Here he comes. Cue the Debbie Downer chords. The one who’s never satisfied. The one who expected more, even after a season full of positives.

No, not me. That would be Syracuse head coach Doug Marrone. Summing up his team’s entire season in three short sentences after SU’s loss to Boston College last Saturday. Marrone symbolized the rapid change in approach that has developed throughout his second year as coach.

‘I told them it is very disappointing,’ Marrone said. ‘We didn’t go out the way we wanted to. There is a foundation here now and an expectation we have to understand.’

The expectation Marrone talked about goes hand in hand with SU’s progression in just his second season. An increased expectation that, because of a quick start, became more than Marrone’s goals at the start of the season.

Let’s take a look at the preseason checklist. A winning season. Check. A bowl. That goes hand in hand. Restoration of a once-proud program. Mark that one down, too.

But as Syracuse completed that list with one signature win after another, expectations changed. On the fly. The reality might not be fair, but it is the reality.

The reality is, after a win at Rutgers that got the Orange to a bowl, the team sat at 7-3 — 4-2 in the Big East — with a real shot at winning the conference and trekking to either Glendale, Ariz., for the Fiesta Bowl or Miami for the Orange Bowl.

The wins weren’t overly impressive. Usually, it would just take one perfect drive, like at South Florida and Rutgers. But they were results in the right column. And after each program-redefining win, the postgame scene seemed to get more emotional.

And the expectations started to change. For those outside the program. For the players. And for Marrone. After a disappointing loss to Pittsburgh following the victory over USF, he acknowledged — and embraced — the change.

‘You want high expectations,’ Marrone said. ‘I want my players to think that they’re better than they are. It creates higher expectations, and you work for it.’

Those expectations only increased when the Orange followed the sobering loss to Pittsburgh with impressive road victories at West Virginia and Cincinnati. And so Syracuse stood at 6-2 after the supposed toughest four-game stretch of its season.

Forget just bowl. This was a chance for something more.

And after it finally happened — after a hard-fought 13-10 victory over Rutgers in which, again, one perfect drive led the Orange to victory — that was the mood. With two games left, this season could have become more than just a ‘foundation’ year.

SU missed that chance the following week with a loss to Connecticut that crushed its Big East title hopes. And after the game, the frustration was there. Frustration from not being able to move onto new goals.

‘We were pushing toward a goal, one of our goals,’ SU running back Antwon Bailey said. ‘And it can’t be accomplished now.’

You can’t help but think he was referring to a potential trip to the Fiesta Bowl that, had Syracuse won its final two games, would be in clear sight right now. And you can’t help but wonder what could have been.

When Daryl Gross rings the bell of the New York Stock Exchange — as he will get a chance to do, as SU looks likely to head to the Pinstripe Bowl in Yankee Stadium — it will, undoubtedly, be massive for a program — and a department — that is trying to brand itself as ‘New York’s College Team.’

But the state of this football team is what really matters. And that reality, fair or not, is that the Orange isn’t riding a high horse into New York. Instead, that trip almost feels like a consolation prize after the team steps back and realizes what could have been.

Just like Marrone, SU senior nose tackle Bud Tribbey talked about the ‘foundation’ this current team continued from its start last year. This season was the next step. Still, Tribbey couldn’t help but feel something had been left on the table.

‘It’s not the greatest foundation, but we did achieve our goal of being eligible for a bowl game,’ Tribbey said Saturday. ‘It is a good foundation for next year, and we hope that future teams can build off of this and do a better job than what we did this year.’

Syracuse continued the foundation in Marrone’s second season. It could have built the entire house.

Brett LoGiurato is an assistant sports editor at The Daily Orange, where his column appears occasionally. He can be reached at bplogiur@syr.edu.

Published on December 1, 2010 at 12:00 pm