The numbers are just plain daunting.
A Division I football team is allowed 85 scholarships. A good Division I football team has walk-ons on top of that who likely would be scholarship players elsewhere. Syracuse, well, it’s not close to either.
The Post-Standard reported this morning that a junior college transfer, JohnMark Henderson, left the team sometime in mid-October. That’s 21 scholarship players who’ve left Syracuse since Doug Marrone’s tenure officially began Dec. 12. That means the first year head coach is trying to win Division I football games with 61 scholarship athletes.
Except not this week. Because Marrone suspended another three players (Antwon Bailey, Torey Ball and Andrew Tiller) who were in that car accident with Mike Williams and because defensive end Jared Kimmel had season-ending surgery. So he goes on the road for the first time in six weeks, to Heinz Field, to face no. 13 Pittsburgh - which is 7-1 and fresh off a bye week - with 57 scholarship players.
“I think when situations come up, it makes you more determined,” Marrone said this afternoon on a conference call. I’d asked him if the “house-cleaning” he’d had to do was even more intense than he expected and he said, “I think I’m more determined to make sure we do get this program turned around.”
But 56 scholarship players? At some point, what’s best for the program really isn’t best for the team, at least not in the upcoming week. And there certainly are very well-paid coaches who therefore slide discipline down their priority list (cough, Urban Meyer, cough). Marrone insisted in his book, there’s no weighing between the two.
“You can’t compromise situations,” he said. ”In other words, it’s always what’s best for the program. You try to do both. You try to make decisions that can help you win and do what’s best for the program. And I think when you’re faced with a decision of one or the other, you do what’s best for the program.”
Yes, but in this day and age, where coaches have short, short leashes and winning becomes paramount, doesn’t he, as a first-time head coach, ever consider how much time he has to maybe sacrifice wins for foundation-building?
Apparently not.
“I feel very confident in my ability as a coach. I believe in ethics, in principle, I believe in all of it. I believe in the school, I believe in the people here, so me doing it the right way is the most important thing,” he said. And if the boosters start moaning, he said, “I can’t worry about that… I have to sleep at night. I’m a father, a husband, I have three beautiful children and I’m always going to do the right thing, or try my best to do it right.”
I heard a lot of the same things when Greg Schiano first took over at Rutgers. I wasn’t there for the first year, so I don’t know what sort of defections he suffered, but I do know behavior ranks above playmaking in his book. Of course, he had a patient athletic director and a fan base with lowered expectations. Does Marrone have either?
Aditi Kinkhabwala has written a regular column for SI.com and been published in Sports Illustrated.