Doug Marrone is one who has never shied away from the fact that things take time. His ascent to the Syracuse head coaching position took time — 17 years. Marrone’s attempt to groom 22 players of Big East caliber who fit his mold took time.

And that win last week, the win in which Syracuse leapfrogged everyone in the Big East, the win in which he shed a tear for his players — the ones who have needed the time to grow — took time. But for any meaningful stretch of time, there is a beginning.

‘All the hard work and everything put into getting to that point is just beginning,’ Marrone said Monday. ‘So it’s still a long way to go. We aren’t even halfway done with the season. We have to keep getting better every week. I have been saying that for a long time, but it’s the truth.’

It may be ‘a long way to go,’ but here it comes. Quickly. Time is about to fly by.

This Syracuse team doesn’t have any more time. Pittsburgh enters the Carrier Dome Saturday. Then there is the trip to West Virginia. That luxury of time — the luxury Marrone’s program has used as a crutch through eight wins and nine losses — is gone.

The time is now.

The time is the next two weeks. The growing and the steps that it took to get Syracuse to its first Big East-defining win over South Florida took all of the 666 days since Marrone took the job. Syracuse didn’t make the leap until last Saturday.

But time’s up. With the upcoming two weeks, it could become two weeks full of two seasons worth of exponential growing for this Orange team. Something SU football hasn’t encountered in recent memory, thanks to this year’s schedule.

Last Friday, the Orange was still, to some, the laughingstock of the Big East. SU ranked at 93rd on the Rivals.com weekly power rankings — dead last in the Big East. Two spots below Rutgers. Forty-four spots below South Florida. Thirty-eight spots below Pittsburgh. Sixty-six spots below West Virginia.

But in one week, Syracuse went from cellar to recognized. Now win this week, and you are a Big East favorite that only had seven days to relish the status of a marginal Big East contender. You are now a team traveling down to West Virginia on a bandwagon ready to compete in a game to become the Big East’s favorite.

And you are favored by one point in this week’s game.

It is funny how time has worked for this Syracuse football team this season. The time and the ramifications of it are reflected and pertain to the schedule Syracuse had to traverse. With the first four games, all the talk was of how the game against Akron and the two games versus Maine and Colgate refused to let fans and critics know exactly what this team is. Through four games, everything was a question mark.

Time froze: Could this offensive line play? Who knows. Can this offense become balanced? Nothing has been proven yet.

No longer the case.

Within the span of these three weeks, time will not stand still. It will take the route of Antwon Bailey versus Colgate. Straight north and south. Zipping right by.

But for the Orange, any kind of an exponential growth curve yielding in the Big East’s most favorable path to a BCS bowl following the WVU game starts with Saturday. And it starts with a withering down of the overarching theme canvassing this squad right now.

It is about not wasting any time. SU can’t take time Saturday. As the one-point favorite against a team that doesn’t know where it is at right now, admitted by head coach Dave Wannstedt, SU has to blitz through and through. Not just on a Scott Shafer stunt call, even though that will be a part of it and aplenty.

‘I thought of wiping the slate clean,’ Wannstedt said. ‘I’ve been in these meetings, and I’ve done it before where you put a drape up over the first half of the season. I’ve done all of that stuff. I’m not sure where we’re at right now, how we’re trying to figure out who is doing what and how we’re trying to piece everything together.’

It has always been about mindset for Marrone. Saturday, it will be about a ‘go out and take what is yours’ mindset in the first quarter. Hit and wither away that low Panthers confidence until it is no longer there.

But that can’t take time. It has to be an instant. And if the Orange is to get to 3-0 in the conference, the time it took to pummel Pitt in the Dome will seem like an instant over the course of these 21 days.

Time stood still for this program since Marrone took over. Now he and SU must make sure time doesn’t pass them by.

Tony Olivero is an assistant sports editor at The Daily Orange, where his column appears occasionally. He can be reached at aolivero@syr.edu.

Published on October 13, 2010 at 12:00 pm