sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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SU News
Ron Johnson Jr, Coach Dwayne Savage, Dymelle Parker and Brad Hawkins
Camden Developing Big-Time Recruits and Building a Football Powerhouse, Now Eyes Title (nj.com; Evans)
For Camden High School coach Dwayne Savage, days like Friday are why he coaches.
When wide receiver Brad Hawkins made his commitment to Michigan official, he was the third player in eight days to commit an FBS program. Defensive end Ron Johnson Jr.made his own commitment to Michigan the previous Friday and linebacker Dymelle Parker followed it up a few days later by deciding on Syracuse.
It was a big week for a Group 2 inner-city school that has justifiably been known more for its basketball through the years.
“We’ve never had this much attention before (on the football program), but we’re doing a great thing for Camden,” said Parker. “We’re going to make it to the top.”
Savage is entering his fourth year as Camden’s head coach. The Panthers were 1-9 the year before he arrived and 14-38 the previous five years overall.
In 2012 – when this group of rising seniors were freshman – Camden went 5-5. And in 2013, the Panthers put themselves on the map.
Camden started the season with a 38-29 upset over perennial power Delsea and finished 10-1, losing to Haddonfield in the South Jersey Group 2 semifinal.
Officially on the radar, Camden won its first eight games last year and earned the No. 1 seed again. This time, the Panthers suffered a stunning loss to Collingswood in the first round of the playoffs and ended up 9-1.
A 19-2 record over the last two years shows how far the program has come. So does three commitments to big-time programs in just over a week with possibly a fourth – defensive lineman Jamal Holloway – on the way in August and other standouts like junior offensive lineman Cesar Ruiz receiving big-time looks.
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How Many Games Will Syracuse Win This Year? (sujuiceonline.com; Cheng)
Coming off a 3-9 season, Syracuse head coach Scott Shafer and company need to make sure they don’t stall momentum from the last half decade with a second consecutive losing season. The goal this year will be for the Orange to finish the season 6-6 and make a bowl game. But how likely is that?
To figure out the realistic range of wins, I separated the 2015 schedule into five separate categories: (1) Will win; (2) Should win; (3) Coin clip; (4) Should lose; and (5) Will lose. Here’s what I came up with:
- 1st Tier (Will Win): Rhode Island.
- 2nd Tier (Should Win): Central Michigan. USF.
- 3rd Tier (Coin Flip): Boston College. Pittsburgh. Virginia. Wake Forest.
- 4th Tier (Should Lose): Loiusville. NC State.
- 5th Tier (Will Lose): LSU. Florida State. Clemson.
» Related: Previewing SU’s non-conference game against USF
You could also make an argument that Wake Forest belongs in the second tier, and NC State belongs in the third tier, but I think given that SU is coming off a 3-9 season, both teams are in the right category.
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Would Syracuse Want to Be in a Non-Gerrymandered "Northeast" Conference? (TNIAAM; Cassillo)
Most college conferences today make little sense in terms of geography. Footprints stretch from Miami to Boston, or Waco to Morgantown, or Atlanta to Idaho without a second thought. While Syracuse reaps the financial benefits of that, it's obviously one of the less-than-great parts of what college football's become.
SB Nation's Auburn blog, College and Magnolia (obligatory: PAT DYE), saw these league setups as pretty similar to gerrymandering -- not a stretch when you consider the origin of the long-standing political practice to get the most of out voting districts (for a respective party) by redrawing wacky district lines. If you want an actual definition,Vox.com gives you a lot more to chew on.
Gerrymandering could be on the way out of politics, however (or at leastis in Arizona), so blogger @WarRoomEagle wondered what would happen if the same was true of college football. The results? We end up with 16 conferences of eight teams apiece, all with varying degrees of difficulty, but all with geography at the forefront. You can check out the original post to see how things shape out for every team, but we'll hone in on the one you (and I) care about most: Syracuse.
SU ends up in the "Northeast" conference, an eight-team group consisting of:
Army, Boston College, Buffalo, Connecticut, Rutgers, Temple and UMass (and of course, us).
"Thrilling."
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Other
At a Crucial Moment, SUJ's PrioritY" Revive Research (PS; Eisenstadt)
Syracuse University is not known for its research.
When Patrick Mather was being recruited to come to SU from Case Western Reserve, a big research school in Ohio, his first thought was, "Syracuse. What do they do?"
Compared with Case Western and other universities where research is the bread and butter, SU's research funding was "minuscule," Mather said. Going there was a risk, he said.
But Mather took the job as the director of the Syracuse Biomaterials Institute at SU.
That was 2007, and the gamble has paid off. Since then, research dollars coming into the institute have increased by 20 percent every year, Mather said. The products under development are straight out of sci-fi: fake tissue that could be used for stents that dissolves in the body; metal that can heal itself when scratched or cracked; plastic sheaths to hold broken bones together under the skin that dissolves as the bone heals.
The institute is a bright spot at a university that turned to community engagement and development under former Chancellor Nancy Cantor. By 2011, the research dollars and credibility dwindled enough that the university left the prestigious American Academy of Universities before it was kicked out.
That year, SU was number 186 out of 200 in a national ranking of colleges for the total amount spent on research. It was just behind the Lafayette campus of the University of Louisiana and the University of Akron.
At the time, professors spoke out, criticizing Cantor for diminishing the university's reputation by diverting money away from classrooms and research, and lowering admissions standards. David Bennett, a history professor, told The Chronicle of Higher Education that SU was on a "road to nowhere."
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