Early Expectations

Looking at SUs sched what are the expectations as of now? I will divide our opponents by where I project them to be overall.

Top 75-100
Maine, Akron, and @Louisville
Maine is 1AA but is usually a strong 1AA so I will include them here. Two games are at home and the other is a team we have played well the last 4 years, winning the last 2. Worst case scenario we should be 2-1 here. But I think we will go 3-0.

Top 50-75
Minn, NW, RU, @UConn
Three of these are at home. And all four are beatable. I think SU should be able to squeeze out at least 1 W here.

Top 25-50
USF, WV, Cincy, @Pitt
Again 3 are at home. While any would be a mild upset, none are out of the question. But I think we go O-fer here.

Top 25
@PSU
Dont see any way SU wins this one.


So as of right now I think 3-9 should be the minimum expectation. Anything less will be a disappointment.

Follow up

As a follow up to yesterday I wanted to compare other Eastern FB teams. I think it is safe to say that SU in the last 50 years is the best BE team. But what about Army, BC, MD, Navy, PSU, Temple, and VT?

Top 25 Finishes
PSU 40
VT 17 (15 since 1990)
BC 11
MD 11
Navy 4
Army 1
Temple 1

So after looking at all of this, SU seems to be the 2nd best Northeastern team the last 50 years behind PSU, who is #1 by far. For awhile SU was on par with PSU until they pulled away in the 1970s. From 1959-1969 PSU had 9 Top 25s, while SU had 8 and a Championship. From 1970-1986 PSU had 15 Top 25s with 2 Championships, while SU had ZERO Top 25s. Then from 1987-2001 SU was very close to PSU, 11 to 10 in Top 25s. And then SU fell down again as PSU has had 5 Top 25s from 2002-2008 and SU has had NONE.

Also there is the Lambert Trophy winners of the last 50 years

PSU 26
Miami 4 (BE teams are eligible)
SU 4
BC 3
Pitt 3
WV 3
Dartmouth 2
VT 2
Navy 1.5
Louisville 1
Yale 0.5

Again there is a huge gap between #1 and #2, but once again SU is the 2nd best of the bunch.

As we approach

This year will mark the 50th anniversary of the 1959 Championship team. So I decided to look back and see how good have we been since then. In those 50 seasons SU has finished the season ranked 18 times (the Coaches poll 17 times and in the AP poll 12 times). From 1959-1967 we finished ranked every year. But we didnt finish ranked again until 1987. From 1987-2001 we finished ranked 10 times out of 15 seasons. But since 2001 we have been dry. Hopefully Marrone will fix that sooner rather than later.

For comparison the other BE teams Top 25 finishes the last 50 years

WV 14
Pitt 13
Louisville 7
RU 3
Cincy 2
UConn 0 (2000 joined 1A)
USF 0 (2001 joined 1A)

What about us Dougie?

Dear Doug Marrone,

I think it is great that you are having a Spring Tour but what about us Alumni in Jersey? There are a ton of us here and we are too often ignored. And even if there was a stop in our area I bet it would most likely be in NYC. That is still a trip for most of us. Well then Doug Marrone I demand an apology. Or you can just add a tour date at the East Brunswick Hilton. It is conveniently located for most NJ residents and those NYC folk can travel over here for once in their life times. Also it will be a big FU to Schiano.

Thank You

King Otto III

How far away are we?

Some people think SU has a long way to go to get back to .500 FB. While SUs talent is down compared to past SU teams how far away is our talent from Bowl bound teams? I believe that coaching had more to do with the GRob era than poor talent. Just look at his first season here. So I decided to take a look back at GRobs record and how SU did against bad teams. Here is what I found:

Record vs 1AA teams: 1-0... yes we only played a 1AA team once.

Record vs 1A teams that finished the regular season under .500: 6-6... that is bad. However with better coaching shouldnt we beat more of these teams?

Record vs 1A teams that finished the regular season .500: 3-5... that is still bad. But again with good coaching we could easily get more Ws here. If you are a .500 team shouldnt you be expected to be on par with other .500 teams? If GRob could almost go .500 against these teams shouldnt Marrone have no problem?

Record vs 1A teams that finished the regular season above .500: 0-26... yes it was ZERO Ws. That is amazing. Are we really that far away from Bowl bound teams? Or did GRob and gang have no clue how to play teams with any talent?

So against teams that lacked talent GRob was 10-11 overall, despite his poor coaching. So it seems that we certainly have the talent to beat bad teams. Against teams with decent or better talent he was 0-26. While we dont have the talent to beat these teams with any consistency, upsets happen all the time. The fact that we didnt even upset one of these teams is amazing. And that IMO reflects on the coaching. The other thing this all shows me is that SU plays a difficult schedule. Of the 47 games we played 26 teams that finished better then 7-6 (ND) and 20 that finished worse.