SWC75
Bored Historian
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2011
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First, regarding my avatar change: The image if from my favorite-all-time TV series, “The Fugitive”. The man is Richard Kimble, who is looking forward but isn’t sure exactly what he sees. Is it the one-armed man, and possible salvation or is Lt. Gerard, and possible disaster? I don’t know what we are going to see this fall so this image came to mind.
The Glorious History of the Carrier Dome
Everything changed when the Carrier Dome finally opened in 1980. Athletic Director Jake Crouthamel took one look at the new SU football palace and realized it was the ideal place for wide-open football. Instead of the old Ben Schwartzwalder concept of dominating the line of scrimmage and wearing out the other team with a powerful rushing attack, then passing over the heads of the defenders when they crept up to defend the line of scrimmage, now we were going to use the pass to open up the defense, forcing them to cover everyone and every spot on the field, which is, of course impossible, and then hitting them in the gaps that would open up in the defense when they tried to do it anyway. And he also realized that playing an exciting, wide-open and at the time unique brand of football would allow us to be a national recruiter, not just limited to kids who were aware of the program because they happened to grow up in this area of the country. Instead we’d recruit top talent from sea to shining sea who would come here to play in this offense and do it in this building. So Jake went out and got a coach who wanted to reinvent the game using the pass and off we went into the wild, blue yonder.
Our opponents never knew what hit them that first year. We scored over 50 points five times, waxing one poor opponent 83-7. People scoffed at our numbers, saying we were a gimmick team with a weak schedule but they were all paying attention in the bowl game when we turned a 14-34 deficit into a thrilling 46-45 win with a hail marry on the last play of the game. Our quarterback blew away school and NCAA records, completing 64% of his passes for 4,571 yards and 47 touchdowns. We led the nation in scoring with 47 points a game.
Not only were SU fans thrilled but there were more of them than ever before. People were coming down the Thruway from east and west and clogging 81 from north and south to get to the Dome to see the spectacle. The new stadium held 50,000 fans and that’s how many were there each and every game. The opponent didn’t matter: they came to see Syracuse play. And the coaching staff logged record airline miles going to all the top quarterbacks, receivers and running backs to get them to come to Syracuse. But the linemen, linebackers and defensive backs were listening too, They knew that a high scoring offense was paradise for a defensive player. They could concentrate on making big plays, knowing that if they gave up a few big plays, ti would matter because any mistakes would be over-whelmed by our offense.
The beat went on and in 1984, we broke through with our second national championship, going 12-0 and beating mighty Michigan in the big bowl game, 24-17. They had the athletes to keep up with our big-time playmakers but by now we’d recruited so many players we could stop them, too, and beat them anyway.
We kept rolling up big scores, winning a game 82-28 in 1988, another 95-21 in in 1989 and 84-21 in 1990. When would we hit 100 points? Our quarterbacks kept putting up huge numbers and we got our second Heisman Trophy winner in 1989, (63%, 4,699 and 46TDs) and our third in 1990, (64%, 5188 yards, 41TDs). Our quarterbacks didn’t do well in the pros and people complained they were “system” quarterbacks, who could put up great numbers in the Syracuse system, surrounded by Syracuse talent but when they were given a chance to play on Sunday, they turned out to be mediocre. SU fans didn’t mind. If we had a system that could turn mediocre quarterbacks into Heisman winners, good for us!
Other schools tried to imitate Syracuse. They sent coaches here to attend our camps and practices. Our coaches made big money conducting clinics around the country. We lost coaches, even a couple of head coaches who tried to perform the Syracuse miracle at other schools or in the NFL. But no one could quite duplicate the atmosphere of the Dome- the always dry, fast field, the perfect weather regardless of what was happening outside and the 50,000 screaming fans that made the “loud house” so intimidating. We led the nation in passing 19 times and in scoring 15 times.
Then there were the great games. The greatest was surely the2006 bowl win over Oklahoma , 43-42 using a hook-and-lateral for the touchdowns and the old statue of liberty play for the two point conversion that won it. That was one of 8 games we won where the other team scored 40+ points. There were scores like 62-45, 67-56 and 69-67. Nobody had more fun than Syracuse fans. Each year there were half serious bets about which Syracuse team- our football team or Jim Boeheim’s basketball team- would score more points.
