Pitarresi: Marrone is the guy, maybe

How much drama can you stand?

 

Skip Holtz? Turner Gill? Doug Marrone? Amos Alonzo Stagg, maybe?

 

Who is going to be the next Syracuse University football coach?

 

Not Skip Holtz. He took himself out of the running.

 

I’d bet Turner Gill would like to be, but that probably isn’t going to happen.

 

Stagg – Yale graduate, member of the first All-America team in 1889, a pioneering coach who spent 60 on the sidelines and also played in the first public basketball game at Springfield College in 1892 for those of you who don’t know – has been in gridiron heaven for more than 40 years.

 

As this is being written, at 11 p.m. Thursday, it seems Marrone, a former SU player and now the offensive coordinator of the New Orleans Saints, is the guy. At least some of the sources reporting that Marrone will be hired have proved wrong about this very question in the last few days, but when the NFL Network reported that Saints coach Sean Payton was “ecstatic” that Marrone is going to SU, that more or less convinced me.

 

If the NFL Network has its ducks in a row. They were wrong about Holtz, although it’s possible they had good reason to say he had the job before the deal fell through. But SU AD Dr. Daryl Gross more or less swore that hadn’t offered the job to anyone as of 7:24 p.m. today.

 

Can Marrone do the job? Silly question. Who the heck knows? Who knew Pete Carroll could do the job at USC? Who knew Bobby Stoops could do the job at Oklahoma? For that matter, who knew Knute Rockne could do the job at Notre Dame? No one knows if Marrone can do the job, and while there will be hints early on, no one will know for sure for two or three years at the very least.