The first thing that comes to mind with Syracuse was firing Paul Pasqualoni, which might have been justifiable after a couple of mediocre seasons, but I thought it was weird just because it's always seemed to me that college coaches are tenured like professors: If you manage to keep your job for six years or so, you're practically unfireable thereafter
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No, Coach P got fired because his recruiting had become quite bad, and it's just now showing up on the field. I can't see it getting much better, either...there aren't a lot of positives to going to Syracuse compared to other BCS conference programs.
Upstate New York isn't exactly the greatest place to go to school...there's not a lot nearby, and I don't know how many of you have been there, but in the winter, it's sure not Miami. There aren't a lot of kids who grow up dreaming of playing for Syracuse, like they might West Virginia or Louisville or Pitt if they grew up in-state. You never get on national TV -- the Big East is the only BCS conference that doesn't have a network deal with a broadcast network or ESPN (not ESPN2 or ESPN+). Syracuse only got on national TV once this year, when they played Notre Dame (and got killed, of course). And with Miami and Va Tech leaving the conference, there aren't any perennial powers in the conference that you can point to and say you get to play those guys every year.
I don't see things turning around in Syracuse anytime soon. It's hard to recruit to a losing program, and it's hard to turn around a losing program if you can't recruit.