The Syracuse situation doesn't really affect our football team. It is entirely in our basketball program and thank God that it was dealt with soon after it broke open despite Boeheim unnecessarily shooting off his big stupid mouth. I haven't really gotten into much but that is all a multi-layered mess of crap that has manifested itself locally in a media contest between the mayor, former and current chiefs of police on one side and our DA Bill Fitzpatrick on the other. Essentially Fitzpatrick is wondering why information apparently was collected from an investigation in 2002, and news was leaked to ESPN and the Post-Standard, but nobody could have been bothered to tell him - quite a good question really. And yeah, on top of it the whole thing is political. The city government has been Democrat controlled since 2001; Fitzpatrick is a popular Republican.
Oh and did I include that the aforementioned former chief of police that may or may not have done a whole lot in the original investigation happens to be former SU hoops star Dennis DuVal? Yeah. I support SU basketball very loyally. I'm glad to see them as a strong #3 in the rankings. I'm glad that despite this they were focused enough to defeat #9 Florida last week. I hope they win the tourney next spring. That said, clean this crap up.
As to the original point, even though this is the basketball team and not the football I agree that it all did cast a shadow on the football season (and probably will the basketball season as well.) It's all just another facet of the general malaise in this country today. Along with the concerns we already have about continued economic weakness and the continued overreach of both big government and big business, is added this layer of depravity and collusion from what was to be part of the wholesome antithesis of all that. Meanwhile those overseeing college football continue to get farther from us, giving us a rematch of a 9-6 game (Lupica: Game of the century? Yeah, the nineteenth century.) when a majority of the populace made clear that wasn't the match we wanted to see.
The whole thing put together it's hard for morale not to be down. No wonder half of our discussions lately seem to have turned toward food and liquor.