Those packed houses and the frequent, highly-rated TV appearances caused money to poor into the University, both directly from the football team but also indirectly because the University got a three hour infomercial every Saturday. This allowed the school to make sure Syracuse had state of the art facilities for its golden-goose sports teams. Whenever somebody else upgraded beyond us, the advantage would be short-lived. Recruits who came here were dazzled and couldn’t wait to get here to score touchdowns in front of all those screaming fans.
Of course we went to bowls every year: even in a down year, the bowl committees salivated over our offense and the TV ratings it produced. But we didn’t just make minor bowl games: we were in the Orange Bowl 6 times, the Sugar Bowl 4 times, the Fiesta Bowl 5 times and even went to the Rose Bowl once.
Over time, SU coaches realized that their wide open offense didn’t have to be just a passing offense: we could run the ball as well or better than the running teams by using the pass to set up the run. The breakdowns of SU’s yardage gained in this decade tell the story: 2010 286 yards per game rushing, 245 passing. 2011: 236-352, 2012: 232-341, 2013: 260-360; 2014: 216-366; 2015: 327-290. Cover the pass, we’ll run on you. Cover the run, we’ll pass on you. If we have better running personnel in one season, we can do that. If we have better passing personnel we do that. As long you are spread out, we can do what we want. How do you stop that?
This made our offense even more dynamic and gave us the versatility we needed to be perennial national championship contenders. Our 2010 and 2014 teams both played for the title and lost. But there’s always next year.
Meanwhile, every time SU fans walk thought the hallowed gates of the Carrier Dome, they thank Ol’ Jake for having such foresight so many years ago.
Actually, that didn’t happen. It’s a fantasy based on achievements at schools like Brigham Young, Texas Tech, Boise State, Oregon and Baylor, the latter being the school we now have finally decided to emulate.
Here is what actually happened:
After sticking for another year with Frank Maloney, Jack Crouthamel brought in Dick MacPherson a pro assistant coach he remembered from his successful gig at the University of Massachusetts. Dick installed a “pro-set” attack, primarily based on running, (he was blessed with Joe Morris), which was designed to get the other team to move up to defend against the run so we could occasionally pass over their heads, (as Todd Norley did to Mike Siano vs. Nebraska). Besides that he did exactly what Frank Maloney had done when he arrived and Doug Marrone would do years later: he put his best athletes on defense to keep the team in games and give an underdog a shot at victory. It worked. We were 2-9 with an empty cupboard the first year but went 6-5, 6-5 and then 7-5. People were expecting a big breakthrough but were greeted by an 0-4 start in 1986 that produced the “Sac Mac Pack”. But the team railed to a 5-6 record.
In the meantime Coach Mac had begun recruiting the offensive talent that would turn the program around, especially a group of big offensive linemen recruited after we went to the Cherry Bowl in 1985 and got “bowl credibility. They moved in the O-line en masse in 1987 and suddenly all the plays were working like they were diagramed on the blackboard: running backs weren’t being hit until they passed the line of scrimmage and they were the ones doing the hitting. Receivers had time to get open and the quarterback had the time he needed to check each one of them before he threw. By now we had a new offensive system, based on the option and all the plays that could be run off of it when the defense adjusted to it. The idea was to draw the defense not only up to the line of scrimmage but to one side of the field. Now we could run misdirection away for the flow or go deep- or both. The result was some very exciting football and a lot of wins: 11-0-1 in 1987, 10-2 in 1989, bowl wins in 1988-90. It got coach Mac, a New Englander, a shot at coaching the Patriots late in his career. The earphones were handed to Paul Pasqualoni, who went on to become the second winningest coach in school history and who began his career with a couple of 10-2 seasons and two more bowl victories. There was no need to dream of a glory era: we were having one.
