sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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Welcome to National Suspenders Day!
No belts today, guys. It’s National Suspenders Day! You can go fancy or casual, colorful patterns or plain neutrals, as long as they’re suspenders.
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes.”
Luke 12:22-23
SU News
Computer Models Predict One More Win for SU in 2015 (TNIAAM; Suxa)
For those that are meteorologists in the Land of Smiles and Puppy Belly Rubs: You may want to reasses your partly gumdrops forecast -- FPI, S&P+, and the Massey Ratings give Syracuse about a 0% chance of going undefeated in its final six games of 2015. A miracle turnaround of epic proportions is basically impossible.
For those that are meteorologists in the Land of Everything Smells Like Urine: Your forecast of infinite days of having skin removed with nail clippers is probably a little aggressive -- FPI, S&P+, and the Massey Ratings give Syracuse about a 21% chance of going winless in its last half-dozen dates of the season. Those probabilities are unnerving, but a Monte Carlo simulation alleviates some worries about crashing through Thanksgiving.
This, however, doesn't mean that football computers are predicting some kind of .500 finish for the Orange. In fact, the three measures that have been cataloged each week from a projected win-loss standpoint are only expecting Syracuse to collar one more victory over the next two months. If anything, the projection outcome for Syracuse at this point in the year highlights just how important the losses to South Florida and Virginia were, the two defeats potentially foreclosing an avenue to a bowl game this winter.
As usual, accept, ignore, or process the following information as your brain sees fit. The usual disclaimers apply.
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Syracuse Beat Temple Back in 2012...And Everything's Been Weird Since (TNIAAM; Cassillo)
An eagle screeched on a Friday morning, pretending to be an owl. It was 2012, and the Orange had just defeated the lowly Temple Owls in Philadelphia -- their seventh victory of the season, and the one that ultimately earned Syracuse a tie for the Big East championship on the way out. The screeching noise was only relevant because Temple plays at the Eagles' stadium, and they don't bother creating a different sound effect for the Owls' lesser bird of prey mascot.
An impressive 38-20 win for Syracuse, was supposed to signal what was to come for all parties involved. The 7-5 Orange were headed to a bowl game and the ACC come the next yearly athletic calendar. Temple, on the other hand, was the first in a long line of mercenaries sent to the Big East/American Athletic Conference to refill the ranks. We'd thought the zombie league was going for quantity over quality, and especially scoffed at the 4-7 Owls' return to a league they'd been voted out of years before.
We were wrong.
Not just "we" here, either. Everyone was.
Less than three years later, the college football world, and the worlds of these two programs are very different places. After the 2012 season, Steve Addazio left for Boston College, and Doug Marrone left for the Buffalo Bills. The two coaches were replaced by Matt Rhule and Scott Shafer, respectively, with very different results.
Over at Temple, Rhule went 2-10 in his first season at the helm, then a better-than-the-win-loss-record 6-6 in 2014. So far in 2015, the Owls are 6-0 and RANKED for the first time since 1979. They have a win over Penn State in there too. Syracuse doesn't have a win over Penn State in decades. They're ranked for the first time in 36 years? It's been over 10 since the Orange last sniffed a poll. Temple was once thrown out of the Big East, only to be re-invited and now be an apparent power in the restructured (and pretty impressive right now) AAC. Syracuse... is likely cruising toward another finish at the bottom of the ACC.
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Orange Watch: If SU Doesn't Make a Bowl Game, Does a Coaching Change Follow? (thejuice; Bierman)
Item: Scott Shafer, his staff, and players rightfully remain resolute in chasing down preseason goals of postseason play despite a three game losing streak, with those three defeats coming in contrasting fashion; playing a top ten ranked team with a walk-on quarterback tough and losing by 10 (LSU), letting one get away and regressing into a three touchdown loss in the road debut to a non Power Five opponent (South Florida), and turning a 10 point fourth quarter lead into an agonizing triple overtime conference loss against a team seeking its first FBS victory of the season (Virginia). Ouch. Now, there’s three games left at home (beginning with longtime rival Pittsburgh (5-1, 3-0) on Saturday in the Dome – 12:30 p.m.ET / ESPNU), three on the road, and three wins needed to make a critical-for-the-program-to-move-forward bowl game.
