SNY.tv: Online Home of All Things Sports

Syracuse has the taxicab ads, the ones that proclaim it "New York's College Team," and Syracuse has an athletic director who's unfurled an 11-story banner sporting an orange apple in Times Square.

Rutgers has a coach with a GPS.

"It's not even close, other than Army -- which is a service academy -- it's not even close which school is closest, which Division I institution is the closest to all of New York City, Staten Island, Long Island, Westchester County," that coach, Greg Schiano, said. "There's no debating it. It's not even close."

It was earlier this week, as Schiano was readying his 7-2 Scarlet Knights (2-2 Big East) for Saturday's kickoff up at woefully-undermanned Syracuse (3-7, 0-4). There was plenty football to talk, and plenty to be played up in the Carrier Dome Saturday, but there's also definitely another game being played out far away from those snaps: the contest for New York.

Back when Doug Marrone was a high school prospect in the Bronx, there was no contest, nor any question. "When I was being recruited," Syracuse's first-year head coach said, "that's how I always viewed (Syracuse), as New York's college team."

And from Ernie Davis to Donovan McNabb, Syracuse was. But then Paul Pasqualoni was fired, Greg Robinson was hired and the Orange haven't had a winning season since Schiano's first at Rutgers, in 2001. Schiano in that time meanwhile made relevant one of the country's most irrelevant programs, drawing New York Giants and Mets to his sidelines, goading the Empire State Building to light in scarlet and dropping New York in every mention of his now-patented "State of Rutgers."

"I look at it," Marrone said, "and I think that Coach Schiano and his staff have done a nice job."

What more can he say? He's in his first-year, and as he said, far more concerned with building his own program than keeping track of another. He was a coaching wunderkind as the New Orleans' Saints' offensive coordinator, earmarked by the NFL for a special assistants' executive search program and then championed by Colts' general manager Bill Polian, who told Syracuse athletic director Daryl Gross he'd have to move fast or an NFL team would make Marrone a head coach.

This is the only college head coaching job Marrone's ever wanted and in the binder-bound notes he called "The Plan" and scribbled in for years (Schiano kept a similar binder), he of course wrote about the import of winning "back" New York.

" When I was growing up, when I was being recruited basically all over the country, it was important to me to stay in state and go to a school like Syracuse where I would have connections later on, where if I didn't go on and play football -- at that time I didn't know I was going to go into coaching -- that I knew that the alumni base of the people would be able to help me settle into an area where I wanted to be the rest of my life," he said, repeating a line he's likely said to many a recruit this past year.

And so, the game continues.

In that same geography conversation, Schiano said, "I don't have Mapquest, but I'm sure from parts of New York City, Maryland's campus may be closer than Syracuse's campus, or Penn state's campus. The one thing I do know is Rutgers is right there, right in the middle."

Before that, in announcing Rutgers' game at Yankee Stadium -- a place Syracuse has yet to schedule -- with Army, Schiano said, "Army and Rutgers, it's always been New York's two teams, both within an hour of the city."

Before that, in discussing Syracuse's three games at the new Meadowlands Stadium -- at which point Rutgers hadn't yet confirmed its one game there -- Gross pointedly said, several times, Meadowlands officials "recruited us."

Before that, at the Big East's Media Day in Rhode Island, Schiano said, "New York does need a team and I believe we're it."

Before that, when Gross was asked about the Empire State Building's scarlet lights, he realistically -- and confidently -- said, "You got to play good. Once we do, we'll have the Empire State Building lit up orange. We'll have the State of Liberty orange."

(The Statue of Liberty, incidentally, sits on an island that's officially New Jersey territory.)

On it went and on it goes. Gross came aboard five years ago and commissioned a new block "S" logo. (Perhaps in the mold of Rutgers' then relatively new block "R" logo?) Syracuse's basketball players have taken to calling Madison Square Garden their home floor every March, and they've done it when Rutgers' hoops team was long gone from the hallowed arena.

In the end, Schiano said, "You can claim whatever you want." What affirms that claim, Marrone said, is winning.

Syracuse won 15 of 16, from 1987 to 2002, including one particularly awful (for Rutgers) three-year stretch, when the Orange outscored the Scarlet Knights 162-17. The Knights have won five of the last six, though, and with a win Saturday, they could ensure this senior class leaves Syracuse without ever having beaten Rutgers.

Schiano said he doesn't yet know Marrone particularly well, their previous conversations largely limited to times the younger coach came to work out Rutgers' NFL prospects. Still, Schiano said, his new colleague makes a strong impression, that it seems "He's a really good person, a good guy."

"He's one of us," Schiano said. "A northeastern guy."

And as every northeasterner knows, the northeast's capital is New York City.