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Message: [QUOTE="Clemson Troll, post: 767729, member: 3857"] I agree, it'd be most ideal to be great at both, but that is freaking hard to do. The odds are stacked against both of us in that regard. The thing that has lead to our re-emergence in football is our athletic department and board of trustees feeling the heat from the fans as to our continued under-performance. Things hit rock bottom in 2008, and we saw an urgent re-focusing after that. We dumped a ton of money into our football program suddenly. Out of the blue, a new coaching staff appeared, and the coordinators were amongst the highest paid in the country. An indoor practice facility sprung up. A bunch of money was poured into some stadium upgrades. And we are [B]still[/B] playing catchup to the schools that are elite on a yearly basis (we can't make that claim yet). If we wanted to be great in basketball, we'd need to do the same sort of thing there. The problem is: doing so would stunt the flow of funds to our football program, and that would be incredibly unpopular. I suspect the same would hold true for Syracuse. Would you be OK with falling behind a little regarding to coaching staff wages and facilities to invest in building a new football stadium, getting better coaches, building top tier player facilities? As is the case with our basketball fan base, your football fan base probably isn't big enough to fund such improvements separately. And that's before we even get into the cultural side of things. Syracuse seems to be in a rut football-wise, just like we have been in basketball. You can't convince a Clemson fan to donate for a new basketball arena because our culture dictates that we suck in basketball. Chicken before the egg type deal. While your football team is comparatively much better than our basketball team, my observation is that football isn't king at Syracuse. It's hard, but not impossible, to be great at both. It's an excellent ideal to shoot for, but I think that Syracuse and Clemson are probably at a higher disadvantage than most. [/QUOTE]

Verification: What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?