In the wake of SU Athletics dismissing Syracuse football head coach Dino Babers this past Sunday, effective immediately, ESPN’s David M. Hale writes that the Orange faces a “stark reality” and problems that run deeper than the ‘Cuse replacing its eighth-year head coach.
After the Orange lost at Georgia Tech, 31-22, last Saturday night, that dropped the ‘Cuse to 5-6 overall and 1-6 in Atlantic Coast Conference competition within the current 2023 campaign. Syracuse football hosts Wake Forest this coming Saturday afternoon, and the Orange can still reach a bowl game for the second year in a row if it can knock off the Demon Deacons.
One contest shy of wrapping up his eighth season on the Hill, Babers compiled a 41–55 overall mark and a 20–45 record in league encounters during his tenure in Central New York. He produced two winning campaigns, and his teams went to a pair of bowl games, going 1-1.
Those kinds of outcomes made the decision by SU Athletics leaders to fire Babers “hardly a surprise,” Hale writes. Tight ends coach Nunzio Campanile, by the way, will serve as the interim head coach when the ‘Cuse battles Wake Forest this weekend.
Syracuse football is conducting a national search for a new head coach to replace Dino Babers.
Hale writes that the firing of Babers “signals a larger set of problems — problems that echo the uphill battle so many low-end Power 5 teams will face moving forward in the new era of college football,” with the sport’s evolving landscape requiring head coaches and their teams to navigate the NCAA’s transfer portal, conference realignment, and name, image and likeness opportunities.
In 2022, the Orange went 7-6 overall and reached a bowl game. However, the ‘Cuse had raced out to a 6-0 start last year and a 4-0 beginning this year, only to go on a downward spiral in the second half of each of the past two seasons. That was enough for Syracuse University athletic director John Wildhack to elect to make a change at the top of Syracuse football.
A few weeks ago, Babers said, according to media reports, that the Orange’s depth had taken a hit in part due to former players transferring to other schools amid the growing NIL saga. “Schools like us, we’re not going to have a lot of depth because it gets bought away,” Babers said in part at the time.
And, as Hale notes, that’s the challenging position that head coaches at lower-end Power-Five squads face. This past off-season, several ‘Cuse players headed to the pros, and a couple of talented guys also transferred out.
What’s more, in recent weeks, the Orange’s offense has become one-dimensional due to injuries that its top-two quarterbacks have been dealing with, and while the ‘Cuse was able to recently knock off Pittsburgh in New York City relying almost exclusively on its running game on offense, that strategy didn’t work this past Saturday evening against Georgia Tech in Atlanta.
Given NIL and the transfer portal, those are huge obstacles for the Syracuse football head coach, whether Babers or his eventual successor, to overcome in trying to land commitments from four-star prospects. In recent years, the Orange’s recruiting classes, while okay, have consisted virtually entirely of three-star players.
Hale acknowledged in his piece that Babers’ recent comments regarding depth, the portal and NIL aren’t off-base, although the ESPN writer also says that Babers has made some mistakes, and those mistakes are tremendously magnified “when the margins are so thin” to win at the highest level against elite competition.
"In adding that Babers went 12-12 over the past two stanzas, Hale summed it up this way. “Perhaps the next coach will win more than 12 games in two years. It’s certainly possible. But the problems at Syracuse run deep, and some of them simply can’t be addressed by hiring a new coach or funneling more money into the football program.”"
I hate to say it, and I hate to admit it, but Hale is spot on here.