An exciting Pinstripe Bowl win marks a new era in Syracuse University gridiron lore
That Syracuse University tailback Delone Carter rushed for nearly 200 yards and two touchdowns in the Orange’s first bowl victory since 2001 was impressive enough. That Carter did it carrying the hopes and fears of a close friend on his back made it the stuff of legend.
Carter and the rest of the SU players and coaches dedicated the inaugural New Era Pinstripe Bowl played Dec. 30 to punter Rob Long, who is battling cancer after having surgery to remove a brain tumor. With Carter leading the way, the Orange outlasted the Kansas State University Wildcats 36-34 before 38,274 mostly Orange-clad fans at the new Yankee Stadium.
Carter, who was named the Most Valuable Player, sought out Long after the game and gave him a hug. “He came up to me after the game and he said he ran with me on his back,’’ Long said.
“He’s a special kid,’’ Long said of Carter. “As a person, father, friend, he’s one of the best people I know. For him to do what he did {last Thursday} was special.’’ Long, a senior from Downingtown, Pa., is facing weeks of radiation and chemotherapy to combat the malignant cells that remain after the surgery. Long spent the days leading up to the game with his teammates in New York City, and he joined fellow captains Derrell Smith and Ryan Bartholomew on the field for the pre-game coin flip.
“To go out with them means a lot,” Long said. “I made sure I made it here to be with them and my teammates.”
Wearing his No. 47 jersey, Long watched from the sidelines and celebrated with his teammates when the game ended. “I know Rob wishes he could have been out there,” Carter said. “But I felt him out there with us.”
Inspired by Long, buoyed by Carter’s relentless running and lifted by quarterback Ryan Nassib’s three touchdown passes to wide receiver Marcus Sales, the Orange played its best offensive game of the year and one of the most memorable bowl games in SU history. Played in a historic venue in the city that never sleeps, the game featured a flea flicker, halfback pass, missed extra point, fake field goal and a controversial call that will forever convince KSU fans that Syracuse truly is New York’s college team.
With one minute and 13 seconds remaining, Wildcats quarterback Carson Coffman connected with wide receiver Adrian Hilburn on a 30-yard touchdown pass that sliced SU’s lead to 36-34. Considering that only one offensive drive in the second half ended without a score—and that was because of KSU’s ill-advised fake field-goal attempt—it seemed like better-to-even odds that the Wildcats would punch in the twopoint conversion to tie the game.
But after shaking his defender and highstepping into the end zone, Hilburn dropped the ball and saluted the fans in that corner section of the stadium. Two officials tossed flags as Hilburn, a senior, was nabbed for violating rule 9-2-1d, which states a penalty is called for “any delayed, excessive, prolonged or choreographed act by which a player attempts to focus attention on himself (or themselves),” said Todd Geerlings, who was the referee for the all-Big 10 Conference crew that officiated the game.
EXTRA POINTS
SU improved its bowl record to 13-9-1 and its Yankee Stadium record to 6-1. (The Orange was 5-1 at the old Yankee Stadium, including a 3-0 win over Pittsburgh in the first college football game played at the park in 1923.)
Carter, a senior who’s expected to be selected in the NFL draft in April, finished his career with 3,104 career yards, third on SU’s all-time list .
Nassib’s 202 completions this season broke the SU record of 193 set by Greg Paulus last season.
Nassib’s three touchdown passes matched the SU bowl record set by Donovan McNabb in the 1996 Gator Bowl.
Nassib’s 52-yard touchdown pass to Sales on a flea flicker in the first quarter was a career-long pass for Nassib and career-long reception for Sales, and it was the seventh-longest pass play in SU bowl history.
Bailey caught three passes to improve his career reception total to 62, the most ever among SU running backs.
Krautman’s field goal tied Gary Anderson’s school record for most field goals in a season with 18, and it also tied Anderson for most consecutive field goals with 16.
—Matt Michael
“It was nothing that was planned out; I just did it,” Hilburn said. “I was excited and got emotional.” Hilburn, who said he never before had been whistled for an unsportsmanlike penalty, added that one of the officials told him, “Wrong choice, buddy,” after his quick salute. “I was just saluting,” he said. “It’s something you do out of respect for your fans.”
