Assessing Damage Done By Syracuse Loss

It's be a rough week two days for Syracuse athletics. Star WR Mike Williams quit the team (one of four players who broke team rules and got into a car accident). The head football coach was forced to defend QB Greg Paulus, getting emotional and saying he is "a victim of his own success." And then of course there was last night, when the basketball team lost to cross-city Division II Le Moyne in an exhibition game, on a day that, unfortunately, had no World Series, no NFL, no major college football and no big sports story. The result: lead story on this morning's SportsCenter, and Sean Keeley at Troy Nunes is an Absolute Magician assessing the damage. 

"Let's not blow this out of proportion.  It's an exhibition game."  You know what....you're right.  And you're wrong.  You're right from the (tremendous) standpoint that it doesn't count, Boeheim is still working out the kinks and the team didn't play to it's full potential.  But you're wrong because perception is reality.  It's one thing to fly under the radar as a fringe Top 25 team that can play the "nobody believed in us" card.  It's another thing to lose to a DII team and be ridiculed nationwide to the point where you can't find a college basketball fan or pundit who thinks we're going to win 20 games right now.

I have to now listen to Doug Gottlieb, Dana O'Neill, Pat Forde and all of the other Cuse-haters make snide comments for the next three months because nothing we do in that time we erase the stink of this loss.  Only if we make strides in the Big East will everyone be able to look back and laugh about this.  Otherwise, the season hasn't even started yet and we've already defined it.  Awesome.