The most noticeable public displays of Mark Coyle’s still relatively new job of guiding Syracuse athletics that he’s undertaken during his three months plus at Manley Field House, is observing and asking questions, lots of questions. Behind the scenes he’s plotting strategy and business plans with other university offices and his trusted senior management inner circle, while overseeing his own large department staff and respective head coaches, but when’s he out and about it’s continually scaling the learning curve in contact with a variety of constituents at a place he continually refers to as “special” among college athletic programs both in tradition and prominence.
From meeting with fans at special scheduled athletic department events, to touring the concourses of the Dome on game days, Coyle, like any good leader, is not only getting the pulse of the business he runs from both the CEO’s 10,000 foot level, but also the ground floor to better gauge the mindset of the critical customer base, in this case for Orange football, ever evolving in its third year of being amongst the ‘Big Boys’ of the Power Five conferences, minus many of the financial and other resources enjoyed by larger state public schools.
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"Leveling the Playing Field: The Story of the Syacuse 8" Book Signing and Discussion with the Syracuse 8 on Friday, October 23, 2015 (fox14tv.com)
The Syracuse Office of Program Development and The School of Education have scheduled a book signing at Huntington Hall Commons, School of Education, Syracuse University on Friday, October 23, 2015, 3 - 4 p.m. Successful book signings were held previously in July at Busboys and Poets, Washington, DC and September at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, New York. Clarence McGill, a member of the Syracuse 8, accompanied by author David Marc, also appeared on News One Now with Roland Martin in September.
Syracuse 8 is a long-overdue story about members of the 1969-70 Syracuse University football team who boycotted the spring 1970 practice to protest racial inequality on the team. The players petitioned the coaching staff with four demands: access to the same academic tutoring made available to their white teammates; better medical care for all team members; starting assignments based on merit rather than race; and an effort to integrate the coaching staff, which had been all-white since 1898.
About Leveling the Playing Field
Leveling the Playing Field, written by former Syracuse University Magazine writer David Marc, chronicles this contentious moment in Syracuse University’s history, telling the story through the eyes of the players who demanded change for themselves and for those who would follow.
Mistakenly called the Syracuse 8 by the media in 1970, the players actually numbered nine and included Greg Allen ’72, Richard Bulls ’73, John Godbolt ’73, Dana Harrell ’71, G’73, John Lobon ’73, Clarence “Bucky” McGill ’72, A. Alif Muhammad ’71, Duane Walker ’80, and Ron Womack ’71. After graduation, several of these players led by Clarence “Bucky” McGill of Binghamton, NY went on to play minor league football for the Triple Cities Jets of Binghamton, NY in the Empire Football League.
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Other
Rooms with a View: Work Started on New Downtown Syracuse Apartments (PS; Moriarty)
The Horn Cos. has begun transforming the former Syracuse Herald-Journal building into apartments, office space and a restaurant.
Over the past month, workers have been removing asbestos and demolishing the interior of the former newspaper building at the northeast corner of Herald Place and Franklin Street, a block north of the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que restaurant.
The most visible sign that the $5 million project has started is most of the building's many windows have been removed. They will be replaced with new, more energy efficient ones.
The windows will provide views of the downtown Syracuse skyline, as well as a view of Franklin Square to the north of nearby Interstate 690, which runs behind the building. Some of the windows will be really big. Six apartments will have windows that are eight feet high and 15 feet wide.
Chris Hornstein, a partner in the project with his father, Tom, said workers are also working hard to replace the building's roof.
"We're trying to get the building buttoned up before winter," he said.
Plans are to put 27 apartments — mostly two-bedroom units — in the top three floors of the four-story building. The first floor will contain office and retail space and a restaurant.
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