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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 686678, member: 289"] Players want two things- to play on a winning team and to get to the NFL. They will be impressed by things that convince them that that will happen. You gave me a lengthy check-list of aspects of SU football history, including coaches like Solem who coached decades ago and implied that all of those things are specific reasons why today's teenagers would come here. I was pointing out that some of the things you listed are clearly not the reasons a teenager would come here. A current SU recruit is probably aware of Ernie Davis and may know who Jim Brown is. I'm sure he's heard of Donovan McNabb and some other recent SU players that made it in the NFL. That helps, somewhat. The rest of what you listed are things you and I know about but the recruit almost certainly doesn't. We can tell him we won the national championship 50+ years ago but I doubt that would make much difference to him. You once referred to the ACC as a "Big Boy Conference" you were glad we were now in. What makes it a "Big Boy" conference is that the schools in it have significant football histories while the Big East was full of wannabes trying to establish a reputation after being small-time for years. Now, all of a sudden, you're saying we've got a history the ACC schools won't be able to match. Duke has quite a football history: [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Blue_Devils_football[/url] Great players. Great coaches, (they even had Howard Jones as coach, one of the guys you mentioned as being part of the Syracuse history). Great teams. Their problem is, it's all in decades past. Their reputation now is of being a basketball school. If we have to resort to pitching what we were decades ago to get recruits, we'll be just like them. Fortunately, our present isn't too bad and our future could be pretty good. That will mean much more to current recruits than the glories that occurred before they, or their fathers or their grandfathers were born. [/QUOTE]

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