Entering the 2015 season, Syracuse’s Scott Shafer will be one of a handful of coaches who pundits will have sitting on the proverbial hot seat.
There are several reasons for this, the most viable being Shafer’s 10-15 record in his two years guiding the Orange. After what was a somewhat promising first season -- 7-6 with a bowl win -- the football program bottomed out with a 3-9 record in 2014 that included a 1-7 mark in ACC play.
Add in a new athletic director, and the line of thinking that new ADs want “their guy” in at high-profile sports like football, and Shafer’s hot-seat candidacy is a righteous one. Not one that’s remotely agreed with, though, by long-time men’s basketball coach Jim Boeheim, who launched into a very impassioned defense of his coaching colleague.
From the Syracuse Post-Standard:“Coaching is very hard at this level and you have to work very hard,” Boeheim said. “Coach Shafer, I think, works as hard as anybody I’ve ever been around.
“Obviously, it takes some time. I think Coach (Dick) MacPherson was here four years and he had a losing record (18-25-1, before going 48-21-3 in his final six seasons). But everybody out here thinks they should win this year or we need a new football coach. And that’s the most ridiculous way to think that I’ve ever heard in my life.
“And everyone standing right here thinks that. And that’s ridiculous. I mean, you gotta give coaches a chance to get things going and to get the job done. And we all have to support those coaches. There’s going to be ups and downs. You have to understand that.
“Mike Krzyzewski would have gotten fired after four years (62-57). He didn’t have a good record (at Duke). You have to be patient. You have to wait. We have an athletic director, I think, who knows what he’s doing and I think he’ll make good decisions, based on everything I know.”Whether the new AD, Mark Coyle, agrees with that stance remains to be seen. Shafer could help himself immensely by getting back to a bowl game; that’ll be easier said than done, though, as the Orange’s schedule includes a non-conference game against LSU as well as conference road trips to Florida State, North Carolina State and Louisville to go along with home dates vs. Clemson and a Boston College team that’s expected to be much improved.