Orange Love

I've realized something surprising over the past year.  The Syracuse Orange men's college basketball team is my favorite team.  Not in college basketball.  Of course they are that, but also in all sports.  More than the Mariners.  More than the Raiders.  More than the World Champion Philadelphia Phillies.  The Orange, regardless of how many more games they play this season (hopefully four!), are my favorite team in any sport.  Period.  And they have been for a long time, at least since 2003 -- the year of their first and only NCAA championship.  I just didn't realize it.

College basketball is not my favorite sport.  It's third -- a strong third, but it still ranks behind baseball and football as the sports I enjoy watching the most.  Perhaps that's the fantasy influence -- I follow every team in those other sports, while in basketball, I only follow Syracuse and, sometimes, the rest of the Big East -- but there's no doubt I spend more time with the MLB and NFL during any given year.  And traditionally, my favorite team in all sports is the team that's doing the best in my favorite sports.  The Phillies have owned my fandom for the longest time -- since I was a kid and they won their first ever World Series in 1980.  The Raiders (still in Oakland) came a few months later, when I rooted for them over the local Eagles in the Super Bowl, either because I was already an independent spirit at the age of nine or because I didn't want my Phillies to be overshadowed by a team in a sport I didn't yet follow.  Syracuse didn't come until 1987, when they made a run to the final game of the NCAA tournament (losing to Keith Smart's jumper at the buzzer).  Why I rooted for Syracuse that year I don't remember.  I know I'd become a college basketball fan in the previous couple years, but I don't know why I didn't cling to the local Villanova squad that had shocked the world with a national championship in 1985.  I'd say maybe I picked them in my bracket but I don't think there were brackets in 1987, were there?  In any case, I did follow them from that moment on (despite the loss).  But they remained a distant third behind the Phillies and the Bo Jackson-led Raiders of the late '80s/early '90s.  I remember being crushed by the Orange loss in the Elite Eight in 1989 to Illinois (in the year that Michigan won its title with Glen Rice over Seton Hall in OT in the championship game -- go Blue!), but I can't imagine that was as devastating as the Raiders' 51-3 drubbing to the Bills in the AFC championship the following year, or as disappointing as the run of Phillies' crappy teams between 1984 and 1992.  Actually, when the Syracuse team was suspended from tournament play in 1993, I adopted my 2nd favorite college basketball team at the time, Indiana (I once loved Bobby Knight), as my new favorite and lost a lot of interest in the Cuse and their much-hyped but ultimately disappointing Derrick Coleman/Billy Owens era teams.

By 1995, I'd adopted the Seattle Mariners as my favorite AL team (for a number of reasons) and when they beat the hated Yankees in the playoffs, Syracuse had fallen to around my 4th favorite team, behind the Raiders, Phillies, M's, and possibly Indiana.  Then came the John Wallace-led run to the NCAA Finals in 1996 (Boeheim's second trip), a miracle run with an under-manned squad that won dramatic game after dramatic game (including the overtime win over Georgia in the Sweet 16 and the shocking upset of Kansas in the Elite Eight in a perfectly played contest) before falling short against a Rick Pitino Kentucky squad that featured 9 future NBA players.  We had Wallace and a bunch guys you don't remember (Lazarus Sims, Jason Cipolla - who hit the miracle 3-pointer against Georgia to send the game to OT, Todd Burgan, Marius Janulis, and the center combo of JB Reafsnyder and Otis Hill).  The Final Four was played in the nearby Meadowlands and I still remember eating lunch on Monday at a diner by my office, wearing my Syracuse garb, with a bunch of Kentucky fans sitting at an adjacent table on their way to the game.  Syracuse lost that game, and didn't even make the tournament the next year, but something about that run and that team and the way Boeheim went from curmudgeon to media darling endeared the Orange to me more than they had been when they had "better" teams in the late '80s/early '90s that always seemed to fall short.

For the rest of the decade, though, the less talented Syracuse teams fell short a lot as well.  These were the Jason Hart/Etan Thomas/Ryan Blackwell teams that peaked with 2nd round NCAA tournament losses in 2000 and 2001 (including a Big East regular season title in 2000).  But they had definitely supplanted Indiana as my favorite college basketball team again (Bobby Knight leaving the school helped as well) and were right with the Mariners, Raiders, and Phillies as my favorite teams.  Of course, with the Phillies perennially bad, the Orange were almost definitely in my top 3, but the Mariners had a historic 2001 and the Rich Gannon/Jon Gruden era Raiders were among the best teams in the NFL (fucking tuck rule!), so I doubt they were any higher than third.  The Raiders lost the Super Bowl in 2003, which was devastating -- I still hadn't won a "personal" championship since the Phillies in 1980 as a 9-year-old despite several near misses (Phillies in 1993, Syracuse in 1987 and 1996, Raiders in 2003, even the Flyers in 1996 and 1998, the Sixers in 2000, and Indiana in 2002 -- I was desperate!).  Then, just two months later, Carmelo Anthony, Gerry McNamara, Hakim Warrick, Kueth Duany, Billy Edelin, Josh Pace, Jeremy McNeil, Craig Forth, and Josh Pace led the 3rd seeded Orange to a stunning freshman-carried national championship and the rest, as they say, is history.

