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The mercurial Mark Coyle hasn't said much other than a carefully-worded statement since firing Syracuse Orange football coach Scott Shafer. A radio interview with Matt Park was played in the Carrier Dome prior to the team's final game of the season on Saturday and the new-ish athletic director expanded on the situation and what he was working on.
On his decision-making process:
"You want to be efficient, but you want to make a good, long-term decision. Obviously the recruiting calendar is very active right now. The coaches can be recruiting until Dec. 13 and then it goes dead for a month and then they get back on the road and so I want to make sure we've reached out to all of our recruits and keep in contact with them. But again you want to be efficient, you want to make the best long-term decision for our students and the institution."
Why he decided to make the change:
"I wanted to take a deep breath and evaluate the program, which we did, and as I said in the statement I just feel a change in leadership was best for our program going forward."
How tough it was to let go of Coach Shafer:
"Well you know first off I appreciate you saying it was a tough decision, because these impact people and obviously you've got the people being your students on that team who worked so hard this year to compete at a high level and then you talk about Coach Shafer, his family, our assistant coaches, their families, and that's what makes it really hard Matt because you're making decisions that impact a lot of people."
On the effect for recruits and SU's community:
"I think there's a lot of uncertainty for everybody, obviously you want to make sure recruits pick your school because of the institution, and the relationship they have with the head coach. Now obviously we've got a new head coach that will come in here so you need to make sure you communicate with those recruits because Syracuse hasn't changed, it's still a great institution, it's still an institution with a great academic tradition, it's still an institution that has a proud football tradition and now we just got to find the right piece of the puzzle to lead that program and develop that relationship with those recruits."