But somehow the lubricant in the machine started to fade and, due to complacency, we forgot to oil it. We were winning so why change anything? There might be a few more bumps in the road but as long as there were wins in between them, there was nothing to panic about. Facilities had always mattered in college football: Biggie Munn took his entire SU staff to Michigan State in 1947 because they promised to spend money on their program that SU wasn’t willing to spend. The ante was raised considerably with the coming of two platoon football which required national powers to be national recruiters: you weren’t recruiting fans so you had to dazzle recruits when they showed up. It was further increased when big TV money poured into the sport and effectively took it over: schools had much more money to make, much more to spend and they were willing to spend more to make more. If you didn’t keep up with the Jones- or the Rutgers- you fell behind.
On the field, teams were adjusting to the “freeze option” by over-loading to one side of the field while Pasqualoni and his OC, George DeLeone grew increasingly conservative. In 1994, only four teams in major college football threw the ball less than Syracuse: Rice and the service academies- all wishbone teams. Our recruiting was mostly limited to the northeast, with some trips to Florida and Texas to get a few players: B- listers in those states who were as good or better than the A-listers up here. P-D never did recruit a group of offensive linemen comparable to the Cherry Bowl group. As a result we were neververy good at sustaining drives. We used the option more to set up other plays – and then didn’t use those other plays often enough. The system was heavily dependent on having a great talent at quarterback. As long as we had a Don McPherson, Marvin Graves or a Donovan McNabb, we could score and win games. And they were at their best when we surrounded them with great receiving talent, like Rob Moore, Marvin Harrison and Kevin Johnson, who not only made big plays from scrimmage but could also burn teams on kick returns. It was often said that our best play was third and long, where the QB would get to scramble and improvise and his receivers could do the same.
But the conservatism prevented us from making maximum use of those assets. Harrison, who would one day set an NFL record by catching 143 passes in a single season for the Colts, caught 135 passes in four years at Syracuse, including 36 in that 1994 season. I remember a fan calling in to the coach’s show that year asking why we didn’t throw to him more and being told that the coaches are very proud that Marvin is such a team player who realizes how much he can help the team blocking for the option.
Because of that conservatism, we always seemed to come up short of expectations. We lost most of our confrontations with the “big boys” of college football and we’d find a way to lose to some inferior opponents as well. But what really hurt were the horrible nationally televised blow-outs that were massive negative advertisements for the program:14-46, 0-49 and 0-43 in consecutive games, (Lee Corso demanded ESPN keep Syracuse off TV), 0-62, 0-59, 7-49, 7-51, 0-51 and, in Coach P’s finale, 14-51.
The run of great quarterbacks finally ran out when Michael Vick opted for Virginia Tech. Even when we had great QBs, they didn’t put up the numbers we saw at those other schools: Don McPherson in three years as our starter, threw a total of 44TD passes with a high of 22 as a senior. Marvin Graves in four years threw 48TD passes with a high of 15. Donovan McNabb in three years threw 77TD passes with a high of 22. When they were replaced with the likes of Troy Nunes, R.J. Anderson, and Perry Patterson, a decline was inevitable.
To arrest that decline we brought in another coach from the pros, Greg Robinson, a man who had earned two Super Bowl rings as defensive coordinator of the Denver Broncos. He had a handsome face and a confident smile. People wondered why he had never been a head coach anywhere in 30 years and we soon found out. He brought in the Bronco’s offense , which was said to take five years for a quarterback to learn, (and he was coaching a four year school). But that was OK because he had no system for getting the plays in anyway. He seemed to have no conditioning program to speak of and his defensive drills consisted of “throwing uppercuts” because he felt that was similar to tackling. The result was the worst coaching tenure in SU history: 10 wins and 37 losses.
