So, I decided to break this down Mel Kiper style for the denizens of our fine corner of the Internet. Instead of looking at the most meaningful November game, I decided to be specific. I'm looking specifically at the most meaningful November HOME game since 1987, so why not? I scoured College Football Reference and found the contenders. They are nicely laid out in a beautiful spreadsheet below. They are color-coded, which will give you an idea of how I might rank these games in matters of importance to the program.
Green = Incredibly Important/Program Defining
Yellow = Important/Season Defining
Red = Important/In the Context of That Season
Some of these definitions are squishy, and that's because it's my rubric, and I'll make it up however I want to. So, if you disagree, tough. Do your own research and get back to me so I can ignore you. That's a trend these days in the U.S., and I aim to uphold it to the extent that I can. Below the graph is a ranking of the MOST critical home games in November in the last 37 years.
11. SU-BC (2013): It was the start of the Scott Shafer era and an opportunity for SU to go to back-to-back bowls for the first time since the 1998-1999 seasons. SU won thrillingly and then got the best of a game Minnesota team in the Texas Bowl. It was great for Shafer and the team but relatively meaningless in the grand scheme.
10. SU-Louisville (2018): This game was a prelude to the biggest game in 2018 that should have been in the Dome. Louisville was putrid this year, but for Syracuse to have any real shot at climbing the CFP rankings, it needed this win and then a victory against the #3 ranked Irish of Notre Dame in NYC the following week. So this was a tune-up, but so often in Syracuse history, tune-ups ended up being season-killers.
A crazy 30 points in the 2nd quarter ended any notion this version of the Orange would rot on the vine. Eric Dungey, Mo Neal, and sure-footed freshman Lou Groza Award winner Andre Szymt slammed the door on the hapless Cards.
Next week, Syracuse, ranked in the top 12, would battle the nation's #3 team. The game that should have been the biggest November game in the dome was instead played in Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.
9. SU-Pitt (2004): This was not the last game of the season, which counts for something in my rankings. But it was an endlessly entertaining overtime tilt between two teams that should be rivals but never really have been. It kept SU's chances at a bowl game alive, but the 'Cuse came crashing back down to Earth the next week, losing to a pretty awful Temple Owl team. They bounced back at Chestnut Hill the following week in the Diamond Ferri game. None of it saved Coach P's job, though, as he was fired unceremoniously after getting boat raced by Calvin Johnson and Georgia Tech in the Champs Sports Bowl. That decision was program-defining for all the wrong reasons.
8. SU-BC (2001): SU and BC have had some pretty memorable late-season matchups on occasion, but none more meaningful than this game. SU came into this game REELING from a 59-0 shellacking at the hands of the dastardly Hurricanes. Miami was #1 and won the whole enchilada that year. They are arguably one of the most dominating national champions in the past 50 years. SU went into that game ranked #14 in the AP with a shot at a MAJOR bowl if they could knock off the Canes. Instead, SU got knocked out. They had to limp home and host the #25 Eagles.
A win could help salvage the end of the season. A loss would be a nut punch following the gut punch from the week before. SU leaned on James Mungro en route to a career-high 184-yard, two-touchdown game. SU went on to beat Kansas State in the Insight.Com Bowl. The Freeney year brought SU back to national prominence after a few down years following McNabb's senior year. Alas, it was a blip on the radar to a prolonged decline in SU football fortunes.
7. SU-VPI (1998): This game is one of the most thrilling contests in the long annals of Orange football history. SU entered the game following a road loss to Marc Bulger and the Couch Burners in Morgantown. The Turkey's were ranked 16th in the country, and SU was out of the AP poll for the first time since the start of the season. Virginia Tech had a defense that had bullied previous teams, led by an undersized monster named Corey Moore. They were 7-1 and riding high coming into the dome. They gave SU everything it could handle throughout the game. It was a roller coaster ending with McNabb getting sacked by Moore with time running out. Then he pitched the ball across the field to Stephen Brominski, and the rest is history. Fans of both teams still remember this game, as do college football aficionados. It was the most entertaining college football game of 1998 and cemented the SU-VPI rivalry. This game loses points because it wasn't the last regular season game.
THE BEST OF THE BEST
Below are the six best November home games in the past 37 years.
6. SU-Louisville (2012): You might question this selection above the '98 Virginia Tech game. Both games were not the season's final games, and this game moved SU only to 5-5 on the season. But you need to understand the context of this game to understand its significance.
Louisville was undefeated and ranked 11th in the country. It was 9-0 and a heavy favorite coming into the Dome. Teddy Bridgewater was one of the country's best quarterbacks, and SU was only 4-5. But inside the program, SU fans, players, and coaches knew the team was better than its record. They were hard-luck losers to Northwestern in the season opener, a team that went 10-3 and won the Gator Bowl that year.
They lost to the #2 ranked USC in the Meadowlands, to Minnesota on the road, and to a surprisingly solid Rutgers team at home. And they lost on the road to a 10-3 Cincinnati team featuring the two Kelce brothers. At 4-5, they were dangerously close to missing out on a bowl game for a second straight year.
