On Monday, the Atlantic Coast Conference officially added Syracuse, Pittsburgh and Notre Dame to create a 15 team league. Of the Eagles' three new conference mates, you only need to familiarize yourself with one of them:
Syracuse University.
Appreciating that there's now nearly a decade's worth of Boston College and Syracuse grads that may not be familiar with one another, I figured this was as good a time as any to get reacquainted. Here are a few reasons why you should absolutely hate the Syracuse Orange.
-- If one was asked to build a university from scratch in the least desirable city in the country, they would choose South Bend, Indiana. But if they were forced to pick a second least desirable city, chances are good one would choose Syracuse, New York -- a dying, cold-weather, sorry excuse for a city located in the northeastern reaches of the Rust Belt.
-- It's so cold here that Syracuse's football program is forced to play its home games in a dome. You know which college football programs play in domes? The worst ones. Idaho. Houston. Texas-San Antonio. Tulane. Even Boise State sacks up and plays outdoors.
-- The SU athletics department clings to a ridiculous marketing pitch in no small part because they want to disassociate themselves with the city of Syracuse and upstate New York. SU obnoxiously plaster billboards and NYC taxi cabs with said marketing slogan -- "New York's (City's) College Team" - when the school is closer to Canada than Midtown Manhattan. So, Canada's College Team.
-- Most fans in the 20-30 year-old demographic have this strange obsession with becoming the first person to discover Syracuse (football)'s true rival, when the answer is smacking them in the face. Perhaps it is Virginia Tech, they'll say. Remember all those games 20 years ago that were moderately close with the Hokies? Nevermind the fact that the program faced Virginia Tech all of five times before the Hokies inclusion in the Big East, never played them after Tech jumped to the ACC and will play them just once every six season in the ACC.
-- Pitt was paired with the Orange as Syracuse's cross-division rival, so the program's natural football rivalry has to be the Panthers, no? Frankly, I don't respect any program that considers Pittsburgh to be their chief rival in anything.
-- How about all those close games with Big East 2.0 Louisville? Certainly Orange-Cardinals is the league's budding Atlantic Division rivalry. Remember that one game we won a few years back when we were a 37-point underdog to Louisville, forgetting for a moment that we let the program get so bad that we were 37-point underdogs to a conference opponent ... and Louisville, of all teams.
-- Grads act like they've graduated from an Ivy League school (Cornell caliber tho) when the school ranks closer to the likes of the University of Connecticut or worse, Boston University.
-- 'Cuse took its "abusive and hostile" team nickname, lopped off the "-men" and "-women" and became known simply as the Orange. Only the d**chiest of schools are named after a color -- Harvard, Dartmouth, Cornell, Stanford. I rest my case.
-- Syracuse's mascot is an Orange blob-looking thing created to either look like a basketball, the school's most successful program (because what else are you going to do in Upstate NY in January and February) or the fruit; the latter an obvious homage to Upstate New York's burgeoning citrus industry.
-- Fans are already hating on Clemson, apparently. Like this will somehow mitigate the beating SU is going to take on the gridiron by the program with the ACC's most hospitable fan base.
-- In basketball, fans arrogantly presume that Syracuse will immediately vie with Duke and North Carolina for conference titles when SU is probably going to West Virginia it. They find every sympathetic national sportswriter to beat the "ACC Tournament to MSG" war drum without ever have even given Greensboro a shot. I'm all for moving the tournament out of Greensboro but seriously, chill the f*** out bros.
-- While SU fans believe him to be a God or something, Jim Boeheim is really that F***ing ***Hole. 900+ wins is impressive and all, but to borrow a phrase from former Boston University hockey coach Jack Parker, a coach reaches that milestone by being able to coach for 30+ years ... because he hasn't been fired, or the NCAA hasn't been able to dig up enough dirt yet on the men's basketball program.
-- SU fans scoff at Boston College's recent bowl winning streak, when the only bowl streak Syracuse has put together over the last decade is the number of consecutive times Greg Robinson dropped a steaming deuce on the football field, playing in a conference without Boston College, Miami and Virginia Tech.
-- Seriously though, was SU intentionally bad in football after BC left? It takes a special talent to go 4-31 in conference play over the first four years after the Eagles left for greener pastures.
-- Fans think that Boston College's best football days are behind them. Well, I've got news for you guys. If BC isn't rebounding in the ACC for football, SU isn't either. Fans mistake the fact that SU has won 21 games over the last three years against teams like Tulane, South Florida and the MAC as progress. Around these parts, we call that the cupcake-y non conference portion of the schedule, bros.
-- SU fans manage to work the name "DIAMOND FERRI" into every conversation with Boston College fans, conveniently ignoring the last meeting between the two programs when Syracuse's now NFL head coach managed to score all of seven points, at home, against a Frank Spaziani-led team. Drops mike, walks away.
-- I hate that Boston College has to share Tom Coughlin's legacy of awesomeness with Syracuse. He may have went to your school, but he got his head coaching start en route to multiple Super Bowl rings with us.
-- Finally, I hate that Syracuse didn't even bother to ask us what happens when a program promotes from within only to hire a lifetime coordinator as its next head coach. I've seen that movie before. Hated the ending. But our coach got the NFL job, you retort. Yeah, with the Buffalo Bills.
The Buffalo Bills.