To drag us out of this we again went to the pros but this time to an SU alum who said this was his “dream job”: Doug Marrone, who had been an All-East offensive tackle under Coach Mac. He immediately did what Mac did and Frank Maloney before him: put his best athletes on defense to keep him in games. Then he did what a former offensive linemen would do: built up the offensive line with recruiting, conditioning and training until it became a real asset to the team for the first time since the Cherry Bowl group. His early teams greatly resembled Maloney’s 1975 team and coach Mac’s 1983-85 teams: painful to watch on offense but stout on defense. We scratched and clawed our way to two Pinstripe Bowls and managed to win them both. One problem is that they kept changing the offense. Hisfirst year, with Rob Spence, it all seemed to be bubble screens, with no downfield action. Then we were back in the pro set. In his final season he and Nathaniel Hackett, his OC, devised something actually resembling a modern passing offense centered around his senior quarterback, Ryan Nassib and two senior receivers, Alec Lemon and Marcus Sales All our passing records were set that year: 3,749 yards, 26 TDs, 72 receptions by Lemon, etc. But those players left and so did Marrone and Hackett for another “Dream job”, (which Marrone also walked away from).
He was replaced by defensive coordinator Scott Shafer, a man who seemed to be so in love with his defense that his favorite play was a punt. Down two touchdowns at BC with 7 minutes to go and the ball on the Eagles 40 yard line, 4th and 6, he punted “because I hoped we might get a stop down there- or a turnover”. He actually had a winning record his first season, secured by another minor bowl win, but the defeats were horrendous: 27-48 at Northwestern, (7-34 at the half), 14-49 in the Dome vs. Clemson, 0-56 at Georgia Tech and 3-59 at Florida State, (all accumulated in the first three quarters). Then we went through two dismal seasons: 3-9 and 4-8. It wasn’t the G-Rob era but it was the next worst thing: Shaffer and Robinson both left the program in worse shape than they found it.
SU fans, meanwhile, had begun to lose interest beginning in the Pasqualoni Era. Average attendance at the Dome fell from 49,325 in 1992 to 37,068 in Coach’s P’s last year. It jumped up slightly in G-Rob’s first year because the optimism he brought with him to 40,252 but when we saw what eh actually had brought us, it fell to 33,474 in his final year. It climbed to as high as 40, 504 under Marrone but fell to 32,102 last year under Shafer. And those figures are tickets sold. In many games the actual attendance was more like half that. The fans would still come out in force for a big game- but they were coming to see the opponent, not the home team. Even then, they didn’t fill the place: last year we got 43,101 for LSU and 5,000 of them were Tiger fans: the full allotment. For #1 ranked Clemson we got an absurd 36,706.
But, in the wreckage of the Shafer Era, we may have finally found a man who can look at the Dome and see the possibilities.
The Glorious History of the Carrier Dome
Everything changed when the Carrier Dome finally opened in 1980. Athletic Director Jake Crouthamel took one look at the new SU football palace and realized it was the ideal place for wide-open football. Instead of the old Ben Schwartzwalder concept of dominating the line of scrimmage and wearing out the other team with a powerful rushing attack, then passing over the heads of the defenders when they crept up to defend the line of scrimmage, now we were going to use the pass to open up the defense, forcing them to cover everyone and every spot on the field, which is, of course impossible, and then hitting them in the gaps that would open up in the defense when they tried to do it anyway. And he also realized that playing an exciting, wide-open and at the time unique brand of football would allow us to be a national recruiter, not just limited to kids who were aware of the program because they happened to grow up in this area of the country. Instead we’d recruit top talent from sea to shining sea who would come here to play in this offense and do it in this building. So Jake went out and got a coach who wanted to reinvent the game using the pass and off we went into the wild, blue yonder.
Our opponents never knew what hit them that first year. We scored over 50 points five times, waxing one poor opponent 83-7. People scoffed at our numbers, saying we were a gimmick team with a weak schedule but they were all paying attention in the bowl game when we turned a 14-34 deficit into a thrilling 46-45 win with a hail marry on the last play of the game. Our quarterback blew away school and NCAA records, completing 64% of his passes for 4,571 yards and 47 touchdowns. We led the nation in scoring with 47 points a game.
Not only were SU fans thrilled but there were more of them than ever before. People were coming down the Thruway from east and west and clogging 81 from north and south to get to the Dome to see the spectacle. The new stadium held 50,000 fans and that’s how many were there each and every game. The opponent didn’t matter: they came to see Syracuse play. And the coaching staff logged record airline miles going to all the top quarterbacks, receivers and running backs to get them to come to Syracuse. But the linemen, linebackers and defensive backs were listening too, They knew that a high scoring offense was paradise for a defensive player. They could concentrate on making big plays, knowing that if they gave up a few big plays, ti would matter because any mistakes would be over-whelmed by our offense.
