You’re missing one other very important leg that the program stands on: The passion and intensity of the SU fan base, and the history and winning tradition that goes hand in hand with it. Im sorry but that doesn’t exist everywhere. SU is the only game in town for all of upstate New York in terms of big time college basketball. And unlike football, we have the nearby fertile recruiting areas of the Northeast to tap into. No programs can boast crowds of 35,000 plus for big games and 20,000 for a weeknight game against mid majors or lower tier conference teams. Even with several mediocre seasons in a row by our standards, the fans still come out. JB has remarked on this many times. Fan base matters, and you don’t understand college sports if you think otherwise. Why do you think UConn was able to rise to prominence (along with Calhoun)? How do you think Creighton all the way out in godforsaken Omaha got invited to the Big East? They have a passionate fan base (and a winning history), a semi-large city population to draw those fans from, and no nearby pro sports to compete with. Same with Wichita State and same with Gonzaga. Mark Few has talked about this as part of his ability to grow the program there. It matters that tiny Gonzaga exists in a mid-sized city like Spokane of 200,000 (500,000 metro area) with no pro sports or other schools to compete with. Same with Arizona in Tucson. Obviously building that winning tradition also matters. But it doesn’t have to be built at Syracuse. It already exists.
I actually don't disagree vehemently with your rather well-thought out post.
But this ain't gonna be any slam-dunk after JB leaves. The opinion of some on here is that when JB leaves we'll be able to attract a coach that will be as successful or more successful. (
Especially if the new coach will implement some of the different strategies they have wishing for sitting in their vinyl Laz-R-Boys sucking down Genesee Lights.)
I see the transition as being difficult and fraught with risk. And very likely to result in a period in which things get worse before they get better.
No question that SU has a large and dedicated fan base NOW. But that fan base and the enthusiasm that underlies it is pretty fragile. The SU football experience pretty much proves that.
It's always been the excellence of the SU BB product that has driven the big attendance numbers. Some seem to feel it works the other way or that it could work the other way.
The proximity of a fertile recruiting base is relative. I'd say SU's position is relatively weak. It's 300 miles from the nearest hotbed.
To see this you need to compare it to schools that are much closer to recruiting hotbeds. By comparison, The University of Maryland is in Prince Georges County, one of the most fertile recruiting grounds in the country (Kevin Garnett and many others). It's on the same street as DeMatha High School a couple of miles away. and its half an hour from Baltimore. Georgetown is close by.
Fans, from what I have seen, have a tendency to over-rate the attractiveness of their coaching vacancies. They start out assuming that they can get the best coaching prospects in the country to apply and then the school can just pick one.
The way it seems to work is that these jobs need to be promotions for the incoming coach. Very few are interested in near lateral moves. Guys coming up from Mid-Majors undergo learning curves and down periods while they put their systems in. Programs frequently never really recover (e.g. Indiana)
There's also SU's "pickiness" when it comes to coaching hires. I have watched some WVU games. Does anybody actually think SU would hire a guy like Huggins? He's a hell of a coach, but it would never happen.
I thought George O'Leary would have been a good choice for football. But SU heard about the resume flap, that occurred while he was here, and wouldn't even consider the guy.
Boeheim is one of the best coaches in college basketball and has been for many, many years. When he leaves, SU will probably not be upgrading the coaching position.
We may have an opportunity to see happy some of our fans are when SU loses 20 games in a season but runs M2M defense.
