Daryl Gross had none of the bodily shakiness of an expectant father Friday afternoon, standing at the podium of the introductory press conference for Doug Marrone. His over-read sales pitch for the Syracuse football program had been tossed in the garbage hours ago. Underneath it, of course, he wore the air miles in bags under his eyes.

A reporter joked offhandedly that Gross could now come out of his bunker – which more recently has been a charter jet, taking the Syracuse Director of Athletics from California to New York City to Philadelphia to Ohio to who knows where else in the past few weeks. Qualified head coaches, it seems, can’t be found by one-stop shopping.

Which is why, on Friday, Gross was thinking of only one thing besides a successful introduction for the new leader of the SU football program.

‘I just want to go to sleep, man,’ Gross said.

The coaching carousel has kicked up quite a whirlwind in Central New York for months now, picking up urgent momentum in the last week before the fallout Thursday night. Gross said he hasn’t paid much attention to the internet rumors and TV speculation throughout the process, adding he never wanted the distraction anyway.

Entranced by the resumes that crossed his desk, part of Gross may have never wanted the coaching search process to end either. He revels in the late-night deliberations with his office whiteboard. He’s charmed by the constant chirping of his cell phone. He drinks in the perception of himself as talent evaluator, and here was his chance to show off his own recruiting abilities.

Because everybody knew that the coach Gross hires is as much a reflection of his skill as an attracter as the allure of the program itself. Could he make a splash – like a Gait or a Jensen – offering a team of 10 wins in four seasons? Could he convince a hot prospect – like a Holtz or a Kiffin – that Syracuse is a destination as much as Knoxville, Tenn., or Auburn, Ala.?

‘I’ve done a lot of searches, and some have worked and some haven’t,’ Gross said. ‘We’ve used the same system. This is the most thorough search I’ve ever been involved in my life. But at the end of the day, it’s all about, can you find the special, rare person that separates themselves from everybody else? And this guy had it.’

Broad-shouldered, deep-voiced, dark-haired – was Gross looking for an exact Greg Robinson antithesis, right down to the superficialities? Marrone’s from the Bronx, not the West Coast; he’s on offense, not defense; he’s got connections, but said he’s not a ‘phone’ guy.

He commanded the room right from his introduction, biting down on his grins to glare back at the filled Iocolano-Petty Football Complex with a sort of determination that could have sent a few chills down the backs of the SU players who gathered in the room to watch. It seems official now that coaching coddling walked out the door with Robinson two weeks ago.

‘We are not in a rebuilding process,’ Marrone said. ‘We are in the process of rejuvenating this program and we are in the process of winning football games.’

Maybe Marrone never had ‘head coach’ anywhere on his resume, but Gross was obviously charmed by his NFL appeal, his SU ties, and, perhaps most importantly, his reputation as an offensive whiz. He repeated often how Marrone is the scientist behind Pro Football’s highest-scoring team, how he’ll be one of the few offensive-minded head coaches now in the Big East, and how he supposedly is one of the reasons for Oklahoma’s offensive success this season.

‘I like the fact that Oklahoma went to see him in the offseason to figure out how to do their offense,’ Gross said, adding that the Sooners, who will play in the national title game, set an NCAA record with five-straight 60 point games this year.

Gross can do the math here, too: for a program starving for fan support, why not bring offense as an added attraction? Imagine a dome lit by the spread, hiking up its scoreboard totals as the next greatest show on turf (east of the Mississippi). Fans may not have heard of Marrone, but they’ve surely heard of the New Orleans Saints and their high-scoring attack.

It will be turnstiles, not cellphone messages, chirping in the frenzied psyche of Gross now, now that the headhunt for SU football is finally over. Speculation can cease, and Gross can get the rest he’s been craving.

‘All I want to do is get Doug off to a good start, hit some tennis balls, and then get some sleep,’ Gross said, laughing. ‘Then I’ll be ready to go. If I can get just one eight-hour night, I’ll be fired up.’

Tomorrow, the countdown can begin anew, the pressure can return from the unfailing critics and commentators, and the ceaseless pestering will re-revolve around a football program that will have a whole new set of expectations and demands.

But for today, the stress has stopped, the search is over, the demands have finished: for nobody can possibly know how good, or how bad, the new head football coach at Syracuse can really be.

It’s a sort of peace Gross can sleep comfortably to.

Zach Schonbrun is the sports columnist for The Daily Orange, where his columns will resume every Tuesday next semester. He can be reached at zsschonb@syr.edu.

Published on December 12, 2008 at 12:00 pm