By Bob Hertzel
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — The setting, from a Big East point of view, could not be better unless they could find a way to play a football game in Madison Square Garden.
If any arena in the conference symbolizes what the Big East is all about, it is the Carrier Dome, where at noon today Syracuse and West Virginia University will play a football game that has basketball overtones, much to the chagrin of a Big East football conference that is trying to creep out of the all-encompassing shadow the 16-team basketball conglomerate casts.
The two quarterbacks, Jarrett Brown with the 3-1 Mountaineers and Greg Paulus of the upstart 2-3 Orange, are former collegiate point guards, Paulus of greater note from the basketball court for he played his basketball as a starter at Duke while Brown was more or less just chillin’ between football seasons for Bob Huggins’ basketball team.
But if they were to meet, certainly the Carrier Dome is the venue of choice. Built in 1979, the Carrier Dome seats more than 49,000 for football but crams 33,000-plus in for basketball. When 33,633 showed up for guard Gerry McNamara’s final home game, a 92-82 loss to Villanova in 2006, it broke the all-time regular season record for attendance at a collegiate basketball game.
The building has hosted five NCAA Regional basketball championships.
Today, however, it is football only at the Carrier Dome, as the field will be renamed in honor of one of the greatest football players ever at the school, forever more to be known as Ernie Davis Legends Field. It is named after the running back who followed Jim Brown in the No. 44 jersey Syracuse has made famous and who died of leukemia before he could ever play an NFL game in the same backfield with Brown after being made the No. 1 draft pick by Cleveland out of Syracuse.
Front and center are these two basketball-playing quarterbacks, Brown moving in after understudying Patrick White for three years and Paulus stunning the athletic world by the way he was able to move from Duke to the starting job at Syracuse despite not having played football since he was named Gatorade National High School Player of the Year.
Like everyone else, Brown marvels at what Paulus has been able to accomplish.
“I can’t even imagine doing that,” Brown said at team interviews on Tuesday this week. “Where I’m at now, I wouldn’t be anywhere close to that if I had played basketball that many years. You can never learn too much about the game of football.”
And if Brown marvels at what Paulus has done, new Syracuse coach Doug Marrone, who is mad scientist behind the creation of the quarterback that is Paulus, is even more stunned.
“It’s something that we here, even myself at times, will go back and look and say, ‘I can’t believe how he performed,’” Marrone said. “And the thing that’s even more amazing to me is that he didn’t participate in spring football.
“I think you can bring anyone into a room — anyone who has intelligence and knowledge and a background — and maybe teach them an offense or teach them a system. But to get out there and execute it on the field, those are two totally different things. Greg has done a tremendous job at both. I would say yes, I would be surprised, but I’ve been around Greg Paulus too long.”
In some ways, it is easy to understand what Paulus has accomplished by moving so smoothly from football to basketball. Brown was asked what skills are required from a point guard that translate into quarterback skills.
“The point guard and the quarterback are the leaders of the team,” Brown began. “You have to get everyone else involved. You are running an offense. There really isn’t much of a difference.”
Technically it requires footwork and balance and the ability to pass the basketball or football to an open player, but mentally there is a great amount of study in both sports to understand the plays you are running.
“It becomes second nature,” Brown said. “Once you know a play, you have to know it inside out. In basketball and football, you have to know what everyone on the team is doing.”
At the same time, you have to know what the opponent is likely to do. Both sports require film study.
“It’s all the same. You try to pick up tendencies, study which way they like to go, left hand or right hand. A lot of little things you look for in basketball as well as football,” Brown said.
Football might even be easier, because you don’t have to play defense, unless you throw the ball to the wrong team, something Brown learned two games ago when he threw four interceptions at Auburn and something Paulus learned when he threw five interceptions against South Florida.
The game is critical for a West Virginia team that has to keep pace with Cincinnati, South Florida and Pitt in the Big East, and it would represent a huge step forward in Marrone’s first year as he tries to rescue his alma mater’s program after a four-year spin under Greg Robinson in which it won just 10 times.
Brown is expected to test Syracuse’s porous pass defense while mixing in the runs of Noel Devine, who ranks third in the nation in rushing, while Paulus will try to use the Big East’s leading top receiver, Mike Williams, to test WVU’s vulnerable pass defense.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
