Syracuse Orange football may need a little #BRAND help

Over on Reddit’s largest (and best) college football community, r/CFB, users were polled about which football program they most associated with the color orange. Rather than just tallying totals straight-up, users were grouped by state and “electoral votes” were doled out accordingly (because that system’s worked out so well in the past...).

One might imagine the Syracuse Orange, being named the ORANGE and all, would do pretty well in such a poll. That assumption would be incorrect, however.

Of all the possible programs, Syracuse finished a distant fourth, behind Clemson (269.3 votes), Texas (77.13) and Tennessee (66.13). SU finished with 35 votes, just a handful ahead of Florida (31.5). Illinois, Oklahoma State, Oregon State, Boise State, UTEP and Miami also received at least a fraction of a vote.

For football, in particular, this does make some sense. As a program, we’ve struggled for an extended amount of time, and the names listed ahead of us all have larger profiles and followings. Clemson winning is a bit of an insult to us, but... also to be expected given their recent national title win.

Rich Barnes-USA TODAY Sports

There are some caveats to the voting, however. A look at the state-by-state breakdown shows where SU thrived and faltered. There’s also the potential for a bit of a troll vote situation in polls like this, and that certainly looks like it could’ve been the case in Connecticut and Massachusetts. We won New York and Alaska in a landslide.

If this were a poll among basketball fans, it’s quite possible SU runs away with that, save the obvious states where they’ll pick up losses: Texas, Tennessee, Florida, a few others.

But while we joke about #BRAND and all, this does underline one of the minor struggles with SU football as is. When Syracuse is on TV, they’re rarely wearing orange. The current uniform set seems to de-emphasize the color far more than necessary. It’s also about the lack of wins for the Orange on the field lately. You could name the team the Purple, and if they wore orange helmets and won a lot of games, more fans would probably associate them with orange.

So yeah, win more games and this dynamic probably changes. Win more games wearing orange, and maybe even more so.

The underlying point here: Winning (as always) fixes everything.