Syracuse Football & The Art of Building a Program
At 8–2 and now ranked 12th in the latest College Football Playoff Ranking, the Syracuse Orange have placed themselves in the national spotlight with no signs of slowing down. How has the program produced such a turnaround in just three seasons?
I. The Right Hire
In 2003, the Kansas State Wildcats won 11 football games. It was its sixth time in seven seasons the program had reached the feat. The accomplishment would be the crowning achievement of head coach Bill Snyder’s career, reviving a program once thought to be dead.
The rebuild was a success.
15 years prior, Snyder took over as the head coach of a football team that had gone 3–40–1 after four seasons. Facilities had crippled, come gameday, the stadium was empty and off the field, players were too embarrassed to wear their own K-State gear in public.
In terms of a rebuild, Snyder faced a pile of rubble, yet he still managed to piece together a concrete program. In that same period, Temple University fired three head coaches while losing 132 games. Snyder attributed his success to implementing a system that went beyond X’s and O’s, making sure to find recruits that would fit in the locker room and in the classroom.
At Alabama, the most dominate college football program ever built, it’s easy to credit the Crimson Tide’s success to the amount of talent recruited by its head coach, Nick Saban, but that’s the last step of the building process and probably the least important.
If you ever watch Saban speak, like other great coaches, the John Wooden’s or Bill Belichick’s of the world, you’ll notice he’s a rigid example of every principle his team is built on. The discipline, the consistency, the dominance, gradually these traits are all eventually genetically rooted into their program’s DNA.
“How you lead,” Saban says. “Defines you as a leader and what kind of team you’ll be leading.”
Likewise, brash, audacious personalities can be passed down as well. As assistants and coordinators, Rex Ryan and Scott Shafer — two head coaches I’d played for — their bold, aggressive attitudes aided them in becoming great coaches but as leaders those traits created ardent, temperamental football teams apt to losing their composure.
While both will be remembered as great coaches, neither managed to secure overall winning records as a head coach.
As an athletic director, when selecting your next head coach, it’s most important to find a candidate whose presence is disciplined and consistent while his diction and direction are both clear and effective. The great coaches embrace these traits because they understand that they are a reflection of their team’s culture and character.
In Syracuse, Babers checks these boxes. His voice and command can pull you into his locker room through ESPN cameras during postgame speeches, while his presence demonstrates discipline and measure.
This summer, junior wideout, Devin Butler told me, “I love coach because he’s hard on you, but at the same time you know why, and you appreciate it because you know at the end of the day, it’s going to make you better.”
II. Setting The Tone
Culture, like coaching, is top down.
Consider Stanford’s rebuilding project in 2007, under Buddy Teevens and Walt Harris the Cardinal won just 16 games after five seasons. Taking over as head coach, Jim Harbaugh believed he needed to change the attitude of his football team to run the program he envisioned.
Bow to no man, bow to no program.
The phrase was plastered across hallway walls and would serve as a maxim and a tool of indoctrination for Harboughs players hoping to manufacture a new locker room attitude once considered soft, stuffy and of the elitist nature felt on campus.
By 2010, Harbaugh had built Stanford into one of the toughest programs around the country. The ground-and-pound football team would finish with a 12–1 record and a BCS Bowl game victory in the Orange Bowl. Harbaugh’s character as a coach reflected the program he wanted to run, but he knew the culture and attitude inside his program needed to reflect that as well. Combining the two lifted Stanford into a position to become one of the premier programs in college football.
Four years later and across the country in Syracuse, I was running sprints with the Orange during summer conditioning. It was a typical 80-degree afternoon in Syracuse and temperaments were about as high as the temperature.
“Ay we got three left, standup straight bro.” I can remember senior captain Cam Lynch telling a teammate. In response, the teammate cursed him out. The crazy part was the teammate was new to the team, not a freshman, but a JUCO recruit. Yet no one corrected him. Maybe I should’ve, but even my own attitude was selfish. The team hadn’t bought in.
Myself included.
By season’s end, “Control the controllables” one of Shafer’s aphorisms, was used regularly as an underhanded dig at other players struggling under a particular circumstance. Usually by players Shafer was hard on but giving a second chance to. The respect wasn’t there and the culture smelled no better than our record. That football team would go 4–8 while Cam would go on to sign with the now L.A. Rams.
When people have real leaders, there’s a feeling of security — somebody reliable is in charge. When a majority don’t feel that, there’s a sense of unrest and jitteriness that filters out and down.
III. Talent
Around the country and in Syracuse, in the early stages or after things go south, some coaches and a sizeable amount of fans argue that their teams don’t have the talent or the right personnel to win right away. When done so publicly by coaches, the practice is contemptable.
Talent sustains programs. It doesn’t build them.
In 2006, Chris Peterson would lead an undefeated Boise State team over national power, Oklahoma, in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, the program would finish fifth in country and according to 247sports, the Broncos had just one four-star recruit and average recruiting classes ranked among the countries lowest. Over the next seven years, Boise finished each season with 11 wins or better. Peterson proved that talent doesn’t always win you football games. Like Snyder and Harbaugh, he built a contender from within. Talented recruits took notice, recruiting classes improved and the program has sustained itself over the last decade.
At Duke, David Cutcliffe took a dormant program and built it into an ACC contender on the football field. The Blue Devils didn’t produce a winning record until Cutcliffe’s seventh season, going 10–4 in 2013. Per 247sports recruiting database, the Blue Devils never finished above a 63rd national ranking or a 12th place ranking among ACC opponents between signing classes of 2010 and 2013.
In 2017, the Blue Devils opened a new athletic performance center spanning all of Duke’s athletic programs on the back of $340 million-dollar campaign geared towards facility upgrades, scholarship endowments and operational support for all 27 varsity sports.
The recruiting benefits were evident immediately. On the promise of a new building, Dukes 2016 recruitment class jumped to 33rd while its goup of recruits from 2017, also a top-50, class ranked 47th. Duke and Cutcliffe are proving that if you satisfy coaching and culture requirements, the wins will come and with the help of a committed athletic department, the wins and a few shiny facilities will aid in your recruiting, preserving your success.
In program building, the key to a successful college football team is leadership. A great coach establishes principles for assistants and players — advancing them is his project and purpose. Great leaders, guide you with them, logically, from point A to point B. Dealing with young men, the trait is essential.
Given the locker room speeches and new attitude out of Manley Fieldhouse it seems Babers is fit for the job — judgements based on records are foolish. The Orange can return to prominence under his leadership. Talent will only prolong the wave while losing or firing Babers would simply tank the ship.
A character who loves movies, in the art of building a program, it’s less about Babers’ actors and more about his direction. A sloppy script can sink the show while a charismatic lead will be met with lionizing applause.
