It's a profession where being an a-hole is part of the job description. Who cares if he's a jerk, he wasn't hired to be your buddy, he was hired to do a ridiculously hard job. And part of that involves hurting feelings and making people uncomfortable.
Based upon what people who were really plugged in by the time he left he was completely disillusioned and disheartened by the working conditions and lack of support.
Here are some quotes, "I think the last straw with Marrone was when we lost two recruits to Rutgers strictly because they felt that the school had far superior facilities and was more committed to competing at the highest level of BCS football. I really think that was a tough one to get over for him - as a proud SU Football alum who lived through some of the glory days and takes great pride in SU Football history."
And this from a close observer,
"His wife has been confronted in public places, his son has been harassed at school, he has had to deal with the school (not the NCAA) screwing John Raymon (who cried like a baby in his arms), he has had to deal with supposedly loyal fans calling in to radio shows and telling him SU fans feel like Charlie Brown and that he's Lucy always pulling the ball away when they approach (a reference to approaching the corner but never turning it, I suppose), he has had to deal with intrusive letters from BOT members offering him coaching advice and believing every erroneous character-questioning report in the paper (the Spruill situation and his handling of it being the most recent) or post on the internet . . .
He has told me on more than one occasion that this is now a basketball school that could care less about football. He told me he can handle the fans disagreeing with his strategy on the field, but when it comes to questioning his character and confronting his wife and kids are way over the line and something totally unexpected when he took his dream job, which in many ways has turned out to be a nightmare.
He inherited a total system collapse and is 25-25 with two bowl wins after four seasons, and you still see assclowns out there slinging their crap on the board, and the paper website is 100 times worse.
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All that points to leaving. Loyalty to his coaches and players is big with him, though. Notice I didn't say his school, because I believe he has been soured big-time there."
It's too bad he left after four years, but given the lack of support and failure of Gross and the administration to meet the commitments they made it wasn't surprising.
