#PayDino swept the nation earlier this season for the Syracuse football squad. But it should be a different hashtag trending says Paul Sr.
This past October Friday the 13th was the opposite of bad luck day for several reasons. My beautiful daughter Kali Esden got married and the OITNF shocked the world and beat the defending national champion Clemson Tigers. Following this win, the printing presses were running non-stop T-shirts with the logo #PayDino.
I was somewhat caught up in the frenzy and thought hey maybe we have turned this thing around. And then the bottom fell out.
In my last article ‘How the hell did 4-8 happen?’ I portrayed the spiraling fortunes of the OITNF, similar to a toilet flushing.
Many sports radio talking heads say that Dino Babers isn’t on the hot seat to produce a Bowl victory next year, frankly I do not understand that stance.
The same ‘experts’ that are making this claim are the same ones that called for Scott Shafer’s head. So I did some research to try and understand the difference between the last two coaches of the Orange.
So let me break down some average season statistics for both coaches for you:
| Offensive PPG | Defensive Points allowed | Average margin of defeat | W-L Record | |
| Scott Shafer | 22.4 | 26.4 | 19.8 | 14-23 (38%) |
| Dino Babers | 26.5 | 35.4 | 19.4 | 8-16 (33%) |
| Difference | +4.1 Advantage Babers | 9.0 Advantage Shafer | 0.4 Advantage Babers |
Let those settle in for a minute. I am confident that you are as surprised as I was about those numbers.
So right about now I can hear Bill Parcells saying:
"‘If they want you to cook the dinner, at least they ought to let you shop for some of the groceries’."
As this applies to College Football that correlates to letting the coach have time to coach a team with the players he recruited. This is not feasible in the ‘win now’ generation. I would also offer that using Mr. Parcell’s analogy to be the best of the best cooks you have to sometimes ‘make do’ with the ingredients you have on hand, similar to the shows Iron Chef and Master Chef the true greats can whip up a beef wellington with pop tarts and spam.
Dino Babers is the ultimate salesman. Always with a new catchphrase but with no better results than his predecessor. To me the ultimate reason I am all in to #FireDino is simple.
When push came to shove this season in the Carrier Dome, Scott Shafer brought in a significantly less talented team in Middle Tennessee State and shutdown the Orange is the New Fast.
Next: Syracuse Basketball: Top 30 Players in School History
For those with short term memory loss, they beat us in every major statistical category. It was Shafer’s cobbled together second rate defense versus the shiny Jet Powered OITNF and I will say it now. The better coach walked away with the victory. The two “skins” on Dino’s wall (one against an overrated Virginia Tech team and the other against a Clemson team without its’ starting QB) don’t stack up too well versus the abhorrent losses. Time to move on … oh look its Basketball season.