Syracuse Football: Transfer If We Let You

I've lost count of how many players have left the Syracuse Football team prematurely since Doug Marrone arrived here. What I do remember is that in almost every instance it's seemed that once the process started, it was over in a matter of days, if not hours. Profiles scrubbed from the official roster, their names never uttered again in a Doug Marrone presser and the players quickly forgotten from the depth chart.

Remember Mike Jones (who)? The versatile speedster was going to be an Antwon Bailey-in-training for the Orange this year, shuffling between WR and RB to fill in the gaps where needed. At least that was the plan. Jones surprisingly left the team right before spring practice began. He got the usual website roster scrub and Marrone never spoke of him again. We all just assumed the process moved as smoothly as the rest.

As far as I can tell, Marrone is like a shark, constantly moving forward. If you don't want to latch onto him like a suckerfish and feed off his droppings, then he has no use for you and just keeps swimming. The perfect coaching machine.

So it's a bit of shock to find that the process by which Jones left us was extremely complicated after all. And the one making things complicated is...Doug Marrone??? (H/T to Brett LoGiurdato at The Daily Orange for catching this):

A lot of places make it tough to transfer. Typical is Mike Jones of McDevitt who had to fight Syracuse and head coach Doug Marrone for his release last spring. He eventually was freed only after an appeal before a special council with the stipulation that he not attend any Big East member or any school the Orange played in non-conference games. He ended up at Millersville.

I don't know what's more surprising, that we have special councils to deal with football transfers or that we're not playing Millersville (Go Marauders!). Jones had a nice year at Millersville by the way, in case you were wondering.

Brett is quick to point out that neither Marrone nor Jones gave any indication that this process was so complicated in interviews. And Jones could have easily blown it up considering he was interviewed for an article about the players who have left the team.

I suppose it will forever be a case of He Said/He Transferred. The shock isn't so much that Syracuse has stipulations and councils, you hear about those all the time (and assume that they are in place to begin with). Just surprising to hear that it might not be the cut-and-dry process it's made out to sound like.