Syracuse Football: Athletic Director Wildhack talks Football Scheduling

Syracuse’s Athletic Director John Wildhack talked about Syracuse Football schedule in a radio show appearance. Inside the Loud House tells you what he told Orange fans.

Syracuse Athletic Director John Wildhack talked Syracuse football with Brent Axe on his radio show on Friday. He acknowledged the University schedules tough opponents on purpose, yet the goal is still to win games. Does that sound puzzling to you? It did to me too. Check out what his exact words, according to Syracuse.com.

"Dino and I, we’re in lock step on this. You start with your conference schedule and we have eight challenging games each year. Arguably, the division we play in is the best in college football. Then you’ve got the crossover game. Then some years, as in 2018, you’ve got a ninth game against Notre Dame. I think knowing what we have in terms of quality and depth is we want to build an attractive non-conference schedule that, at the same time, frankly, we want to give our coaching staff and our team an opportunity to have success and to win games."

I had to read that paragraph a few times the first time I read it. Wildhack said that both he and Dino Babers agreed that they needed to make the non-conference games “attractive” and hard so as to challenge the Orange before the tough ACC games start. Yet, the goal is to “win games”. How is that possible? Maybe he has more insight? He continued with this explanation, also courtesy of Syracuse.com:

"This is not like the days of the old Big East. ACC Football in 2017 is night and day from where we were four or five years ago. We all need to understand that and schedule in a way that, yeah, we want to schedule good teams. We’re playing high-quality, nationally-ranked teams each year. I think your non-conference needs to be reflective and take into account the annual challenges you have within the conference."

This is where I got real mad. In my mind I was like, “Hello??? Have you seen Syracuse Football have more than three winning seasons in the past ten years?”

I get why Wildhack and Babers want us to be challenged before we get into ACC play. Jim Boeheim sometimes does that to test his team as well. However, doing it against mostly bowl teams from the year before, or ranked teams this year, seems a bit harsh.

In my opinion, the Orange are struggling to win games: period. Even the so-called easy games aren’t easy on the Orange anymore. They have to earn those wins and that’s really sort of sad if you think about it. The Orange may go into ACC play better tested having played harder teams early in the schedule, but it won’t lead to many wins. There in lies the flaw and what truly makes me angry.