Four years ago a week from next Sunday – graduation day of the senior class, by coincidence – marks what was supposed to become a new era of Syracuse sports. The Orangemen and Orangewomen became the Orange, an artificial creation of something so arbitrary but in hindsight, a date that serves as a tipping point in Syracuse sports.

The football team, with a highly recruited freshman quarterback, was opening at Purdue. The basketball team was still waking up from a national championship. The men’s lacrosse team was at the apex of its sport, marching with this new nickname and logo and won a national championship three weeks later.

It was the type of moment that years later can be identified as the time when everything changed. It just changed the wrong way.

The freshmen who arrived with hope four years ago leave with something different. They are realizing what to do, where to live, how to lead a life that doesn’t start at noon and doesn’t feature $3 pitchers. But they’re also trying to figure out where the four years went. They’re trying to determine why an athletic department that appeared so promising left so much disappointment. They’re trying to piece together what happened after Syracuse went Orange.

***

Nick Natario’s job was tougher than he bargained for. As Otto, Natario is in charge of exciting a crowd. This is easy to do when the game is tied with a minute left or Syracuse is on the verge of a major upset. But when half the fans departed or SU is playing its second-straight NIT, the job becomes more difficult.

‘Basically to sum it up, there were a couple highs, but there were a lot of lows,’ Natario said. ‘And the lows definitely outweigh the highs.’

Once he became Otto during his sophomore year, the major teams’ success declined, and the fans’ interest waned. During the 2007 football season, the SU Spirit Team received e-mails complaining about Otto dancing around when the football program was sinking to 2-10. Never mind Otto’s job requires dancing around – the fans didn’t need a mascot to help them cheer when the teams wouldn’t make them cheer.

Natario even held meetings with the other Ottos to discuss how to handle disgruntled fans. It was a struggle between performing their jobs and performing for their fans. ‘We had to bring our ‘A’ game,’ Natario said, ‘even when the football team wasn’t.’

The most unrest Natario felt was actually during a basketball game gone awry in 2006-07, when the cheerleaders charged the court for the ‘C-U-S-E’ flag running and the fans responded with boos.

‘That was when I was like, ‘Wow, people are really upset,” Natario said.

Even on the road, Natario felt the burn. In Iowa for a football game, fans thanked Otto for coming because the Hawkeyes needed an easy win.

So much of Natario’s bitterness results from the expectations. The major teams were so successful before he arrived, and unless the lacrosse team continues its success this season, much of the senior class’ time was spent without major triumphs.

‘It was very heartbreaking,’ Natario said. ‘I’m leaving here, and I’m not too pleased.’

***

Max Meisel witnessed Syracuse sports from both sides. As a freshman, Meisel arrived with two goals: transfer into Newhouse and walk onto the football team. President of the United States and curing cancer might have been No. 3 and 4.

In his sophomore year, both happened. He entered into SU’s television, radio and film program and convinced head coach Greg Robinson to keep the 5-foot-4, 145-pound fan-favorite on the team as a receiver. One season later, he returned punts in the Carrier Dome.

Meisel sat in the bleachers when Syracuse lost to Florida State in the Dome four years ago and walked off the field at Florida State’s Doak Campbell Stadium in his sophomore year. Now he strolls around campus as the most recognizable walk-on at the school. He’s on stage at comedy shows, in the line at Food.com and in the football locker room.

It gives Meisel a rounded perspective of the pulse of Syracuse sports fans – an attitude that generally derives from the football and basketball teams.

‘Look, I know we’re not the talk of the town right now,’ Meisel said. ‘You take a lot of negativity from people. … When it comes to talking with students, usually the first question I’m asked is, ‘What do you think of Robinson?’ In the sense of, will he stay or will he go?’ Of course that has a negative connotation.’

It’s part of the deal of being an athlete, he said. If he wasn’t on the football team, the same attitude would pop to mind. So when he walks on campus, when he sits in Newhouse or converses with his friends, he knows the questions are coming. And with this senior class, the questions have come too often.

‘We want it for (the fans) as much as we want it for each other,’ Meisel said. ‘We know they’re just as disappointed as us.’

