Cuse Country

I have not closely followed the news from football camp; I’m usually content to let all that stuff work itself out. The battles for starting positions, player defections, and general daily newsbits that keep Donnie Webb employed, I’ll occasionally take a glance but for the most part, whatever happens in the next couple of weeks is in some sense irrelevant to me. I’ll of course be watching when the season begins, btu the inner machinations aren’t usually of much interest. This was true long before Greg Robinson’s reign of ineptitude, though I will admit that he caused a further dampening of enthusiasm.

But the Paulus Announcement from last night is the kind of thing that demands one’s attention and (if you have any claim to being a worthy SU sports blog) comment. As a devoted ACC-hater, I am finding it confusing that I have to suddenly want Greg Paulus to succeed. When he joined the team, I appreciated the publicity that it brought to the team but privately wanted Ryan Nassib to beat him out as the starter. I figured, though, that this day would come (as did pretty much everyone in the world) and I knew there’d be some sort of awkwardness on my end when it did. If you love college basketball, especially East Coast college basketball, you either hate Duke or you are a front-running, fair-weather bandwagonneer like my next-door neighbor (whose allegiances shifted effortlessly with the passing of championship trophies). There are natural exceptions for those who grow up in or nearly in North Carolina, or attend Duke, or whose kids attend Duke, things like that. But for everyone else there is absolutely no reason to like Duke, and every reason to despise them — and accordingly despise their players.

The wider world of Duke-haters tend to focus on the “annoying white guy”, a tradition born in the days of Bobby Hurley and Christian Laettner and passed on through Steve Wojczejzowjzski and JJ Redick and finally to Paulus. But that’s simplistic and shallow. Those with true animosity towards Duke basketball despise all players that have come through Durham, including such upstanding citizens as Grant Hill and Elton Brand. We groan at their professional success and cackle gleefully when they fail. So you can imagine that I feel betrayed that the fate of our football team rests on the shoulder of one of the Tainted Blue.

From an unbiased football perspective, this move makes all the sense in the universe. Paulus is undoubtedly the most talented QB on the roster, and that talent ought to be able to make up for whatever rust he is still dealing with. You know he is mentally able to handle the pressure of big-time athletics (whether “big-time” applies to SU football is debatable right now). He’s older and more physically mature than any of hte other QBs save perhaps Cam Dantley, and we know what lies down that road. As long as he gets into proper physical condition to absorb the deluge of hits he is about to take, he’s the best choice and it’s a good thing Marrone made the move early.

Here’s the thing, though, that is ultimately helping me to accept Paulus’ presence: the team will still probably only win a handful of games, Paulus or no. The schedule is brutal and the supporting cast is woefully thin. There are a few solid playmakers on each side of the ball, but unless the line play improves drastically we are in for another long year. Paulus will be an upgrade at QB, and should bring some incremental improvement to the team as a whole. But adding one player to an awful team, no matter how talented he is, can only do so much. We all like the direction the new coach is taking things, but that sort of institutional change doesn’t bear fruit in one season. The benefits mainly are these:

• a flurry of publicity. We’ve had that already twice: once when he transferred, and once now that he is the starter, and there will be more when he plays his first couple of games. I imagine it’ll fade once people realize that he has not miraculously and singlehandedly resurrected the program.
• improved confidence and morale among the rest of the offense when they discover that they are actually capable of scoring points against someone besides Louisville. This year will hopefully give the offense something to build on for the future.
• Greg can serve as a punching bag for opposing defenses while the offensive line gets a year to develop, so they can learn better how to protect the Future of the Program next season.

So in short, what is going to allow me, for now, to root for Greg Paulus’ success is the assumption that he is not going to have much of it, and that whatever he does have is going to benefit the team in the future far more than it will benefit him in the present.

But if SU wins in Happy Valley in Week 2, I’ll need a whole new set of rationalizations.

That said, this is all you are probably going to hear in this space until football games are played. (Not to mention field hockey!) But never fear, kids. Cuse Country will be back in full swing this fall when the real action heats up. (In case you were wondering, the reason we haven’t posted much this summer is that we’ve all been busy erecting shrines to Fab Melo.)