Former Texas Coach Robinson is Done

And sadly, Greg couldn’t. He won’t be unemployed long, the guy is a great defensive coach.

Now the holiday conversations with my wife’s Syracuse alum family members will be about something besides GR. I like Coach Robinson, personally, and even defended him yearly, but perhaps this season (which will be spent in Syracuse) I can spend more time talking hoops smack. If we ever meet the Orange in the Final Four again, we will kick their Traffic-cone Orange asses.

Good Luck, Coach. Now come back to the South, where recruits have talent and folks understand the game.

Robinson just was not a good head coach in any way, shape, or form.

Pasqualoni made that program a powerhouse for a while in the Big East, so there is potential there.

In the weakened state the Big East is in now, there is no reason a good coach can’t go back there and make it a dominant program again.

There is talent in New York and New Jersey in football, you just have to recruit it. Syracuse is a good enough academic school that you can recruit some nationally, so you can get it done there. Robinson just wasn’t the right guy for that job.

“The Douchiest Recruiting Message in History” starring G-Rob.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPMw0iE4b3Y

Having lived in Syracuse the last seven years, I can tell you the three sources of failure for Greg Robinson. All are fixable.
1. recruiting. The Carrier Dome has lost its luster as a place to play, and Robinson did not recruit nationally. Connecticut got some players that otherwise would have gone to SU, and the rise of Rutgers may have been a direct consequence of Syracuse’s fall (Ray Rice chose Rutgers over SU, and Mike Hart chose Michigan over SU, for example)
2. offensive strategy. Robinson tried to install the West Coast offense (Bill Callahan and the Nebraska implosion anyone?) and made every QB on the roster a miserable wreck. He did not coach to match his personnel.
3. attitude. Robinson was a champion optimist, to the point where the players seemed to show complete indifference to the game. When you lose 52-3 and the coach says, “We’re making progress,” the team just doesn’t play hard.

If SU was willing to put up the dough for a dynamic young coach somewhat off the radar, Joe Paterno’s eventual retirement could open enough recruting possibilities to get the program back solid again. The bigger problem is a general lack of talent in the North relative to the South, Southwest, and in California. New York high school teams only play 8 regular season games, and skill position players often play lacrosse in the spring. If you count camps, spring football in high school and the longer season, warm-weather players are often twice as experienced and skilled, and likely better-trained for football, than their northern counterparts by the time they enter college.

SU used to own New Jersey and the NYC suburbs, including Long Island. Western and central New York has nearly 2 million people, and SU was uncontested there. They also occasionally stole a few from Pennsylvania, particularly the eastern coal cities and Philadelphia (Donovan McNabb), and from Boston.

Pasqualoni did OK with recruiting, but Syracuse had no identity on offense, and this eventually led to a loss of players.

When Robinson first got to SU, he tried to recruit the South, and especially Florida, and came up empty.

The whole situation makes you appreciate Mack Brown all the more, because it just shows you how fragile a good program can be. It also proves what happens when a school gets too loyal to its coaches (Phil Fulmer at Tenessee?) and too frugal.