A semi-informed breakdown of the Syracuse Football coaching search

Syracuse fired Dino Babers, so now we're into full on silly season.

I’m sitting in the Atlanta airport after attending Syracuse football’s 31-22 loss at the hands of Georgia Tech. It was not a pretty game, and even with some pretty poor discipline and penalties from the Orange, they still had a chance to win the game. I will write another post later this week breaking down the Dino Babers era at Syracuse, but for now, what’s needed to know is that Athletic Director John Wildhack fired the head coach, and now has an aggressively short window to hire a new name. (We’ll get into that later this week.)

I don’t have any names that sources are feeding me in any way, so I’m going to reference the reporting done by others here as I break down the buckets of head coach types I think the Orange are now looking at to fill the vacancy. I think it will become pretty apparent what I think the right call is by reading below, and as always, I appreciate you taking the time to read my therapy sessions.

Old Name, No New Tricks

Includes but is not limited to: Bob O’Brien, Joe Morehead, Doug Marrone, Steve Addazio, Al Golden, Dan Mullen

Why you do this? It’s really obvious that even if Syracuse wins on Saturday against Wake Forest and goes to a bowl in back to back seasons for the first time in nearly a decade, the appetite for more football was completely zapped in the fanbase via the 1-5 skid the Orange have produced. This kind of coach brings with them name recognition that’s immediately leveraged into fan base rejuvenation, something Syracuse desperately needs.

What’s the risk? As everyone likes to tell me when I bring up “traditions” or “marketing” with football, this fanbase cares about wins and losses. None of these names have done a lot of that lately, or they’d be out of Syracuse’s price range. College football has fundamentally shifted in a post NIL and Transfer Portal world, and we saw Dino struggle to adjust to these changes with his roster building strategies. Most names in this category will not have successfully built a team through the portal or maintained the roster with NIL, meaning you’re hiring them based on potential where their past success outweighs their failures enough to warrant trust. But if you go down that pathway you should really be looking at…

Hotshot Youngun

Includes but is not limited to: Tony White, Sean Lewis, Alex Atkins, Adam Fuller, Jason Beck

Why you do this? Syracuse will never have the biggest wallet to hire the best, proven commodities on the market. If you grab an up and comer, not only can you potentially get a great hire cheaper, but should become so successful long term that a big school does want to hire them away, you’re getting paid nicely via buyouts. On the field, the Orange have a build in advantage with their home Dome, and have proven to be a team where units of three stars can be top 25 producing sides with the right scheme. A schematically sharp coach can succeed at Syracuse if given the chance to focus on X’s and O’s of head coaching and build a likeminded staff around them.

What’s the risk? Look: these guys are insanely intelligent at running a piece of a football program; Running the whole thing is an entirely different beast, especially in an era where college coaches (Dino Babers included) shielded them from any media availability and thus public accountability. When Syracuse looked to hire Dino Babers in 2015, Chris Ash was supposedly offered the job before he decided to go to Rutgers and put together an 8-33 record, and Scott Frost, who succeeded at UCF before flailing at Nebraska, a school far more like Syracuse than I want to think too long about. This kind of move can work when there is a solid infrastructure in place to allow a greener head coach to ease into program management and leverage their intelligence into on field results as quickly as possible. Syracuse does not have that foundation for that scenario to play out. So that naturally leads you to look more at

Program Builders

Includes but is not limited to: Curt Cignetti, Jason Candle, Bob Chesney, Jamey Chadwell, Jeff Monken, Chuck Martin, Tyson Helton, Jerry Kill,

Why you do this? Syracuse isn’t a Group of 5 job: it’s a school in the ACC with a tradition that fans will always hold in the back of their minds when comparing success metrics of the present to the past. A coach coming into Syracuse could really use experience in running a program top to bottom, with minimal resources, and have a strategy of how to navigate these challenges. Proof of concept somewhere not Syracuse, but with enough similarities, can be a big plus for the resume.

What’s the risk? This was exactly the profile of Dino Babers, the guy just fired. We saw first hand as a coach used to a whole different level and operation of College Football struggled to adapt to the day in and days out of not winning consistently or at a high level, which is almost certainly going to be the case in 2024 with the Orange without some skilled navigation of the transfer portal. When you talk about the Orange in relation to the rest of it’s peers in the ACC, it can be easy to see “coach winning” and assume that will translate up, but it’s not a guarantee when $1million at a G5 job does a helluva lot more than $1million in the ACC and Power 5.

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Ultimately, I think it’s telling every article written about this job opening talks about how hard the job appears. NIL infrastructure is changing, but it’s not enough right now compared to the expectations the Orange have. However, I thought Nick Carparelli’s quote was telling:

“Syracuse is never gonna out-resource people,[…] They didn’t back then and they don’t now, and I don’t see that happening the future, but that’s OK. You can still be successful there, and I saw it happen firsthand.”

When you look at this job, it’s going to take a holistic approach to get right. We’re not just talking all facets of on the field play, but how are there guys training, eating, sleeping, working with coaching groups and working with their position groups. e know that nutrition is something lacking at Cuse, the players have said so. We know the NIL and alumni finacial support is lacking, the football alumni have said so and are the main ones driving current efforts to catch up to the rest of college football. At a school like Syracuse, you can’t do what everyone else is doing in these areas and expect to do anything different; they just don’t have the skill or talent to show up and beat anyone. Heck, they couldn’t beat a Georgia Tech team that’s about the same talent wise right now! The next guy to take this job is stepping into one of the hardest jobs in college football when the sport is fundamentally changing. It’s going to take a certain type of coach to navigate this storm and guide Syracuse to some consistency. My pick? Cignetti or Candle seem to be the best options on paper, but don’t count out Tony White.