse.com had an article explaining this point but it’s very valid. Marrone’s program is probably a drastic change for many of these athletes and whats important is that these kids have a red-shirt year to get acclimated to the complex playbooks and academics of a top flight university. Last year we were finally able to start red-shirting linemen and wideouts and hopefully this year we can add some positions to bring along slowly. The quality and overall leadership of red-shirted players is very evident. Either due to injury or suspensions we’ve been throwing NR and 2 star guys into the fire and are expecting them to perform at an unrealistic level. With the ability to give under the radar recruits, i.e. players that are facing position changes or players that need to gain size, an additional year to do so will drastically change our talent level.