What made that 2012 season so special was how the team overcame many obstacles and set up a thrilling end of the year. They won their final four games of the season, and it started with a stomping of a Louisville team many thought might be a dark horse national championship team. SU stamped out any crazy national champion ideas by scoring three consecutive TDs in the 2nd quarter en route to a 31-10 halftime lead. Any comeback was stifled when Jerome Smith scored on a 35-yard TD run. The 'Cuse followed that up with a thrilling win at Missouri and a thumping of Temple before trashing West Virginia in the Pinstripe Bowl.
5. SU-WVU (1991): SU came into the game undefeated in the newly formed Big East (sans Miami, who would enter the following year). It was also the first season of our former linebacker coach taking the helm from the legendary Dick MacPherson. People weren't 100% sure about the hire until Kirby Dar Dar took a kick return to the house against #5 Florida in the dome.
SU lost to #1 Florida State and then lost in a classic hangover game the next week to East Carolina. While that loss looks bad to us today, ECU finished the season 10-1 with a Peach Bowl victory over NC State. SU's two losses that year were to teams that finished a combined 21-3.
The 'Cuse came into the game riding high, having won four straight. They were 16th in the country and had a junior quarterback who was a throwback to Donnie McPherson. And then West Virginia took the lead into the locker room 10-6. The Orange faithful collectively held their breath through the 3rd Quarter as the teams became involved in a defensive stalemate, smashing into each other's defensive fronts without any give. Marvin Graves couldn't do anything against the Mountaineer pass defense. He threw for a measly 84 yards, but David Walker did what David Walker does. He always leaned forward, never losing a yard, and rushed for 114 yards. Marvin broke through with a seven-yard TD in the fourth to put the good guys up 13-10, and John Biskup kicked a late field goal to preserve the win.
The game was so forgettable that it didn't even garner a write-up in the Sunday NY Times that week—just a box score. So why is it this high? It allowed Syracuse to claim the Big East championship and a New Year's Hall of Fame Bowl butt-kicking of Ohio State. It also set the stage for the following year. 10-2 in year one of Coach P, and only sunshine and roses ahead. The game cemented the fantastic mid to late '90s edition of Syracuse football—one of its most prosperous decades in program history.
4. SU-Miami (1998): If the 1991 West Virginia game was the harbinger of a '90s to remember for Orange football, this game represented the end of an era. The '90s were nearing an end, and Syracuse's most beloved QB in its history was also bidding the home crowd a farewell. And who better to do it against than the dreaded and fearsome Hurricanes of Miami? But this version of the 'U' was not as fearsome or dreaded as its past versions. No Michael Irvin, Gino Toretta, or Ray Lewis walked through those doors. Syracuse had pummeled the Canes in Florida the previous year, 33-13. A Hurricane team that limped to a 5-6 finish.
But they were still Miami, with Santana Moss, Reggie Wayne, Edgerrin James, and Ed Reed. Syracuse fans hadn't seen SU beat them in the dome, well, ever. Despite the Cane's decline in the '90s, they still managed to break SU's heart every year they played under the bubble. But not this year. Not when Donovan McNabb was greeted on Senior Day with the loudest, most sustained standing ovation for an exiting player these old ears had ever heard. Yes, this Cane team had regained some of its swagger. Yes, it was ranked ahead of the Orange coming into the game. Yes, they would go on the next week to beat the #3 UCLA Bruins, a clear sign the 'U' was gearing up to make another charge at glory. But not on this day.
This was less a game than a rout, a coronation, a floodgate bursting on a dam that had been overtopped six years prior when the Canes stopped Chris Gedney three yards short of the end zone on the game's last play. SU could have won 3000-0, which wouldn't have been enough that day.
A decade that was one of the best in Syracuse's history was also one of the most maddening. Games fumbled away against inferior opponents. Game and player mismanagement dashed great opportunities for top 10 finishes in the polls. This team was so close, yet so far, every single year. Those three yards in 1992 felt like endlessness—endless misery of being this close stretching away into infinity. The poor Hurricanes were nothing more than a passing May shower in this one. SU swept them away, and years of pent-up frustration were unleashed on the team we hated most in that era - the Miami Hurricanes.
1.5 points per minute. That's the rate at which the Orange scored in the first half. Forty-five points before the half. A team, a town, a university, vindicated on national television. And yet. And yet. We all knew it was also an end. At SU's greatest 1990s triumph, it was all over. No more McNabb, no more Konrad, no more Johnson. And as it would turn out, no Michael Vick either. The biggest blowout of the Canes since 1944 was the last time a Syracuse team would be looked on in college football circles with such lofty praise. But for that one night, the moon shone orange, and Syracuse stood on Miami's neck and celebrated with a bloodlust Braveheart would have been proud of.
3. SU-Miami (1996): The 1998 Miami beatdown was what the 1996 game should have been. Ranked 16th in the country and the winner of eight straight games, Syracuse was the bully this time. In those eight games, SU had won by an average of 42-11. This WAS the coronation game. A chance to go back to a big bowl game for the first time since the Fiesta Bowl at the end of the 1992 season.
