That’s why the games are played on the field (or court).<\/p>\n
Ah, a favorite adage of mine, and many other Syracuse football fans<\/a>. Sure, I write articles during the summer “doldrums” that examine preseason chatter, expectations, rankings and the like from national and Atlantic Coast Conference pundits regarding our beloved Orange.<\/p>\n Yet I often opine to take these sorts of prognostications with the proverbial grain of salt. Sometimes, these forecasts are correct. Sometimes, they’re way off base.<\/p>\n If we’re talking about Syracuse football, ACC media members recently cast their votes for the league’s annual preseason poll<\/a>. Just like in 2024, as we look ahead to the upcoming 2025 campaign, which is a mere few weeks away, journalists who cover the ACC aren’t super high on the Orange.<\/p>\n I like that.<\/p>\n Huh? (remarks everyone who reads this column)<\/p>\n Let me repeat. This is a good thing for the ‘Cuse, and here’s why. For one, it’s not a surprise that the Orange is projected to finish at No. 12 among the conference’s 17 members in football. Syracuse football has a ton of key producers on offense and defense to replace from the 2024 term<\/a>, who will be the starting quarterback isn’t yet known, and the program’s 2025 schedule is brutal with a capital “B.”<\/a><\/p>\n ACC media is disrespecting Syracuse football, and I’m cool with that.<\/p>\n Another component to this: when expectations are tempered, I personally think players play looser, with less pressure on them. It’s like they’re playing with house money, so to speak. By extension, we can all feel that ACC media members are sleeping on the Orange, and Syracuse football players can play with a chip on their shoulder.<\/p>\n The ‘Cuse will want to prove the naysayers wrong. I imagine that head coach Fran Brown<\/a> and his top-flight staff will use this preseason ACC media poll as motivation and as fuel to shut the doubters up.<\/p>\n Lest we forget. In 2024, Syracuse football was predicted to finish at No. 12 in the ACC<\/a>. Florida State was forecast to win the league. The ‘Cuse, in Brown’s debut season as a college football head coach, went 10-3, triumphed in a bowl game, and had a No. 20 national ranking in the final Associated Press top-25 poll<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Seminoles, meanwhile, went 2-10 overall.<\/p>\n Just saying. That’s why the games are played on the field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"That’s why the games are played on the field (or court). Ah, a favorite adage of mine, and…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":117625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[1318,1317,1315,1316,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-117624","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114969320230668202","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}