So I'm killing or transferring all my old documents before I have to turn in the company laptop tomorrow, and I tripped over this, my prediction for the 2012 season. Let me say this assignment was the one I hated most, as I felt it was a no-winner (pick the team to stink before it has played a game and the players and coaches hate you; pick it to be good and the fans call you a moron). In this case folks, it was blind squirrel finds acorn. It gave me a laugh.
"The Syracuse University football team would go at least 8-4 this season if it were playing last season’s schedule. The Orange is bigger, stronger, faster and – most importantly – deeper than it has been in any of Doug Marrone’s four years as coach. It actually looks like a Division I football team out there on the practice field now.
"Unfortunately, the Orange is not facing last year’s schedule. Instead, it will play only five games in the Carrier Dome. It will play what is universally considered one of the toughest nonconference slates in the nation, with a neutral site game against No. 3 USC, a road date at SEC member Missouri and two Big Ten teams in Northwestern and Minnesota. A lot of that is the school’s own doing, so it is hard to feel any sympathy for the team in that regard.
"On the flip side of the coin the Big East is down and wide open for exploitation, as no conference teams made the preseason coaches top-25 and only one (Louisville) is in The AP media top-25. Plus, West Virginia is gone to the Big 12 and has been replaced by Temple, a team perhaps on the rise but not at the same level of the Mountaineers.
"The feeling here is the Orange does much better than its seventh-place prediction in the Big East and finishes 7-5 and back in the postseason. It is a scarily optimistic prediction, as a scenario of 3-9 can be just as easily created."
"The Syracuse University football team would go at least 8-4 this season if it were playing last season’s schedule. The Orange is bigger, stronger, faster and – most importantly – deeper than it has been in any of Doug Marrone’s four years as coach. It actually looks like a Division I football team out there on the practice field now.
"Unfortunately, the Orange is not facing last year’s schedule. Instead, it will play only five games in the Carrier Dome. It will play what is universally considered one of the toughest nonconference slates in the nation, with a neutral site game against No. 3 USC, a road date at SEC member Missouri and two Big Ten teams in Northwestern and Minnesota. A lot of that is the school’s own doing, so it is hard to feel any sympathy for the team in that regard.
"On the flip side of the coin the Big East is down and wide open for exploitation, as no conference teams made the preseason coaches top-25 and only one (Louisville) is in The AP media top-25. Plus, West Virginia is gone to the Big 12 and has been replaced by Temple, a team perhaps on the rise but not at the same level of the Mountaineers.
"The feeling here is the Orange does much better than its seventh-place prediction in the Big East and finishes 7-5 and back in the postseason. It is a scarily optimistic prediction, as a scenario of 3-9 can be just as easily created."