The beat went on and in 1984, we broke through with our second national championship, going 12-0 and beating mighty Michigan in the big bowl game, 24-17. They had the athletes to keep up with our big-time playmakers but by now we’d recruited so many players we could stop them, too, and beat them anyway.
We kept rolling up big scores, winning a game 82-28 in 1988, another 95-21 in in 1989 and 84-21 in 1990. When would we hit 100 points? Our quarterbacks kept putting up huge numbers and we got our second Heisman Trophy winner in 1989, (63%, 4,699 and 46TDs) and our third in 1990, (64%, 5188 yards, 41TDs). Our quarterbacks didn’t do well in the pros and people complained they were “system” quarterbacks, who could put up great numbers in the Syracuse system, surrounded by Syracuse talent but when they were given a chance to play on Sunday, they turned out to be mediocre. SU fans didn’t mind. If we had a system that could turn mediocre quarterbacks into Heisman winners, good for us!
Other schools tried to imitate Syracuse. They sent coaches here to attend our camps and practices. Our coaches made big money conducting clinics around the country. We lost coaches, even a couple of head coaches who tried to perform the Syracuse miracle at other schools or in the NFL. But no one could quite duplicate the atmosphere of the Dome- the always dry, fast field, the perfect weather regardless of what was happening outside and the 50,000 screaming fans that made the “loud house” so intimidating. We led the nation in passing 19 times and in scoring 15 times.
Then there were the great games. The greatest was surely the2006 bowl win over Oklahoma , 43-42 using a hook-and-lateral for the touchdowns and the old statue of liberty play for the two point conversion that won it. That was one of 8 games we won where the other team scored 40+ points. There were scores like 62-45, 67-56 and 69-67. Nobody had more fun than Syracuse fans. Each year there were half serious bets about which Syracuse team- our football team or Jim Boeheim’s basketball team- would score more points.
Those packed houses and the frequent, highly-rated TV appearances caused money to poor into the University, both directly from the football team but also indirectly because the University got a three hour infomercial every Saturday. This allowed the school to make sure Syracuse had state of the art facilities for its golden-goose sports teams. Whenever somebody else upgraded beyond us, the advantage would be short-lived. Recruits who came here were dazzled and couldn’t wait to get here to score touchdowns in front of all those screaming fans.
Of course we went to bowls every year: even in a down year, the bowl committees salivated over our offense and the TV ratings it produced. But we didn’t just make minor bowl games: we were in the Orange Bowl 6 times, the Sugar Bowl 4 times, the Fiesta Bowl 5 times and even went to the Rose Bowl once.
Over time, SU coaches realized that their wide open offense didn’t have to be just a passing offense: we could run the ball as well or better than the running teams by using the pass to set up the run. The breakdowns of SU’s yardage gained in this decade tell the story: 2010 286 yards per game rushing, 245 passing. 2011: 236-352, 2012: 232-341, 2013: 260-360; 2014: 216-366; 2015: 327-290. Cover the pass, we’ll run on you. Cover the run, we’ll pass on you. If we have better running personnel in one season, we can do that. If we have better passing personnel we do that. As long you are spread out, we can do what we want. How do you stop that?
This made our offense even more dynamic and gave us the versatility we needed to be perennial national championship contenders. Our 2010 and 2014 teams both played for the title and lost. But there’s always next year.
Meanwhile, every time SU fans walk thought the hallowed gates of the Carrier Dome, they thank Ol’ Jake for having such foresight so many years ago.
Actually, that didn’t happen. It’s a fantasy based on achievements at schools like Brigham Young, Texas Tech, Boise State, Oregon and Baylor, the latter being the school we now have finally decided to emulate.
