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Message: [QUOTE="IthaCuse, post: 5562097, member: 10689"] I’m a lifelong Syracuse sports fanatic, going back to when I went to my first Syracuse basketball game as a 9 year old in 2001. I was a Syracuse football season ticket holder for nearly the entire Babers era. College sports, and especially college football, were always a huge passion for me. I far preferred them to the NFL and especially NBA because of the connections we built with the players. That connection is now gone. Even as it was unfolding, it was striking how much more I enjoyed the 2018 season than the 2024 season, despite that both ended in a 10-3 record. The 2018 season was the culmination of the building of a program where I saw several young men grow up before my eyes. I watched Eric Dungey, Dontae Strickland, Chris Slayton, Jamal Custis, etc come in as freshmen and struggle through three straight 4-8 seasons before finally going out as winners. I watched guys like Steve Ishmael, Erv Phillips, Zaire Franklin and Paris Bennett help bring the program to that point. 2024 was the total opposite. You had a small core of program guys left (Wax, LeQuint, Barron), but the biggest contributors on each side were hired guns. There was no process of watching young men grow up, and I felt no emotional connection to most of the players as individuals. I find myself deeply frustrated at the start of both football and basketball season, resigned to the fact that I have to learn an entirely new team with very few familiar faces. There's no pro sports league which so thoroughly dismisses the human side of sports. Even NFL teams have four year contracts for rookies! When I look at my Buffalo Bills compared to Syracuse football, the core has remained largely the same. Which makes if much easier to care! Now we’re mired in a season where the bottom has fallen out, and the number of program guys has shrunk even further. Who could you even consider that at this point? Villari for sure, I would say Jobity, but I can’t think of anyone else. Next year we will have an entirely new group of guys vs the group out there today, and I will have another 16 new starters to try to remember. I just wish there was something that could be done to reverse this horrendous product decision, one which has destroyed the single greatest American sports tradition. I’m actually at the point now where I care much more about the Bills than Syracuse football, and care very little about basketball now as a whole. I would rather go back to 4-8 seasons with teams full of guys I knew and loved than continue whatever this travesty has become. [/QUOTE]

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