***

Alana Edmunds stood by the student season ticket entrance four years ago in a Carrier Dome red employee T-shirt, scanning season passes and stamping hands. She witnessed her classmates enter Gate E at the Carrier Dome full of enthusiasm. As she ascended through the ranks of student employees at the Carrier Dome, Edmunds anticipated the innocent ignorance witnessed freshman year would remain through the years.

Not quite.

‘It’s gone downhill,’ Edmunds said. ‘I remember freshman year when I worked at the Dome, I would get there early morning, and there would be tons of people waiting outside. … The excitement was so big. They would be pumped to be there.’

Freshmen always attend games. It’s part of the mystique of coming to SU. But the presence of the upperclassmen is often an indication of interest.

‘If people lost faith in something, it doesn’t make it fun to want to go anymore,’ Edmunds said.

The shift into apathy is most evident in football, Edmunds said. When she started at the Dome, she prepared to hand out wristbands for the overflow sections of the student seating. As the team struggled, the overflow seating was the least of Edmunds’ concerns. She received calls on her walkie-talkie to put students behind the endzone for the mere hope that the attendance would not appear so depressing on television.

‘It’s happened more than once, unfortunately,’ Edmunds said. ‘It’s those games that make me not want to stay and watch the game when I get off work. It makes me want to go home and take a nap. And I don’t like that feeling.’

***

Darryl Patteson does his homework. When Edmunds talked about the passionate Syracuse fans who slept outside the Dome and who stuck around after the biggest blowouts, Patteson was the first name she mentioned.

Patteson is the former president and co-founder of Otto’s Army, the official student fan group. When approached about discussing the four years of Syracuse sports in the eyes of the fans, Patteson warned there is much to talk about. He’s found the way to measure the struggles.

Since the NCAA Tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985, this is the first senior class graduating without a bowl win or a Tournament win.

‘It was tough at times,’ said Patteson, ever clad in Orange and championing school spirit. ‘I’m not going to lie.’

Patteson lists the sequence of events, from the basketball team’s devastating loss to Vermont in the opening round of the 2005 NCAA Tournament to the decline of the football team from mediocrity to futility. And when asked about the nadir of the fandom, Patteson pulls out a midseason lacrosse game from 2007 when Cornell topped Syracuse on a last-second goal right in front of the student section.

‘Are you serious?’ Patteson asked. ‘Can this really be happening?’

Yet the foundation of fanaticism is hope. And even though there are no years left for Patteson as an SU student, he still looks for the bright side. He points to the ‘Break the Record Nights’ in basketball and rushing the court twice against Georgetown. He remembers Gerry McNamara’s Big East tournament run of 2006 and Diamond Ferri’s theatrics of 2005.

But his lasting legacy will be the group of fans who still show up when the basketball team hosts Colgate and remain the lone bystanders witnessing West Virginia’s drubbings of the Orange in football. Otto’s Army was created in a dorm lobby four years ago and lasted longer and stronger than anyone in that room expected.

‘I would have loved to carry goalpost out, or win a national championship,’ Patteson said, ‘but I had a lot of fun.’

***

The Orange lost the 2004 season opener to Purdue, 51-0. The touted freshman quarterback, Joe Fields, soon lost his job. SU made a bowl game but fired its head coach. Jim Boeheim’s 2004-05 basketball team started the season with All-American candidates Hakim Warrick and Gerry McNamara, flirted with the top of the rankings throughout the year and finished with Vermont’s T.J. Sorrentine’s long 3-pointer to shock SU in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament. Two months later, the men’s lacrosse missed the final four for the first time in 22 years.

Some freshman year.

The football team hasn’t had a winning season since. The basketball team hasn’t won a Tournament game since. The lacrosse team reached the final four the following year before failing to reach the postseason in 2007.

The luxury of a four-year cycle is the stench of disappointment will eradicate with each passing class, to the point that this year’s seniors become mere archived alumni in a database. But there will be a collective emptiness residing in the memories of Syracuse sports fans who walk through the Carrier Dome next Sunday. It clings to the optimism of what could have been, the idea of what would have been, but the bitterness about what became after the school went Orange.

zberman@syr.edu

Published on May 3, 2008 at 12:00 pm