Syracuse Football Head Coach Questions That Are Apropos of Nothing (& Everything)

Does Syracuse need to worry about hiring a guy who will leave in 3-4 years for a better job?

No.

Seriously, no.

In fact, I think we should welcome this. Because if you think about it, in order for that scenario to happen, something else has to happen first...

He has to be successful at Syracuse.

So if you're telling me that the guy we're going to hire will turn Syracuse around and make us a consistently-winning program and then leave after four years to take a Big 12/Big Ten job he really wants...I say why the hell not?

There are no Jim Boeheims out there. There are no Roy Simmons. Hell, Doug Marrone was that guy and he couldn't even make it five years before the NFL (THE NFL!) came calling.

For the time being, Syracuse is a stop-gap job. It's a place you coach in order to prove that you have what it takes to coach at a destination college spot or in the NFL. I don't have any problem leaning into that.

Should Syracuse make sure it does a good job to consider a minority hire?

This is such a loaded question I was afraid to bring it up (and clearly, so is everyone else). If you look around the landscape of college coaches, it's predominantly white. And if you look at the guys being considered for the next round of head coaching vacancies, they are predominantly white. Even when you just focus in on coordinators looking to move up.

Certainly, Syracuse should be cognizant of all the factors at play here and make sure it reaches out to qualified candidates of all backgrounds. That said, the Scott Shafer Era reminded us that at the end of the day we just want the guy who will win more games than he will lose. We don't care what he looks like. We don't care where we comes from. We don't care whether he prefers Wegmans or Food Lion (well...). We only care if he wins football games or not.

So hopefully SU does its due diligence and can back up it's hire regardless.

Should Syracuse try to hire a guy with head coaching experience?
Should Syracuse try to hire an offensive-minded head coach?

To me, the answer to both of these questions is...maybe.

The more important question is, who are you going to hire to coach the areas you are deficient in? Scott Shafer's downfall can probably be traced back to when he handed George McDonald the keys to the offense.

So if you're going to hire an offensive coordinator as head coach, I need to know who his defensive coordinator is going to be. And vice versa.

If you're hiring a guy who has experience as a head coach, I want to know who he's bringing with him or has his eye on. The more information up front, the easier it is to see if the coach is setting himself up for success of failure.

Is there a Syracuse coaching candidate out there who will appease everyone?

No.

I felt like Scott Frost was probably the closest thing. He covered a lot of different bases (big-time program, recruiter, offensive whiz, OREGON, etc.). Otherwise, you're looking at a lot of guys who have the same level of upside and downside.

I think more than anything Syracuse fans are realizing now just how much of a crapshoot this all is. We very well may end up with another Greg Robinson. Or we may end up with the next Coach Mac. There's almost no way to know for sure.

That doesn't necessarily mean we should have stuck with Shafer, it just means that you won't really know what you've got until you've got it.