His friends’ band was minutes away from taking the stage at Funk ‘n Waffles. But the show would have to wait. Upon hearing the news, Mitchell Gelkopf was too excited. As his friend in the band scurried down the steps to the restaurant yelling ‘It was about time!’ a smiling Gelkopf stood in satisfaction.

Syracuse will have a new football coach next season.

‘It was well overdue,’ said Gelkopf, a sophomore dual major in public relations and finance. ‘It should have happened last year. You could tell things weren’t going to get better.’

Finally. That was the overriding sentiment sweeping campus Sunday night when the news spread about Greg Robinson’s pending dismissal as SU’s head football coach. Freshmen have hope. Seniors have reprieve. Overall, relief and closure.

Gelkopf said Robinson’s presence has spoiled the entire recruiting process. Digging the program to new depths week by week, Robinson needed to go. Change was a necessity.

‘People invest way too much in this school to have such lousy results,’ Gelkopf said. ‘On a PR aspect, you can’t have a horrible football team and expect to get good recruits in here. We’re never going to get better if we don’t get good recruits.’

This chance to ‘get better’ is suddenly a reality for students on The Hill. With attendance plunging to record lows, the inevitable regime change has pumped life into a dejected fan base.

‘Fantastic. (It’s) the best news I’ve heard all year,’ freshman Ben Norowski, a sport management major said. ‘It’s not all his fault, but still. Coming here as a freshman, it’s not something you like to see. I think they just needed a change.’

By and large, this year’s batch of freshmen came to SU like the three previous groupings – open-minded, with a fresh perspective on Robinson. But as the losses accumulated, the interest disintegrated. From 2005 to 2006, the average home attendance decreased by 2,989 fans. The next year, it dropped 2,254 more. And this year, more of the same. The school announced that only 28,081 showed up to Saturday’s home finale against Connecticut, and the actual number of people in the Carrier Dome was much less.

Like Norowski, two other freshmen were thrilled that SU is finally shaking things up.

‘Awesome,’ freshman business major Devin Young said. ‘When I first heard it, I was absolutely delighted.’

Immediately, nearby freshman newspaper journalism major Kevin Kearns punctuated his emotion.

‘Pure ecstasy,’ Kearns said.

But not everyone was jumping for joy. Brett Crandall, a 29-year-old guidance counselor at East High School in Rochester, N.Y., has been a season ticket holder for seven years. He doesn’t dislike Robinson but realizes it was time for the program to throw in the towel on the Robinson era. Still, Crandall sang the praise of Director of Athletics Daryl Gross, citing the other Orange programs Gross has steered into prominence.

‘I have full confidence that Gross will make the right decision,’ Crandall said. ‘I am so glad that Daryl Gross is here, and we’re lucky to have him here. I don’t think the rest of the population here at Syracuse understands how lucky we are to have him.’

Crandall said a flaccid Orange fan base deserves some blame for the program’s downfall, saying fans need to ‘look in the mirror themselves.’ For comparison, he credited Penn State’s dedicated fan base. Crandall said even when Penn State went 3-9 and 4-7 in 2003 and 2004 respectively, the school’s recruiting pipelines remained strong because 108,000-plus fans continued to fill the stadium each week.

For SU seniors, the firing is bittersweet. Baldwinsville native Eric Reitz followed the football team religiously back to the days of Donovan McNabb, Dwight Freeney and Marvin Harrison. But being close to the epicenter of his team has been a miserable experience.

‘I grew up here, and this has been the worst four years I’ve ever seen,’ said Reitz, a senior television, radio and film major. ‘It’s awful.

‘I would have fired him last year, but apparently that would have cost more money, so they made the economic decision. I’d rather have him gone already. This year, they just wasted a year. We could have had a new coach with new players.’

The underclassmen hope a new coach brings better success. Elated outside of Funk ‘n Waffles, Gelkopf said SU needs a ‘big-name coach,’ and he’s hoping things click before he graduates.

‘You need someone who’s going to make kids want to come here out of high school,’ he said. ‘I hope we’re good my senior year.’

thdunne@syr.edu

Published on November 16, 2008 at 12:00 pm