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AmeriCU Dino Babers Show Returns Thursday - Syracuse University Athletics
The season's first edition of the AmeriCU Dino Babers Show is set to air at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 2, live from Heritage Hill Brewery.
Coach Babers’s show this year show will be Thursday nights at 7PM except when the game is not on a Saturday. This year it will be 90 minutes, with the first hour being with Dino and the last half hour being with a ‘special guest’, who in the past just got a couple minutes at the end of the show.
The show originates from Heritage Hill Brewery in Jamesville:
Heritage Hill Brewhouse
Heritage Hill Brewhouse in Pompey. Handcrafted Beer, Homemade Food & Amazing Views set upon our active crop and animal farm. A family friendly destination that's an escape but close enough to call home.
You can also listen to the show live each week on the Syracuse IMG Sports Network and Cuse.com. Wednesday's show will be on 99.1 FM and 97.7 FM, as well. The show will regularly air on 99.5FM (Syracuse) 99.1 FM (Utica) and 1200 AM.”
You can also get it on: Listen to Free Radio Online | Free Internet Radio | TuneIn
There hasn’t been any change in the phone numbers, which last year were 315-424-8599 (local) or 1-888-746-2873. You can call to ask questions or submit them via Twitter at: https://twitter.com/CuseIMG
#AskDino or through Cuse.com, (the SU Athletic website):
Submit a Question! - Syracuse University Athletics
You can (or could last year, anyway), listen to a podcast of the show, probably the next day, at: Search results for babers | Free Internet Radio | TuneIn
My Question(s) or Comments
Coach, I’m going to start by asking the same question I intend to ask Jim Boeheim on his first show this year.
“There’s an old story about a coach who had a lot of good players coming back and had recruited some more good players. A reporter asked him how he is going to keep all those players happy. The coach replied “I’m not. They are going to keep me happy.” With the wide-open transfer portal, will there be any decisions made this year designed to keep players happy so we can keep the players here?”
The Show
(I sometimes re-arrange the comments so that statements made on the same subject are reported together, even if they came at different points of the show.)
Dino noted that this will be the team’s first night game “in a while”. He was a ‘close compadre’ of Frank Solich and has “shared Bread and talked X’s and O’s’ with new head coach Tim Albin. Matt noted that Ohio likes to run the ball and has a guy who can do it in De’Montre Tuggle. DB: He’s a downhill runner. He runs ‘behind his pads’ and will fall forward.” (He averaged 7.6 yards per carry and 134 per game in the three games last year.) “he’s consistently good, not occasionally great. He’d get time in our backfield.”
The conditions in New York and New Jersey are ‘extreme’. Coach talked to his daughter and son-in-law, (Koda Martin) and they are OK. Rutgers was going to play tonight but that was postponed to Saturday. “That will give them the same preparation time we have.” That’s how coaches think.
What did Coach think of training camp? “We gave a lot of reps to the 2’s and 3’s, a lot of live stuff, playing with the physicality of a spring camp. The 1’s got their physicality in the spring. They didn’t get so much now. We don’t want what happened last year to happen again. We are in a lot better shape health-wise. We just want to go out there and compete. We got dissipated last year.” Interesting. Maybe the coaching staff put the starters through too much last fall, probably because there was no spring practice. “If we stay healthy, practice well and get in some game action we’ll be extremely competitive. We’ll have to see what’s under the Christmas tree.”
John in Baltimore wanted to ask about the quarterbacks, noting how many of them we had and that some of them were noted for their mobility. What can we do to keep them healthy? Dino: There’s a positive and a negative to mobility. The defense doesn’t know what the quarterback is going to do. But he’s more vulnerable to blind side hits. We have a deep room but not all quarterbacks are created equal. They are on different levels of development. We need to be creative. Quarterback when running, should be running for a first down or a touchdown or to fool the defense, but not too much.” Matt wondered how the playing time would be divided up, noting that we’ve got “a transfer with a pedigree”. Dino preferred to talk about the high-level competition between the two, saying that both players were ‘unselfish’. (Coach always stress the unselfish nature of players when avoiding questions about their playing time.) He said always admired Pete Carroll’s USC teams because of the competition for positions during practice which helped them when they were on the field.
I called in my question and was surprised when Dino didn’t give a defiant answer, (we’ll see what happens with JB by contrast). “it’s a combination. Both the transfer portal and NIL have created a new world in college sports. No fingers have touched these pages. We need to think about retention. The assistant coaches will look good or bad depending on whether they can keep their players. If the players play well, they’ll keep me happy.” Matt said that the entire world, not just college football have changed so much. There are more veteran players in college ball. Dino: “I was happy to have 6 ‘super seniors’ until I heard that that Illinois team that beat Nebraska had 20 or 21 of them. We have guys who should have bene trying out for NFL teams. It’s going to create a more mature brand of ball with more leadership in the locker room. It’s a ripple effect that will last 4 years.” (If the freshman who wouldn’t have been freshmen stay that long.)
They fielded a lot of written questions from customers. Erin from Lowville asked what Dino’s favorite place in Hawaii was. He replied “Bellow’s beach. They have 2-4 inch breakers and soft sand there. It’s perfect for boogie boarders like me who are non-swimmers”. Dino is the son of a Navy man and grew up in Hawaii and he is a non-swimmer?
/Bellows+Field+Beach+Park/@21.3442273,-157.7633258,22223m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x7c00147eb7856753:0xed5b8aedc0d85d67!8m2!3d21.3574924!4d-157.7089521
Later Gomez asked when he had last been in Hawaii. It was February 2020. There were rumors of some kind of disease and one Japanese tourist on Maui had gotten it. They talked about the best hotels in the world and Gomez said four of the seven had been in Hawaii. He could remember three: Hale Kaiulani, Moana Surfrider and Turtle Bay.
