Marrone seeking first career win against Penn State as player, coach
The losses still haunt Doug Marrone.
In the Syracuse football head coach’s tenure as a player at Syracuse, Marrone and his teammates could never beat one team: Penn State.
‘One of the goals we always talked about was making sure that we at least beat everyone we played twice,’ Marrone said. ‘We beat Nebraska, we went up and beat Boston College, we beat West Virginia, and we beat a lot of teams. The team, in the four years that I was here, that we didn’t beat was Penn State. It’s something that I always tell people about, that you should never take anything for granted when you go out there and play the game of football.’
When Marrone and Syracuse stroll into Beaver Stadium for Saturday’s contest against No.7 Penn State (noon, Big Ten Network), they will be attempting to remove the 0-for mark stapled to Marrone’s personal demons with the Nittany Lions.
‘It’s something that I look back at my career, and I apologize to our fans, and to Coach (MacPherson), that they put in so much effort that I was never able to be a part of a team that beat Penn State,’ Marrone said. ‘I know everyone who played with me feels that way.’
In Marrone’s first season as a starter in 1983, the Nittany Lions topped the Orange in the Carrier Dome, 17-6. The next season the Orangemen fell 21-3 on the road, and in Marrone’s senior campaign, Penn State escaped with a 24-20 victory in Syracuse (The Nittany Lions lead the all-time series 41-23-5).
Despite his futility playing in the series, it’s not as if Marrone has never seen Syracuse defeat Penn State. While a member of the Miami Dolphins in 1987, Marrone trekked to the Dome for the match-up. The score that season: Syracuse 48, Penn State 21.
‘I believe it was 1987 when the NFL was on a players’ strike, and I was able to come back to the Dome to watch that Penn State game where we opened up with the play to Rob Moore for the touchdown,’ Marrone said. ‘I remember that well….it’s important, it’s a big game.’
SU Prepared For Crowd
No player on the Syracuse roster has ever played in front of a crowd of 100,000 people.
That will change Saturday.
Beaver Stadium, home of the Penn State Nittany Lions, is the biggest stadium in the nation with a capacity of 107,282, and there is little reason to believe there will be fewer than 100,000 in the stands for the 70th meeting between the two teams. In PSU’s season opener against Akron on Saturday, 104,968 fans were in attendance.
Orange players don’t seem to be worried about the environment. SU quarterback Greg Paulus, who played in what is considered college’s best rivalry (Duke versus North Carolina basketball), said having played in those types of game helps settle players down.
‘Obviously there is going to be more noise, and I’ve never been in that situation, but there’s things we’re going to need to do to execute as far as communication, making sure everyone is on the same page, making sure we’re all running the same plays and hearing the same plays,’ Paulus said. ‘We’ll find ways to do that this week.’
Right guard Tucker Baumbach said the team will work out with crowd noise in preparation for situations like this, but for a crowd of such magnitude, there isn’t much a squad can do to simulate the environment.
He still isn’t too worried about the crowd affecting the team, though.
‘You just have to roll with it,’ Baumbach said. ‘It’s hard to tell because you don’t know how loud they are going to be, you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen; it’s kind of a crap shoot. You have to see when you get there and get with it.’
Baumbach Going Home
Growing up in Middletown, Pa., Baumbach soaked in the atmosphere at Nittany Lions’ games several times. He remembers how it was ‘crazy,’ and the last time he went, as a fan, it was a good time.
Baumbach is excited, more than most, for this weekend’s contest in State College, Pa. With 14 or 15 friends and family in the stands this weekend, it will be a homecoming of sorts for the senior offensive lineman.
‘I’ve been looking forward to [this game] for a long time,’ Baumbach said. ‘I remember I was thinking about it a couple years back when I was a senior in high school. We played State College and we went out to Beaver Stadium and we walked around and got to see all the press boxes and stuff and it was really cool. I was always wondering what it would be like to play there and now we’re playing there and I’m excited about it.’
