Steve’s back with some “old guy” thoughts
Hi, I’m back… sort of. I had an idea, and our illustrious grand master has let me take some time to expand on it. All this transfer talk and culture change got this “old guy” (I’m 40 now, cut me some slack) thinking about the Doug Marrone era and the tumult his arrival caused on the Syracuse Orange program, and the culture surrounding football, resulting in a mass exodus of sorts. A mass exodus not unsimilar to what we’re seeing under Coach Fran Brown by the current numbers.
The Orange have had two even moderately successful coaches since Paul Pasqualoni was let go: Doug Marrone and Dino Babers. We’re now into year two under Coach Fran Brown, who racked up an impressive season to start his tenure in Syracuse. Fran and Saint Doug also had one thing in common, a drastic turnover when they took over the program.
Having lived through the Greg Robinson era up on the Hill, I was ready for the change in coaching staff. I don’t think anyone had an idea what to expect when Doug Marrone, a Syracuse alumnus with little else known about him by the average fan, got the job in 2008.
Rich Barnes-Imagn Images
At the time he was the offensive line coach and offensive coordinator for the New Orleans Saints. He had a name in coaching circles, but John Q. Syracuse fan didn’t know who he was. We all did the 2008 equivalent of fervently Googling who he was, which was still Googling but with less AI and crappy ad results. Similar to what we all did last offseason with Fran Brown.
When Marrone took over the program it was a dramatic culture shift for anyone associated. The Bologna in Chief noted that he modeled his system after Coach Dick Macpherson, who he played under at Syracuse. His militaristic method of running the ship was a drastic change from the lackadaisical Robinson era. Marrone instilled a program based on rigid discipline, strict adherence and compliance.
As you can imagine, this created a bit of a culture shock and resulted in almost 30 players leaving the program by year two of the regime. These players left either of their own volition via the at the time, very different, transfer portal, or removed from the team by the head man himself.
Marrone, when he took over in December, decommitted his entire first recruiting class outside Alec Lemon, Justin Pugh and Andrew Phillips and rebuilt the class to his own liking. Add to that the tumultuous saga between Marrone and Mike Williams, the Orange All-Conference wide receiver who stepped away from the team when facing a second suspension for violation of team rules mid-season.
The mass-exodus that occurred from all the happenings ripped the Orange into a new era, kicking and screaming and at the time ultimately righted the ship, gaining bowl status from absolute basement dwelling by year two.
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Flash forward fifteen years to November 2023. Syracuse Football, while in a much better spot than in 2008, was stagnating. Coach Dino Babers had pulled the squad back from the depths, had some spikes of quality, showed some flashes of emerging as a snowball that caught fire, but had been unable to get over the hump and ultimately is let go.
Coach Brown came in, impressed the administration, and caused the fanbase to fervently Google “Fran Brown Georgia Coach” to figure out who they had leading their team. The more we searched and learned, I think the more we were excited about the new direction and the northeast ties. Then he comes out with the Donovin Darius story, the Camden connection, Northeast football, working with George Deleone and wanting to model the program after Coach Paul Pasqualoni and bring it back to the mid-90’s level of quality.
Abe Arredondo-Imagn Images
I wrote it before, but this felt different. The more you learned, the more layers you pulled back, Brown was practicing what he preached. He’s not one for coach-speak. He’s one to blatantly tell you how it is, the opposite of Coach Marrone. From all interactions, it seems he’s got his guys back, and will run through a wall for them, just like they will for him. But he’s also brought into the equation more accountability, more discipline and that can lead to tumult as we’ve seen. Add the new NIL/transfer portal landscape to the equation and we’re seeing shakeup we haven’t seen in more than a decade.
Since Coach Fran took over there have been 48 players that have left the program per data from 247sports.com and their recruiting section. At this point there have been 20 of those in 2025, including some higher profile moves away from the program such as star slot receiver Trebor Pena, starting freshman corner Marcellus Barnes, starting center J’Onre Reed, and freshman All-American Maraad Watson.
We won’t know the real reasons for any of them leaving unless they say something, but in the new, modern NIL landscape, we can only hope that these young men got a bag handed to them, as all of them deserve it. There have been eight inbound, and the window still open, to help offset these departures, with the portal window still open.
We’ve also seen an administration that has supported Coach Fran in a much different way than they did Coach Marrone. John Wildhack and the current athletics admin have made it a point, along with generous donors like John Lally, who’s name is on the building, to renovate and reinvigorate the football program. On the flip side, Marrone reportedly butted heads with the administration over them giving him the resources he needed, which ultimately may have led to his early departure (among other things).
I don’t know if I realized until I really started digging in, but it seems like things can be two things comparing the starts of these two tenures. Coach Brown can have higher turnover but also a higher success rate than Coach Marrone ever did. Based on the modern landscape of the game, support from the school, strong recruiting ties, a wide reaching coaching staff and upgraded facilities to keep up with the Jones’s, there’s a framework in place for Coach Fran to keep this up at a high level.
Coach Marrone also proved that sometimes the apple cart needs to be damn near knocked over and that you can pick up the pieces and reshape the product on the field pretty quickly when you get “your guys.” Especially after what we know about the Pena situation, Fran isn’t afraid to tell someone to go get their bag and reload with another one of his guys.
(Ed. Note: Let’s hope Fran is content with working miracles in Syracuse and not the NFL)