PJ asked about using the tight ends, especially Luke Benson. Dino: “Luke is somebody we want to get the ball to. We’ve got some new wrinkles and he’ll get the ball a lot more than usual. Not 75 or 100 times, but a lot more.” Later Jerry from Dewitt called to ask if we were going to use the tight end more. “When I started at Baylor, we didn’t have a tight end on the roster. I’ve always wanted a tight end to throw to. We can be more than four wide receivers and a tailback.”
Ken wanted to know what would define a successful season. Dino’s highly detailed response: “We just want to go out there and give it our best and let the chips fall where they may.” So if the chips fall where they may, we’ve had a good year? Matt jokingly asked if Coach “ever got tired of finding ways to avoid a question?” Dino: I’ve got a pretty high IQ.”
Chris on Onondaga Hill asked what Dino expected from the secondary, since so many young guys played last year. DB: “I want to see growth. They had exciting freshmen years but I want to see fewer big plays and more sure tackles. .” Matt said that they had been ”gashed by the run early in the year” and asked what the transfers could contribute. DB: “They’ve got a loot of football in them but they still need to learn the scheme. That should take about 3-4 games.”
Ann in Liverpool wonder what Dino’s favorite road venue was. Dino wasn’t sure of the criteria but finally said “We tend to play well in any place named Death Valley”.
Joey wanted to know what Dino’s favorite donut is. That’s a ‘was’ as Dino doesn’t eat them anymore. He used to like a “twister with glaze”. (A cruller?)
Brendon and Dillion in Liverpool asked what Dino’s favorite Dome memory was. It came after the Clemson win. Watching the crowd storm the field was great, except that one guy broke a leg jumping form the stands. He was still being treated as Dino was leaving the Dome and he went over to see how he was. “The guy’s leg hadn’t bene set yet but he wanted my autograph. He didn’t have a cast yet so he asked me to sign his body.”
They brought on Tony White, not for the last half hour but for the last 15 minutes of the first hour. This was the time Dino was given to eat his dinner. That allowed Tony more time than assistants have gotten in the past on this show. Tony had been on the staff at UCLA when Dino was there.
Tony said that he was just excited that “college football is back. We need to represent the school and operate right.” Matt suggested that “last year was not representative”. Tony said that the players were “learning lessons. They’ve spent a year looking at film, correcting their errors.” Matt asked Tony to break down what happens when the defense breaks down and gives up a big play. “85% of the time, one out of 11 players wasn’t on the same page.” But Tony’s learned what to say next: “That’s on the coaches. We’ve got to give these guys a chance to line up and execute.”
Tony said that Mikel Jones and Garrett Williams were the leaders of the defense. “Garrett was a student last year. Iffy brought him along, showed him how to study.” Matt, in admiration, said that Garrett “talks like a coach. Coach (Chip) West, (the cornerback coach), was always on somebody else’s side of the field.” TW: “He’s the first one to acknowledge a mistake and wants to be coached on it.”
Ohio “is physical. They have an identity on offense and they stick to it. New guys get plugged into the system and they keep operating.”
The coach returned for the final half hour to be interviewed by morning show host Gomez. Heritage Hill is in the Town of Pompey. Gomez went over a list of famous people who came from Pompey, including Winston Churchill’s grandfather, the founder of Wells Fargo and two governors of New York:
Pompey, New York - Wikipedia
Coach recently listed his favorite football movies: Remember the Titans, Any Given Sunday and Waterboy, which Gomez agreed was an underrated football movie. (Why are there more baseball movies than football movies?) Gomez noted that the big action movies such as the Top Gun sequel, the latest Mission: Impossible and James Bond movies were being postponed until the spring. Who was Dino’s favorite 007? “I was a Roger Moore guy until I saw the Sean Connery films. He was something special.”
Gomez asked what was the biggest adjustment to the pandemic that is likely to stay with us. Coach said it was washing hands. The whole team got into it. “I’ve never seen so many clean fingernails. I’m proud of the fact that we didn’t miss a game all season, one of only 15 teams that can say that.” Gomez wondered if it was an advantage to have gotten those 11 games in when Ohio only got to play three games. “It is but they have a lot of super seniors back.”
Gomez asked about the new air conditioning in the Dome. Dino felt it was ‘really cold. I don’t want people to catch cold.” He said he’d like to pull the plug on it. I called in again to point out that Jim Boeheim does commercials for a heating/AC company that boasts that they can divide your home into zones that can have different temperatures in each zone. I suggested that company could probably se it up so that Coach could have a device with two controls on it, one for his side of the field and the other for the other side of the field. He could make it 60 degrees on his side and 90 degrees on the other side. Dino said he’d rather be able to pull the plug on it. Gomez suggested that they could keep the doors open to get a draft when the opposition is lining up a kick. I told a story about Bill Veeck when he owned the Cleveland Indians. He set up mechanical outfield fences that move toward home plate when the Indians were up and away from home plate when the other team was batting. That lasted as long as it took to make a rule against it.
Gomez asked if anyone on the team does a good Dino Babers impression. “We’ve got a couple of guys who can pull it off without a coach making them run. You know the team is lose and in a good frame of mind if that is happening.” Is there an advantage to opening on the road? “Anyone would like to open at home but being on the road gives you an ‘us vs. them’ feeling. You get a feeling of Ohana. You don’t have the distractions you can get at home with everyone talking to you about the game. You want to turn cheers into boos or silence. Playing well to produce silence can motivate you as much as cheers at home. “
