The Daily OrangeMCCULLOUGH: Seniors saw 4 years of compelling stories, if not great results
By Andy McCullough
Posted: 5/6/09, 6:27 PM EST Section: Sports
On a sun-splashed Saturday morning in September 2005, I woke up early in my Flint Hall dorm room and prepared to become a Syracuse fan.
Guys from my floor packed into my room at the end of the hall. We drank shots of rum. Paint was scrawled across chests. One guy donned a cape. Then my new best friends and I rolled down the Mount Olympus steps and into the Carrier Dome to watch the Orange play West Virginia. I knew, vaguely, that the old head football coach was gone. I wondered if Diamond Ferri was still here. Yeah, I didn't know much about the team. But little of that mattered as we piled into the student section.
A lean man with white hair came out of the tunnel before the game started. He pumped his fist at us. The crowd roared. Greg Robinson, I remember thinking, this guy might be alright.
That's my first Syracuse sports memory. I cherish it. I don't know why. It's a weird memory, of course, considering three years later I would write that nice, white-haired man was incompetent, a failure and someone who needed to be fired - immediately.
But it's a memory. That's all I can offer. That's all anyone, when talking about sports, really can offer.
This column is supposed to be a retrospective of the past four years in Syracuse athletics. If you're reading this in print, you're probably a senior like me. You're probably graduating this weekend. So I'm supposed to write to you, Class of 2009, this column as an 800-word bow to wrap up your four years.
Well, I can't do that. Sports aren't that easy to understand. No one figure embodies these past four years. No one fits. Greg Robinson? Too pessimistic. Jonny Flynn? Too optimistic. Donte Green? Too fleeting. Jim Boeheim? Too enduring.
So hopefully you have some stories to tell. To my mind, that's what makes these games special.
Maybe you don't think that way. Maybe you subscribe to the Lester Freamon prom date theory: If you're going to the dance, you need to get something out of it. For you, maybe sports are about supremacy. Championships. Parades. Bragging rights.
Guys from my floor packed into my room at the end of the hall. We drank shots of rum. Paint was scrawled across chests. One guy donned a cape. Then my new best friends and I rolled down the Mount Olympus steps and into the Carrier Dome to watch the Orange play West Virginia. I knew, vaguely, that the old head football coach was gone. I wondered if Diamond Ferri was still here. Yeah, I didn't know much about the team. But little of that mattered as we piled into the student section.
A lean man with white hair came out of the tunnel before the game started. He pumped his fist at us. The crowd roared. Greg Robinson, I remember thinking, this guy might be alright.
That's my first Syracuse sports memory. I cherish it. I don't know why. It's a weird memory, of course, considering three years later I would write that nice, white-haired man was incompetent, a failure and someone who needed to be fired - immediately.
But it's a memory. That's all I can offer. That's all anyone, when talking about sports, really can offer.
This column is supposed to be a retrospective of the past four years in Syracuse athletics. If you're reading this in print, you're probably a senior like me. You're probably graduating this weekend. So I'm supposed to write to you, Class of 2009, this column as an 800-word bow to wrap up your four years.
Well, I can't do that. Sports aren't that easy to understand. No one figure embodies these past four years. No one fits. Greg Robinson? Too pessimistic. Jonny Flynn? Too optimistic. Donte Green? Too fleeting. Jim Boeheim? Too enduring.
So hopefully you have some stories to tell. To my mind, that's what makes these games special.
Maybe you don't think that way. Maybe you subscribe to the Lester Freamon prom date theory: If you're going to the dance, you need to get something out of it. For you, maybe sports are about supremacy. Championships. Parades. Bragging rights.
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