I’ll disagree any day you want about the 5 star thing. It’s nonsense and if anything is going to prove it, the last two years in college football should do so. The majority of schools with the “5 star” athletes never out perform the ones with the rest.

It’s self serving to say this but the Cuse is a perfect example. Like I said before, by the time Coach P was canned, he was in a 5 year recruiting free fall. Check out the records during his tenure, who he beat and how, and also find the quotes from other coaches about the Cuse and what they were facing. It goes something like this, “when we went there we knew we could get beat because it was a dog fight. They were always the toughest around.” Coach P, Coach Mac, knew how to prepare a team and squeeze every ounce of talent out of every 2 star player they had and beat the big boys.

Not only that, check out how many big east teams ripped off what coach P was doing. Example, starters playing special teams. If you wanted to start you played ST. Ask Frank Beamer where he got the idea. I could go on all day.

dl lays out some good arguments about Pasqualoni and why he was canned. Just because Robinson didn’t pan out doesn’t mean firing Pasqualoni wasn’t the right move.

Next year, the team puts up a big clunker of a year, going 6-4-1 and definitely underachieving.

The following year, he is forced to start Kevin Mason at QB and narrowly misses a bowl game at 7-4. In my opinion, should have gone to a bowl.

Following year, the best QB to ever play at Syracuse comes on board and wins 9 games his first year, including a 41-0 drubbing of Clemson in the Gator Bowl.

Over the subsequent three years, the ‘Cuse would win three Big East championships, go to two consecutive BCS games and despite losing both in convincing fashion, seemed to be heading in a direction toward being a perennial top-25 team.

But during those McNabb years, there were some “how the hell did that happen” type games where they would lose to opponents they had no business losing (at Minnesota in 1995, home opener against NC State in ‘96, and a real clunker of a game against the Wolfpack the following year on national television). There were also blown timeouts at critical junctures, stupid penalties due to poor coaching (vs. Tennessee in ‘98 there were multiple personal foul penalties for jersey violations).

Following McNabb, there was a precipitous drop in talent at the QB position, despite the talent level around the team getting better or remaining the same. The major blow was losing on the road to perennial doormat Rutgers in 1999. This was the beginning of the end, in my opinion. The next year they lost to Cincinnati and were not even competitive against Miami.

Dwight Freeney, who we all know is a freak, nearly single-handedly won 10 games the next year, but the Orange would go 4-8, 6-6 and 6-6 the next three seasons, an obvious decline cycle.

While I absolutely agree that Robinson has done a putrid job and does not deserve to see another year, nor another game, I also think Pasqualoni had seen his better days and it was time for a change.

That was a shot at Cuse fans going for the head of Paul Pasqualoni 4 years ago when he started struggling. Obviously that was the wrong decision and I think any of you would rather have a bowl team that was competitive in the wide open Big East than that shit that Robinson is putting on the field.

Here is your recruiting since 2002

2002 44
2003 53
2004 54
2005 56
2006 51
2007 48
2008 48

If a program is getting slightly better than average talent a coach winning 7-9 games like Pasqualoni was doing a damn good job.

Jim Brown, Ernie Davis, Floyd Little, Larry Csonka, Joe Morris, Art Monk, Marvin Harrison, Dwight Freeney, Donovan McNabb, Carmelo Anthony and many, many more disagree.