Despite Marrone’s refutal of Carter comments, teammates expect him back with Orange
Marrone repeated numerous times that he and the football program are not involved in any kind of current plan to bring back Carter, the SU running back who was suspended from the team and university in April after he was accused of punching a fellow Syracuse student in a snowball-throwing incident on Feb. 27. This comes despite what SU assistant coach Bob Casullo said to ESPN 97.7 Radio last Thursday. ‘Trust me,’ Casullo said. ‘Coach Marrone and the administration have come up with a plan for Delone.’
Marrone refuted Casullo’s statements on Tuesday.
‘Casullo was wrong in saying that,’ Marrone said. ‘There is no plan in place.’
Marrone maintained that Carter is working with the university regarding his reinstatement as a student. It involves a process where Carter will go before a judicial panel when applying for readmission to the university this month. If the panel rules in his favor, Carter would be able to return to the football team.
Carter is also scheduled to appear in front of Syracuse City Court in a pretrial conference in the misdemeanor assault charge. Carter was scheduled to appear in court on Monday, but the appearance was delayed with no new date set yet. Marrone also said he knows nothing about the postponed court date.
‘I do not have that information,’ Marrone said. ‘…The school will make a decision on what his status is. Once his status becomes, ‘He is enrolled as a student’, we will take our first action with what we are going to do.’
When asked about the team’s running back situation, Marrone steered clear of the senior Carter, who led the team with 1,021 rushing yards in 2009.
‘Antwon Bailey is our starting running back right now,’ Marrone said. ‘Averin Collier is behind him. (Collier) has some issues he has to overcome from an eligibility standpoint. After that, we have Jerome Smith.’
But Carter’s teammates did not shy away from the topic.
Each SU player in attendance, like Marrone, said he couldn’t comment on the reinstatement because of a lack of knowledge of the situation. But both senior linebacker Derrell Smith and senior punter (and Carter’s 2009-10 roommate) Rob Long said they have been in constant contact with the suspended running back and feel as though he is still a part of the team.
Smith said that Carter has been back in his hometown of Akron, Ohio, for the majority of the summer and that he has texted Carter numerous times to ‘uplift him’. One of those read, ‘Keep your head up,’ Smith said.
‘Delone is home working out as if he were here,’ Smith said. ‘So that’s where his mindset is. He ‘s lifting at home and doing the right thing.’
So, even though Carter is not with the team and not on the team’s depth chart or in its media guide — even replaced by Collier on the cover of the conference’s media guide in a collage shot of the Big East running backs — his teammates still treat him as part of the team.
They have done so all summer. Smith has been the spearhead of some of the outreach, the most explicit of which came in a picture message after a workout in Syracuse.
It was a connection to the team for Carter told through a simple abdominal band, one Carter used to wear every day at practice. Smith corralled all of the offensive and defensive linemen after the workout, had them each squeeze into abdominal bands identical to that which Carter used to wear, and sent the resulting picture message to Carter.
‘It’s like an ab trimmer, I guess,’ Smith said. ‘It’s just a band you put around your waist, and I got the whole O-line and D-line to wear one and take a picture of it. A little something like that we sent to him.
‘He is a part of the team even though he is not here with us.’
Published on August 2, 2010 at 12:00 pm
