Spoke with a friend at the gym who's a Louisiana native and has followed Marrone's career since he left the Saints and I badger him about the Orange (live in tri-state area)...
Said he's not surprised, Marrone was on lists prior to coming here and would have been a year or two away had he stayed in NO...said to get some perspective: Marrone's mentor just signed a multi-year deal worth about $8M a year, and has recommended to others they hire Doug Marrone. Imagine your mentor makes $8m and tells you you could make something like $3.5m per over 4 years
This all has me wondering about the performance over the last 4 years and the 25-25 record...it probably indicates (as we all know) that the situation was very bad, and people in the industry know how bad it was, and the rejuvenation is seen as plenty enough to justify the interest in hiring him as NFL head coach.
So the top-down view of success, and I agree that he has had quite a bit of success given the circumstances, have out-weighed little game-day issues that we've all debated as fans. (as an aside, what I find amazing, is a few Special Teams plays may have altered this to a 28-22 record over the period, but coulda shoulda).
No question that college football success is much more of a function of institutional and community support than other sports (ironically, one could argue we're top 5 in this respect in Basketball), and we'll be debating the issue given Marrone's departure...but those elements are probably more important over the long-run.
I'd argue Marrone has done his part in stopping the bleeding and breathing some life into the program, and perhaps we were extremely lucky to have him and didn't realize what we had...
My personal sense is the school has made more investment, probably more than they'd have planed on, and think they did enough but probably short of the expectations of a guy with Marrone's expectations and opportunities.
The Community support from alumni and locals (which I was) is probably a bigger concern. It's a circular issue, no doubt, but in some sense this is the sport with the biggest self-fulfilling prophecy of all...to a degree the followers can impact the trajectory and performance. I have season tickets despite living 4+ hours away, and when I can't make it, I have an awfully hard time giving those seats away. Sad, really. It's possible the community has been hit so hard that there needs to be a re-pricing of the product on game-day, now that there will be dollars coming from other directions.
Would like to thank Coach Marrone for bringing life back and making SU football fun again...this season was great...11 BCS opponents, in every game, exciting Bowl win...good luck with the Bills.
Hope we keep as much of the staff as possible and this recruiting class.
Said he's not surprised, Marrone was on lists prior to coming here and would have been a year or two away had he stayed in NO...said to get some perspective: Marrone's mentor just signed a multi-year deal worth about $8M a year, and has recommended to others they hire Doug Marrone. Imagine your mentor makes $8m and tells you you could make something like $3.5m per over 4 years
This all has me wondering about the performance over the last 4 years and the 25-25 record...it probably indicates (as we all know) that the situation was very bad, and people in the industry know how bad it was, and the rejuvenation is seen as plenty enough to justify the interest in hiring him as NFL head coach.
So the top-down view of success, and I agree that he has had quite a bit of success given the circumstances, have out-weighed little game-day issues that we've all debated as fans. (as an aside, what I find amazing, is a few Special Teams plays may have altered this to a 28-22 record over the period, but coulda shoulda).
No question that college football success is much more of a function of institutional and community support than other sports (ironically, one could argue we're top 5 in this respect in Basketball), and we'll be debating the issue given Marrone's departure...but those elements are probably more important over the long-run.
I'd argue Marrone has done his part in stopping the bleeding and breathing some life into the program, and perhaps we were extremely lucky to have him and didn't realize what we had...
My personal sense is the school has made more investment, probably more than they'd have planed on, and think they did enough but probably short of the expectations of a guy with Marrone's expectations and opportunities.
The Community support from alumni and locals (which I was) is probably a bigger concern. It's a circular issue, no doubt, but in some sense this is the sport with the biggest self-fulfilling prophecy of all...to a degree the followers can impact the trajectory and performance. I have season tickets despite living 4+ hours away, and when I can't make it, I have an awfully hard time giving those seats away. Sad, really. It's possible the community has been hit so hard that there needs to be a re-pricing of the product on game-day, now that there will be dollars coming from other directions.
Would like to thank Coach Marrone for bringing life back and making SU football fun again...this season was great...11 BCS opponents, in every game, exciting Bowl win...good luck with the Bills.
Hope we keep as much of the staff as possible and this recruiting class.
