Gross Decline?

As I was calculating the updated records of both the Men's and Women's programs this afternoon, I started looking a little closer at just what DOCTOR Daryl Gross's leadership has meant to Syracuse Athletics in terms of winning and losing. Now overall, we have seen marked improvement in certain sports, however in general, the Athletics Program has a much worse record now than it did during the final years of Jake Crouthamel's leadership.

After going through the numbers again and again, it is rather disturbing to see what has happened. The three traditional powerhouse programs for Syracuse University, the Men's Basketball and Lacrosse teams, as well as the Football team have all suffered major setbacks during the DOCTOR Daryl Gross era, which I like to refer to as the Post Apocalyptic Era. During this time, the Men's programs (including the Men's Soccer Program) have gone 145-114-9 (.558). Compare that to the 151-88-7 (.628) record of the same Men's programs prior to DOCTOR Daryl Gross and you can see my astonishment.

The situation gets even more discouraging when I looked at the numbers for the Women's programs. With the sharp decline on the Men's side, I was assuming that Women's sports were suddenly performing with much better results. Of course, you know what they say about assuming. Under DOCTOR Daryl Gross, Women's programs have gone 332-312-11 (.515), compare that to the 315-297-6 (.514) record before DOCTOR Daryl Gross, and you see that he really has not done much to improve Women's sports.

However, the area of greatest concern happens to deal with the revenue generating sports. The two sports at Syracuse that generate the most revenue to fund all of the other sports happen to be the Men's Basketball and Football programs. Under DOCTOR Daryl Gross, these programs have gone an abysmal 98-69 (.587) compared to the 87-41 (.680) that they went prior to his arrival. The question is, how much longer will fans continue to support these Men's teams that have struggled under DOCTOR Daryl Gross?

Orange in Decline

After a couple of comments on my blog, I compiled the records of the Athletics Programs that I have been tracking under DOCTOR Daryl Gross for the years prior to his arrival on campus. Without much more of an explanation here are the how those sports fared under Jake from the Summer of 2001 until DOCTOR Daryl Gross was hired.

Men's Lacrosse: 40-10 (.800) [Worse under DOCTOR Gross]
Men's Basketball: 61-19 (.763) [Worse under DOCTOR Gross]
Women's Lacrosse: 29-18 (.617)
Volleyball: 75-47 (.615) [Worse under DOCTOR Gross]
Field Hockey: 43-36 (.544)
Football: 26-22 (.542) [Worse under DOCTOR Gross]
Women's Soccer: 32-35-6 (.479) [Worse under DOCTOR Gross]
Tennis: 29-32 (.475)
Softball: 67-75 (.472)
Women's Basketball: 40-54 (.426) [Worse under DOCTOR Gross]
Men's Soccer: 24-37-7 (.404)
Total: 466-385-13 (.548) [Worse under DOCTOR Gross]

The records in Bold have fared worse under DOCTOR Daryl Gross. This really begs the question, are the minimal gains in Men's Soccer, Softball, Tennis, Field Hockey and Women's Lacrosse really worth the overall loss of competitiveness by the Orangemen and Orangewomen under DOCTOR Daryl Gross.