Syracuse has been my favorite sports team since 2003, and it hasn't been particularly close.  Yes, the Mariners and Raiders have fallen to historic depths of horrible play, so that's been a factor -- but the Phillies, my first and longest team love, just won a World Series and yet their victory did not match the Syracuse six OT win over Connecticut in the Big East tournament in terms of sheer joy I felt as a fan.  I'm not sure why this is.  Of course, the 2003 team that freed me from the shackles of "no titles since 1980" would hold a strong, undeniable place in my heart.  But even though Gerry was there for three more seasons of amazing games (including back-to-back Big East tournament titles), the rest of the '03 team either graduated (Duany, Forth, McNeil, Pace) or left the school (Anthony, Edelin) within a year.  Hakim Warrick's surprising return for his senior season was supposed to yield tremendous results, but ended instead with the unceremonious loss to Vermont in the NCAA tournament.  The next two seasons -- led by the ultimately disappointing trio of Terrence Roberts, Darryl Watkins, and Demtris Nichols -- didn't even do nearly that well.  Yet, I watched every single game, loved every single winning moment, and was crushed by every single loss.  Like any true fan I guess, but more so now than ever before.  Perhaps it's the increased exposure I get of them now -- instead of just the 10 to 12 nationally televised games I'd get to see of the team a decade ago, I now get those plus another 15 games on SNY (New York's Mets and Big East channel) and the remaining two or three untelevised games streaming live on the Internet.  One week after the Phillies were parading around town with their first championship since I was nine, I was watching a Syracuse pre-season matchup online to see if Eric Devendorf and Andy Rautins were recovered from their previous year's knee surgeries and if the team would miss Donte Greene's early exit for the NBA.  The answer to those questions were yes, yes, and an emphatic no, as this year's team is going to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2004.  And while Carmelo Anthony will forever hold the title of my favorite Syracuse player for the title he brought to the team (and he challenges Mike Schmidt, Tim Brown, and Edgar Martinez as my favorite all-time players in any sport), Jonny Flynn is well on his way to challenging Gerry McNamara and Lawrence Moten and Sherman Douglas and Preston Shumpert and Stevie Thompson and John Wallace and Hakim Warrick and yes, Derrick Coleman, as my 2nd favorite Orange men of all-time.  And if Eric Devendorf can hit another five 3-pointers on Friday night, he'll be well on his way up that list as well.  Go ORANGE!!!

(DISCLAIMER:  Of course, the real reason I love the Orange is that I went to college at Syracuse from 1989 to 1994, not at their now-Big East brethren Rutgers, which was in the Atlantic 10 in those years and never played Syracuse and in fact featured two Syracuse transfers (Earl Duncan and Keith Hughes) who led the team to its only NCAA tournament appearance since -- well, I don't know when and they haven't been back since -- so there was nothing wrong with me continuing to root for the team while also rooting for the school I was attending at the time... which was Syracuse of course, so never mind).

Favorite Sports Teams in History (through 2008):

1. 2002-03 Syracuse Orange (NCAA champions)
2. 1993 Philadelphia Phillies (NL champions)
3. 2008 Philadelphia Phillies (World Series champions)
4. 2002-03 Oakland Raiders (AFC champions)
5. 1980 Philadelphia Phillies  (World Series champions)
6. 2001 Seattle Mariners (Best regular season record in MLB history)
7. 1995-96 Syracuse Orangemen (NCAA runner-up)
8. 2000-01 Oakland Raiders (Lost in AFC championship)
9. 1990-91 Los Angeles Raiders (Lost in AFC championship)
10. 1983 Philadelphia Phillies (NL champions)
11. 1995 Seattle Mariners (Lost in AL championship)
12. 2005-06 Syracuse Orange (Big East tournament champs)
13. 2000 Seattle Mariners (Lost in AL championship)
14. 2007 Philadelphia Phillies (NL East division winners)
15. 2003-04 Syracuse Orange (Losers in Sweet 16)
16. 2001-02 Oakland Raiders (fucking Tuck rule!)
17. 2004 Boston Red Sox (World Series champions - fuck the Yankees)
18. 2004-05 Syracuse Orange (Big East tournament champs)
19. 1994-95 Syracuse Orangemen (Lost in 2nd round in OT to national runner-up Arkansas)
20. 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks (World Series champions - fuck the fucking Yankees)

Comments

[LegFuJohnson]

There were brackets in 1987. I ran a small (6 people) pool in high school in 1987, I rode Keith Smart all the way to a 2nd place finish that year.

I'd say you forgot Jeter in your list of favorite athletes, but I suppose regular readers know you don't have to mention the obvious.

[LegFuJohnson]

Really jinxed the shit out of this team, didn't you?

[Switsky]

wow..your favorite team out of all the sports, nice. How many games in the dome have you been to?

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