For Pancakes, Doug Marrone Will Do Anything

We know Dick MacPherson as Coach Mac, the lovable sage of Syracuse football who wanders in an out of our lives, always giving us something golden. 

Whether it's referring to Greg Robinson as "the guy from... uh...USC...wherever he, uh...Denver Broncos, Kansas City Chiefs..." , scolding the media or calling out Methodists, Coach Mac is always making us feel warm and fuzzy.

That wasn't always the case. Before he became our elder statesman, Coach Mac earn his orange stripes as a master manipulator and tough-ass football coach.  Abram Brown of the Daily Orange has a story on Coach Mac and how his presence continues to influence the Syracuse program and within it are some tales of the mighty, manipulating fist he once wielded.

Rob Moore talks about the time he read a quote from Coach Mac in the paper, questioning his ability to go over the middle.  The quote had been planted in order to do exactly what it accomplished...motivate Moore.

"What he was saying was, would I go across the middle and make the tough catches, or would I just be a guy who stayed on the outside and played it safe?" Moore said. "Everything Coach Mac said had a reason. He didn’t just say things just to say them. Everything had a rhyme and a reason."

And then of course there's the way he got some kid from Brooklyn to become a member of his new community:

He once told a hulking SU lineman named Doug Marrone that a local church wanted to feed him breakfast. "All-you-can-eat pancakes," MacPherson told him.

Marrone turned up at the church, waiting for his breakfast. For his pancakes, Marrone had to give a talk to the collected mass at the breakfast.

"I kind of got tricked a little bit," Marrone said. "He said it was all-you-can-eat pancakes, so that got me to do it. But I’ll never forget how scared I was, going up and speaking in front of this church group."

MY fear is that one day Ohio State University will try the same thing.  Invite Doug over for a stack of flapjacks, make sure he gets a waft of that pancake-y goodness and then force him to become head coach if he wants them.

Mac also declared Syracuse champions of the Sugar Bowl, and so we will also follow suit on that.  In other news, Pat Dye is still a p***y.

Check out the whole article, great stuff on Coach Mac.  Then again, what other kind of stuff is there?