To say that Syracuse men’s basketball finds itself at a crossroads would be a massive understatement. This is a moment of profound change for the institution more broadly, with both a new chancellor and a new athletic director coming in … right when program legend Adrian Autry has been fired after a largely disastrous tenure at the helm in which he failed to reach the NCAA Tournament and barely cracked .500 overall across three seasons.
Bullet point summary by AI
- Syracuse faces a critical juncture with new leadership amid three straight non-.500 seasons in the ACC.
- The program must decide whether to prioritize basketball over football to compete financially and on the court.
- A dynamic, proven coach from the local area emerges as the ideal candidate to revitalize the Orange.
All of which is to say: The Orange better get this right, because their glory days are more and more in the rearview, and with how fast the landscape is changing in college sports these days, they might lose their standing for good. But what does that actually mean? What’s happened to this prestigious program, and what does the new administration (and, eventually, new coach) need to do to get things back on track? We’ve put together a five-point plan.
Realize that you do, in fact, need to choose between basketball and football
You could make a pretty compelling argument that everything that’s befallen Syracuse basketball over the last 10 years or so is downstream of choosing to jump to the ACC for the 2012-13 season. Of course, that also happened to coincide with the twilight of Boeheim’s tenure, so perhaps a step back was always inevitable. But it can’t be a coincidence that the Orange have lost 13 or more games in 10 of 13 seasons in their new conference.
It’s certainly not because the competition got tougher; the ACC isn’t nearly what it once was as far as basketball is concerned, much less what the Big East was during Boeheim’s heyday. And that’s sort of the point: The ACC, on an institutional level, has hitched its wagon to football — leaving basketball to wither on the vine.
Which, if you’re a program with elite financial backing like Duke, doesn’t have to be a death sentence. But we’ve seen once-proud basketball schools like UNC, Pitt, Louisville and Boston College run aground to varying degrees, and there’s one common denominator: All of them have put more emphasis on competing in this brave new world of college football, one that costs well into the eight figures just to stay afloat.
New ‘Cuse AD Bryan Blair can insist that it’s possible to do both all he wants. But the evidence doesn’t lie, and it’s hard not to draw a line between the cost of doing business as a power football conference with the Orange reportedly ranking in the bottom half of the ACC when it comes to roster expenditures for men’s basketball. Speaking of which …
Finally embrace the NIL era
I have little interest in relitigating the falling out between Syracuse and mega-booster (and social-media maven) Adam Weitsman. It seems like there’s reason to believe Weitsman’s ability to market himself outstripped the actual money he was giving to the athletic department, and he’s not exactly the easiest guy to manage.
But it’s also true that the Weitsman saga revealed an institution desperate to remain in control of every single aspect of its operations, and that’s a hard way to make a living in 2026. No one is suggesting that Syracuse should outsource its NIL operations entirely. But even the biggest money cannons in college sports right now have handed over the reins a bit; you don’t have t