Take a look at the Wordle Cloud from Doug Marrone's post-game press conference this weekend. You won't find tremendous. I'm pretty sure you won't find it in his Monday presser either.
Last week there was one. Before that? Nothing in the previous two weeks.
What happened? Doug Marrone used to spit the word tremendous like it was "the." You were surprised when he said a sentence and didn't utter the T-word.
It's forced me to do a lot of soul-searching about the nature of tremendous, and of self. After thinking long and hard about what it all means, I've come to one, singular conclusion.
This is good.
I think that Doug Marrone's usage of tremendous was an overcompensation. At the time, Syracuse wasn't very good. So Marrone needed to prop us up. He did so by constantly talking up the tremendous aspects of our team, players and game. If everything is tremendous, then everything must be great. How can anything be tremendous and not spectacular. Of course, that's why Doug graduated from Oxford with a Master's in Quantum Psychology and you didn't.*
*confirming
Now? Syracuse is on the up and up. The program is doing well. There's no need to sugarcoat, simply to let the action speak for itself.
If you do need to add descriptive to SU football, there's no need to make it big or verbose or larger-than-life.
You can simple say that everything is "nice." Exactly like Doug is doing. Genius.
Syracuse will always be tremendous in our eyes, but it's okay to realize that we don't need to say it all the time anymore. Nice job, Doug.
| Syracuse vs. Maine Football: Marrone's Monday Press Conference |