When Doug Marrone returned to his alma mater Syracuse to become the head football coach four years ago, he said it was his dream job. Now, his work at Syracuse is done, as Marrone has left Syracuse to become the next head coach of the Buffalo Bills. Many will claim that Marrone abandoned his dream or lied about the Syracuse job being his “dream job”, but that’s not the case at all. This is not a case of a dream abandoned; this is a case of a dream fulfilled.
It’s not that Marrone wasn’t happy at Syracuse. Anybody who saw Marrone hoisting the Pinstripe Bowl trophy in his native Bronx last Saturday or sitting next to Pinstripe Bowl MVP Prince-Tyson Gulley at the postgame press conference, gushing over how proud he was of Gulley, his seniors, and his entire team, could see that he was happy. In what will be remembered as Marrone’s final moments as the Syracuse head coach, he was beyond happy; he was ecstatic, like someone who was truly living out his dream.
And why shouldn’t he be ecstatic? After the Orange’s third consecutive shellacking of bitter-rival West Virginia to cap off an 8-5 season in which they won a share of the Big East championship, the program is now the best its been in well over a decade. Marrone was where he had always dreamed of being and doing exactly what he always dreamed of doing.
But when nearly a handful of NFL franchises start calling, and you come attached with a glowing recommendation from an NFL head coach and an NFL general manager, it’s hard not listen, and ultimately its hard to turn down a chance to become an NFL head coach. Marrone never said Syracuse was the only job he wanted to have, just that it was his dream job. As we all should know, dreams don’t last forever. Marrone has now fulfilled his dream, and both his career and Syracuse football are better off because of that.
When Marrone first returned to Syracuse after the 2008 season, the program was on life support. In four years under he-who-won’t-be-named, the team won just 10 games and became the laughing stock of college football. The once proud program had been reduced to one of the worst teams in the country.
Deep down, it must have made Marrone sick to take over at his alma mater under such circumstances, but in the past four years, he has turned things around and built up the program, from the very bottom up. And he built the program up the right way: with discipline, with integrity, and with good old-fashioned hard work. He quickly improved the program from embarrassing to respectable, and because he didn’t cut corners during the rebuilding process, his successor is in good position to take the program beyond respectable and retrieve the pride and prestige the program once held.
When Marrone first returned to Syracuse to become the head football coach, many thought, if things went well, that his stay would be longer, perhaps extending to the end of his coaching career. But the siren call of an NFL head-coaching job proved to be too strong for the former NFL player and coordinator. Of course, few thought that Marrone could orchestrate such a profound turnaround of the program so quickly. He brought Syracuse football back to life, and now that the Orange football team is once again competitive, respectable, and a team its fans can be proud of, Marrone’s dream has been fulfilled.