Here is what actually happened:
After sticking for another year with Frank Maloney, Jack Crouthamel brought in Dick MacPherson a pro assistant coach he remembered from his successful gig at the University of Massachusetts. Dick installed a “pro-set” attack, primarily based on running, (he was blessed with Joe Morris), which was designed to get the other team to move up to defend against the run so we could occasionally pass over their heads, (as Todd Norley did to Mike Siano vs. Nebraska). Besides that he did exactly what Frank Maloney had done when he arrived and Doug Marrone would do years later: he put his best athletes on defense to keep the team in games and give an underdog a shot at victory. It worked. We were 2-9 with an empty cupboard the first year but went 6-5, 6-5 and then 7-5. People were expecting a big breakthrough but were greeted by an 0-4 start in 1986 that produced the “Sac Mac Pack”. But the team railed to a 5-6 record.
In the meantime Coach Mac had begun recruiting the offensive talent that would turn the program around, especially a group of big offensive linemen recruited after we went to the Cherry Bowl in 1985 and got “bowl credibility. They moved in the O-line en masse in 1987 and suddenly all the plays were working like they were diagramed on the blackboard: running backs weren’t being hit until they passed the line of scrimmage and they were the ones doing the hitting. Receivers had time to get open and the quarterback had the time he needed to check each one of them before he threw. By now we had a new offensive system, based on the option and all the plays that could be run off of it when the defense adjusted to it. The idea was to draw the defense not only up to the line of scrimmage but to one side of the field. Now we could run misdirection away for the flow or go deep- or both. The result was some very exciting football and a lot of wins: 11-0-1 in 1987, 10-2 in 1989, bowl wins in 1988-90. It got coach Mac, a New Englander, a shot at coaching the Patriots late in his career. The earphones were handed to Paul Pasqualoni, who went on to become the second winningest coach in school history and who began his career with a couple of 10-2 seasons and two more bowl victories. There was no need to dream of a glory era: we were having one.
But somehow the lubricant in the machine started to fade and, due to complacency, we forgot to oil it. We were winning so why change anything? There might be a few more bumps in the road but as long as there were wins in between them, there was nothing to panic about. Facilities had always mattered in college football: Biggie Munn took his entire SU staff to Michigan State in 1947 because they promised to spend money on their program that SU wasn’t willing to spend. The ante was raised considerably with the coming of two platoon football which required national powers to be national recruiters: you weren’t recruiting fans so you had to dazzle recruits when they showed up. It was further increased when big TV money poured into the sport and effectively took it over: schools had much more money to make, much more to spend and they were willing to spend more to make more. If you didn’t keep up with the Jones- or the Rutgers- you fell behind.
On the field, teams were adjusting to the “freeze option” by over-loading to one side of the field while Pasqualoni and his OC, George DeLeone grew increasingly conservative. In 1994, only four teams in major college football threw the ball less than Syracuse: Rice and the service academies- all wishbone teams. Our recruiting was mostly limited to the northeast, with some trips to Florida and Texas to get a few players: B- listers in those states who were as good or better than the A-listers up here. P-D never did recruit a group of offensive linemen comparable to the Cherry Bowl group. As a result we were neververy good at sustaining drives. We used the option more to set up other plays – and then didn’t use those other plays often enough. The system was heavily dependent on having a great talent at quarterback. As long as we had a Don McPherson, Marvin Graves or a Donovan McNabb, we could score and win games. And they were at their best when we surrounded them with great receiving talent, like Rob Moore, Marvin Harrison and Kevin Johnson, who not only made big plays from scrimmage but could also burn teams on kick returns. It was often said that our best play was third and long, where the QB would get to scramble and improvise and his receivers could do the same.
But the conservatism prevented us from making maximum use of those assets. Harrison, who would one day set an NFL record by catching 143 passes in a single season for the Colts, caught 135 passes in four years at Syracuse, including 36 in that 1994 season. I remember a fan calling in to the coach’s show that year asking why we didn’t throw to him more and being told that the coaches are very proud that Marvin is such a team player who realizes how much he can help the team blocking for the option.
Because of that conservatism, we always seemed to come up short of expectations. We lost most of our confrontations with the “big boys” of college football and we’d find a way to lose to some inferior opponents as well. But what really hurt were the horrible nationally televised blow-outs that were massive negative advertisements for the program:14-46, 0-49 and 0-43 in consecutive games, (Lee Corso demanded ESPN keep Syracuse off TV), 0-62, 0-59, 7-49, 7-51, 0-51 and, in Coach P’s finale, 14-51.