Miami was a good team, but it could have been better. Winners of seven games, they were formidable but not stout. Until the 1st Half in the Carrier Dome, when all the ghosts of Miami's past showed themselves. It was like 1991 all over again. Speed and power, all over the field. Miami's defense bludgeoned SU. Donovan McNabb looked googly-eyed in the face of that pass rush.
The one team undefeated in conference games that year looked like a scared 15-year-old groping his way to his first kiss with a much more mature woman. Some dude named Tony Gaiter scored midway through the second quarter on a 36-yard slant and nearly broke the ankles of our biggest bully - Donovin Darius.
And just when it looked like the ship had been righted, and the good guys were getting back into it with a TD before the half and an easy-to-handle 11-point deficit, Tremain Mack struck. Ninety-five yards later - Miami went into the half up 28-10. As every Greek hero tends to do, SU staged a dramatic comeback only to fall finally and tragically short. 38-31. Poof. No big bowl game. Poof. No outright Big East title. Poof. No exorcism of the demons.
Instead, a ho-hum Liberty Bowl played in the mud and an uninspired win over an overmatched Houston squad. Virginia Tech took to the Orange Bowl, played on the national stage, and laid an egg against Nebraska 41-21. We beat the Chokies 52-21 that year. Does anyone think we couldn't have given Nebraska a better game of it? Alas, it was not meant to be.
2. SU-Miami (1992): In the end, this game was full of symbolic victories. But symbolic victories do not make up for the ultimate loss. For 60 minutes, little Syracuse stood toe-to-toe with the BIGGEST bad. Miami. Twenty-seven straight wins, the longest in college football at the time. Gino Toretta, Heisman Trophy winner, he of 122 straight attempts without an interception. Syracuse picked him off three times. Marvin Graves, CNY's very own Rocky Balboa. Nine times hit for a loss in the game, nine times he picked himself off the mat, looked over at the Miami defense, and waved them to come at him again. "More, more," you could hear him say. And Miami stared, knowing they had not faced a team with this kind of moxie, with this kind of fanbase, with this kind of passion for its team. They were really and truly in the Terror Dome, and the doors had been locked behind them.
All for naught. Except for the memories of an undersized, outmatched team literally and figuratively leaving everything they had in them out on that field that day. In the end, that's the memory that remains. The eventual loss stings, but in that loss was forged the type of city, team, and university Syracuse was. A team that punched up. After the half (in which SU gained -1-yard of total offense...can you gain negative yards?) George DeLeone scrapped the option, recognizing that Rohan Marley and the other Miami backers were too fast. He came up with an audacious plan. Let's shove it straight down their gullets. And they did. Traps, counters, and dives. Ben Schwartzwalder was looking down from on high with a grizzled nod and a half smile. THIS was football. We didn't need to be faster; we just needed to be tougher. And in the 2nd half, Syracuse was the more brutal, more physical team.
I will pull a direct quote from the NY Times write up of this game to sum up why we collectively HATED Miami and would die ten times over for Marvin Graves:
With Miami blitzing on the next play, Graves scrambled to his right for 14 yards and went out of bounds at the 22 with 45 seconds to go. He was on his way back to the huddle, taking deep breaths.
A Precious Timeout
"I felt a sharp pain in my heart," Graves said. "I don't know what happened." He became ill on the field and Syracuse called a timeout, leaving the Orangemen with one.
"We're just looking into their huddle and he's throwing up in the open," said Warren Sapp, a freshman Miami defensive tackle. "It was like, 'Yeah, we got him.' " But Micheal Barrow, a senior linebacker, thought something else.
"Here's a guy who's laying it on the line," Barrow said. "You just respect the guy. You respect the competition, that he's putting everything on the line and you're putting everything on the line. You don't think about anything else. You just think, 'We've got to keep it going.' "
Graves was given some chewing gum -- "To get the bad taste out of my mouth," he said -- and went back to work.
SU was transformed nationally in that loss, from an interesting upstart to an on-the-field representation of the struggles of the Rust Belt and its indomitable will to continue despite the overwhelming circumstances. Hyperbole? Perhaps. But also true. Sometimes it can be both.
1. SU-WVU (1987): My writing cannot do this game justice. Syracuse was supposed to roll, but West Virginia was showing everyone a season early what its undefeated squad would look like the following year. Major Harris haunts the dreams of Orange fans from this era.
But this was SU's year. In an era where regional powers were still a thing and not a quaint afterthought - SU was a regional player. This year, this team transformed them into a national one. This game started the second Golden Age of Syracuse football. 11 years of exciting teams who could win or lose against anyone in the country. That run began with this year and this team.
This November home game is singular. Nothing can match it, and it is unlikely that anything will ever match it again.
So, where does this game rank? Pregame, I would put it at #5 for what a win could do to propel the Orange into a potential third Golden Age.
Only the final score and the history it creates will show us where it stands on the all-time list.