The penalty pushed the two-point conversion attempt back to the 18-yard line, where Coffman’s pass to Aubrey Quarles fell incomplete in the end zone. Syracuse ran out the clock and the party started: a Gatorade style water shower for Coach Doug Marrone, the Pinstripe Bowl trophy presentation (which ESPN promised but didn’t deliver, opting to go with the start of the Music City Bowl instead), and SU players dancing on the field and frolicking in the snow that had been cleared from the field and piled along the first- and third-base lines of the baseball diamond.
“I thank these players for making, for just a simple kid from the Bronx, a dream come true,” said Marrone, who grew up nine blocks from the old Yankee Stadium, where his grandfather was an usher.
Carter was the no-brainer choice for MVP after rushing for a career-high 198 yards (143 in the second half) on 27 carries with touchdown runs of 7 and 15 yards. Carter’s 61-yard scamper on the first play after SU snuffed the Wildcats’ fake field-goal attempt set up kicker Ross Krautman’s 40-yard field goal with 3:08 remaining that provided the final margin of victory.
Nassib, SU’s junior quarterback, completed 13 of 21 pass attempts for 239 yards and the three touchdowns to Sales as the Orange compiled a season-best 498 yards. SU’s 36 points were 13 more than they scored in their last three regular-season games combined against Rutgers, Connecticut and Boston College.
Sales, who’s from Syracuse and Christian Brothers Academy, caught touchdown passes of 52, 36 and 44 yards. Not bad for a guy who was buried on the depth chart in August and didn’t make his first catch of the season until Oct. 9 at South Florida. “You have to believe in the players and believe that they are going to get the job done as long as they show you that work ethic,” Marrone said. “Marcus did.”
Like
Sales, the SU program has come back from the dead. The Orange finished
8-5 this season for its first winning season since 2001. To win the
Pinstripe Bowl, the Orange had to overcome a myriad of injuries,
dismissals, suspensions and the devastating news of Long’s condition.
“We didn’t finish the end of the regular season the way we wanted to,” junior running back Antwon Bailey said, referring to SU’s 1- 3 coda. “So this game here, it gives us a little momentum going into the offseason and gets things rolling back to where we need to be.”
Senior linebacker Doug Hogue, whose career spanned the 2-10 nightmare of 2007 to the euphoria of the Pinstripe Bowl, said the win over Kansas State is just the start of SU’s renaissance.
“This
year, we set the bar of getting to a bowl game and winning it,” he
said. “We played our butts off; we played hard. We did everything we
possibly could throughout the whole year. So now, like I told the
younger guys on the team, it’s time to step up and believe and set the
bar even higher for the Syracuse University program.”
Doug Marrone: The Conclusion
Blaming a computer glitch may sound lame, but it’s the reason the final lines of the interview with Syracuse University football coach Doug Marrone didn’t appear in the print version of the Dec. 22-Jan. 5 New Times. Apologies to those of you who read the dangling article, and those of you who called wondering if we were going to fill in the blanks. And apologies to writer Matt Michael, whose enterprise scored the rare interview in the first place.
Here is the final question, with the answer, in its entirety.
Q: How do you think you’ll feel taking your alma mater to a bowl game and walking on the field at Yankee Stadium with your childhood home nine miles away?
A: It’s funny, because I’ve been conditioned this way and it probably goes back to Coach Mac {former SU coach Dick MacPherson}. I grew up playing on fields that were rocks and pebbles and not a lot of grass. When I came to Syracuse University, Coach Mac would always say, “We’re playing a football game. It doesn’t matter if we’re playing in this stadium, or that stadium, or if we’re playing in a cornfield somewhere where no one’s around.” I look at the game of football as the business side. So for me, when I come on that field, I will not be thinking that we’re in the Bronx, or the surroundings or it’s Yankee Stadium. I’ll be more concerned about how we perform as a football team and my concerns will be on our opponent.
