When the answers to life's questions become to impossible to understand, you can do one of two things.
1. Join Scientology.
2. Trust that Donnie Webb will find out.
Thankfully for all of us, Donnie has done what no one else had the wherewithal or courage to do. He answered the single most important question of Big East Media Day. How many lobsters did Doug Marrone, Arthur Jones and Mike Own eat?
I had dinner at the clam bake with Marrone. He ate one lobster. I'm not sure where he found time to eat that one because he was talking so much. Syracuse players Arthur Jones and Mike Owen said they weren't about to approach the Ryan Durand unofficial team record of seven lobsters. They ate at a different table, so I was unable to inspect the crustacean carnage.
Disappointing, to say the least. You know, you believe in something so much sometimes...it's just hard when you hear the truth and it doesn't live up to all your hopes and dreams. This guy knows:
But, we must move on. And so we shall.
One point of good news that Donnie brings back with him is that those terrible billboards all around town promoting SU football with a photo of Doug Marrone looking like he's melting has been replaced!
Those billboards around Syracuse that contained the less than flattering image of head coach Doug Marrone have been replaced. The new ones contain a nicer, sharper image of Marrone with arms folded.
Feel free to pull over onto the side of 81 and stare lovingly at Doug as much as you want.
Donnie also mentions in his post-mortem that one Big East head coach told him he thinks the Greg Paulus Experiment will be a "spectacular failure." Go ahead and start guessing who. I'd say it's between Greg Schiano, Greg Schiano and...Greg Schiano.
On a lighter note, Donnie spoke with SU executive senior associate athletics director Scott Sidwell (whom I met out here in LA and is a very cool guy, FYI, not that you asked) who had some good news regarding ticket sales so far:
Season ticket sales for the $100 packages are running 20 percent ahead of last year, Sidwell said. Total season tickets sales are around 20,000.
"We're approximately about 2,000 new season tickets ahead of where we were last year," Sidwell said. "We're a little over 20,000 and that's with a month to go. We feel pretty good about that. We saw a lot of business last week. We sold approximately 100 season tickets in the last week.
As The Glaude pointed out on Twitter, "Approximately and about? Impressive." '
Scott says he expects the Dome to be full for the September 5th showdown with Minnesota. Let's hope so. And let's hope they all have a reason to stick around in the 2nd half.