The run of great quarterbacks finally ran out when Michael Vick opted for Virginia Tech. Even when we had great QBs, they didn’t put up the numbers we saw at those other schools: Don McPherson in three years as our starter, threw a total of 44TD passes with a high of 22 as a senior. Marvin Graves in four years threw 48TD passes with a high of 15. Donovan McNabb in three years threw 77TD passes with a high of 22. When they were replaced with the likes of Troy Nunes, R.J. Anderson, and Perry Patterson, a decline was inevitable.
To arrest that decline we brought in another coach from the pros, Greg Robinson, a man who had earned two Super Bowl rings as defensive coordinator of the Denver Broncos. He had a handsome face and a confident smile. People wondered why he had never been a head coach anywhere in 30 years and we soon found out. He brought in the Bronco’s offense , which was said to take five years for a quarterback to learn, (and he was coaching a four year school). But that was OK because he had no system for getting the plays in anyway. He seemed to have no conditioning program to speak of and his defensive drills consisted of “throwing uppercuts” because he felt that was similar to tackling. The result was the worst coaching tenure in SU history: 10 wins and 37 losses.
To drag us out of this we again went to the pros but this time to an SU alum who said this was his “dream job”: Doug Marrone, who had been an All-East offensive tackle under Coach Mac. He immediately did what Mac did and Frank Maloney before him: put his best athletes on defense to keep him in games. Then he did what a former offensive linemen would do: built up the offensive line with recruiting, conditioning and training until it became a real asset to the team for the first time since the Cherry Bowl group. His early teams greatly resembled Maloney’s 1975 team and coach Mac’s 1983-85 teams: painful to watch on offense but stout on defense. We scratched and clawed our way to two Pinstripe Bowls and managed to win them both. One problem is that they kept changing the offense. Hisfirst year, with Rob Spence, it all seemed to be bubble screens, with no downfield action. Then we were back in the pro set. In his final season he and Nathaniel Hackett, his OC, devised something actually resembling a modern passing offense centered around his senior quarterback, Ryan Nassib and two senior receivers, Alec Lemon and Marcus Sales All our passing records were set that year: 3,749 yards, 26 TDs, 72 receptions by Lemon, etc. But those players left and so did Marrone and Hackett for another “Dream job”, (which Marrone also walked away from).
He was replaced by defensive coordinator Scott Shafer, a man who seemed to be so in love with his defense that his favorite play was a punt. Down two touchdowns at BC with 7 minutes to go and the ball on the Eagles 40 yard line, 4th and 6, he punted “because I hoped we might get a stop down there- or a turnover”. He actually had a winning record his first season, secured by another minor bowl win, but the defeats were horrendous: 27-48 at Northwestern, (7-34 at the half), 14-49 in the Dome vs. Clemson, 0-56 at Georgia Tech and 3-59 at Florida State, (all accumulated in the first three quarters). Then we went through two dismal seasons: 3-9 and 4-8. It wasn’t the G-Rob era but it was the next worst thing: Shaffer and Robinson both left the program in worse shape than they found it.
SU fans, meanwhile, had begun to lose interest beginning in the Pasqualoni Era. Average attendance at the Dome fell from 49,325 in 1992 to 37,068 in Coach’s P’s last year. It jumped up slightly in G-Rob’s first year because the optimism he brought with him to 40,252 but when we saw what eh actually had brought us, it fell to 33,474 in his final year. It climbed to as high as 40, 504 under Marrone but fell to 32,102 last year under Shafer. And those figures are tickets sold. In many games the actual attendance was more like half that. The fans would still come out in force for a big game- but they were coming to see the opponent, not the home team. Even then, they didn’t fill the place: last year we got 43,101 for LSU and 5,000 of them were Tiger fans: the full allotment. For #1 ranked Clemson we got an absurd 36,706.
But, in the wreckage of the Shafer Era, we may have finally found a man who can look at the Dome and see the possibilities.
