Syracuse University terminated head coach Greg Robinson earlier today with two games remaining on otheir 2008 schedule, ending what the Post-Standard’s Donnie Webb describes as “a turbulent era that began with great optimism only to deterioriate into misery, hopelessness and the worst four-year run in the program’s 119 years of competition.” While Robinson’s rumored replacements include UConn’s Randy Edsall, East Carolina’s Skip Holtz and the recently-liberated Lane Kiffin, the Hartford Courant’s Jeff Jacobs gives Edsall (above) something less than a job recommendation, taking considerable umbrage at prior claims the Huskies would start either Cody Endres or Zach Frazier for yesterday’s trip to the Carrier Dome. Instead, Tyler Lorenzen took most of the snaps during Saturday’s rout of the Orange, leading Jacobs to protest, “if you plunk down your hard-earned money to buy a newspaper and you want to buy what Randy Edsall is selling, that’s your business. But Coach Pinocchio’s words come wrapped with the following disclaimer: caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware.”
The problem is we are in the truth-telling business. We are in the information-distribution business, and Lorenzen said he knew by Thursday he’d start. And the truth is many of you who are doing the laughing are laughing because the Huskies won. If UConn was 3-7 instead of 7-3, chances are it wouldn’t be half as funny to you. I feel sorry for reporters who regularly cover the UConn football team or fans who want to keep up. Reporters deserve extra pay as assistant coaches. They have the temerity to ask questions and then print answers in the days leading up to the game that as often as not prove to be unadulterated bull. They are being used in clumsy attempts to mislead opponents.
Syracuse is 56-81 since its last winning season in 2001, and since Edsall is a Syracuse alum there is not an insignificant chunk of the Orange’s fan base that would like to see Edsall on their sideline. The whispers are that Syracuse would pay him $16 million over eight years. Bud Poliquin, the columnist at the Syracuse Post-Standard, wrote that Jim Brown and Floyd Little apparently have called Edsall to make recruiting pitches for the job.
Edsall went out of his way a few weeks ago to start a teleconference by announcing he had never had any contact with anybody about any job. If you can’t get a coach not to lie about injuries, you can forget the truth about changing jobs. We’re not that naive. We’re just asking for a non-committal truth on personnel. Questionable. Maybe. Something along that line. Don’t go over the line like this past week and lie.