Tough Times
October 06, 2007 06:08 PM | General
October 6, 2007
SYRACUSE, N.Y. – Former Syracuse coach Dick MacPherson popped his head into the MSN radio booth after watching the Orange give up 55 points in a 41-point loss to West Virginia Saturday afternoon.
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| Defensive end Johnny Dingle knocks the ball from Syracuse quarterback Andrew Robinson's hand during West Virginia's 55-14 victory over Syracuse Saturday at the Carrier Dome.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks |
“You tell Don Nehlen that he never won six games in a row against me!” MacPherson said to announcers Tony Caridi and Dwight Wallace while they were on the air.
These are tough times for Syracuse football. The proud alma mater of Jim Brown, Ernie Davis, John Mackey, Larry Csonka, Floyd Little, Donovan McNabb and Marvin Harrison has sunk to depths never before seen even during the tail end of the Schwartzwalder years in the early 1970s and the Frank Maloney years immediately afterward.
Art Monk played for Maloney. There are no Art Monks running around at Syracuse right now.
“We expected to see a better … a closer margin than what it turned out to be,” Syracuse coach Greg Robinson said afterward. “It’s a real challenge for us and we’ve got to dig deep right now and find a way to fight back.”
The Carrier Dome, once college football’s Loud House, was relegated Saturday to the empty sounds of West Virginia’s marching band and the faint echo of “Let’s Go Mountaineers!”
The house of orange has been transformed into the color of silver resembling all of the empty seats at Saturday’s game. At one time the Carrier Dome was a miserable place to play, especially when Paul Pasqualoni was running the ship from 1987-2004.
Hall of fame Coach Don Nehlen won just twice against Pasqualoni at the Carrier Dome in 1989 and 1993. The 1993 game was one of the most memorable victories in WVU history, the Mountaineers gaining sweet revenge for the game Syracuse stole in Morgantown in 1992.
But ah, those are distant memories today.
Before the game, Syracuse honored MacPherson’s 1987 team that tied Auburn in the Sugar Bowl. Most of those guys were outside tailgating by halftime.
West Virginia’s 55 points were the most ever scored on a Syracuse team in the Carrier Dome and were also the most scored by either team in the 55-game history of the football series. Usually, the blowouts went the other way with Ernie Davis romping through West Virginia’s overmatched defense in a 44-0 bloodbath in 1959, or Syracuse’s 45-0 whitewash of the Mountaineers a year later in 1960.
Even Pasqualoni was on the happy side of some laughers. His 1995 team thoroughly dominated West Virginia in a 22-0 victory at the Carrier Dome. A year later, Syracuse transformed the battle fatigue of West Virginia’s 10-7 loss to Miami into a 30-7 Orange victory at Mountaineer Field in 1996.
Pasqualoni’s 1997 defense spent the entire afternoon in West Virginia’s backfield, making life miserable for quarterback Marc Bulger on the way to a 40-10 victory. It was a time when West Virginia fans wondered if their beloved Mountaineers could remain competitive with the Orange.
The same thoughts are now going through the heads of many Syracuse boosters – the same people that were so ecstatic when Athletic Director Daryl Gross wielded his wrecking ball on Pasqualoni’s program.
Today, Rich Rodriguez has engineered six straight victories over the Orange: 34-7 in 2002, 34-23 in 2003, 27-6 in 2004, 15-7 in 2005, 41-17 in 2006 and 55-14 in 2007.
The wins are getting easier for West Virginia, and the losses tougher to take at Syracuse.
“Today is the day to internalize what we just went through. Today is not the day to talk about next week,” said Robinson. “We’ve got to feel it for 24 hours. Feel the pain of it. That was painful because if we could have clicked a little bit all of the sudden that could have been a real interesting football game.”
Last year, Robinson correctly pointed out that if five or six plays were removed from the game Syracuse was right with West Virginia. After today’s game, he was asked just how good West Virginia is: “This team won a ton of football games last year and you were all at media day at the Big East and you were all talking about how good they are so why would you ask me? You know what you think,” Robinson said. “You think Slaton’s a heck of a player. You think White’s a heck of a player. You think Reynaud’s a heck of a player. The fullback has broken 67 facemasks. I heard about it.
“Let me tell you something. What was Slaton’s … I don’t even know what his long run was? I’m not going to take that. They’re a good team. I don’t know what you want me to tell you. I’m just rambling now. I’ll write it for you,” Robinson said.
Of course these things always go in cycles and Syracuse will once again get things going. The school that ranks 14th in all-time victories with 669 (11 ahead of West Virginia in 15th place) has too much history to stay down for long.
Perhaps another win will come next weekend against Rutgers, or the week after that against Buffalo.
There is also Open coming up on Oct. 27.
