It began to flurry outside upon the Carl ‘Chugger’ Davis football field, a silent reminder that this was not the Carrier Dome. Here, on a February afternoon, fresh snow already blanketed the turf Doug Marrone once painted.

A few hundred yards away, the 7-year-old football facility sat empty, its solemnity giving no hint of the frenzy of a few months before, when 10,000 fans came to watch one of college’s fiercest rivalries.

From a hotel room in Kansas City, Marrone had to wait until the next day to find the score.

‘I was as upset this year as ever knowing we lost to Ithaca,’ Marrone said.

The ‘we’ isn’t Syracuse. It’s Cortland State. And the winding path of almost two decades of coaching that led Marrone to Syracuse University began there.

Much was made on national signing day two weeks ago, when Marrone, a Bronx native and Syracuse alum, unveiled his first recruiting class by trumpeting his many Empire State connections. Few realize, however, perhaps his strongest tie is just 30 minutes down Interstate 81, at a small Division III state school overlooked behind its Ivy League neighbor.

At Cortland State, Marrone had his first coaching job, spending one year as a tight ends coach in 1992. He’s checked the box scores of their games ever since.

And when he was hired as SU head coach, he brought in two more people with Cortland State bonds: secondary coach John Anselmo, a former quarterback there in the 1970s, and director of football operations Kevin Van Derzee, a Cortland alum and former student manager.

Their time there never overlapped, and neither spent more than a few years on Cortland’s campus. But now, back at Syracuse after building up resumes around the country, all three can look down the road at the program that gave birth to their football careers.

At a D-III school where the coaching duties included sleeping in dormitories, busing six hours to some away games, watering the fields and doing the players’ laundry.

‘I learned how to appreciate what you get as you build up in the profession,’ Marrone said.

As a 28-year-old coming off a six-year stint in professional football, Marrone was looking to break into the coaching side of the game. He knew being a grad assistant was the first step, and he narrowed his choices down to two: Cortland State and Southern California.

USC had history, D-I status, sun and sand, but no job available as a coach. Cortland State did.

Former SU coaches Paul Pasqualoni and George DeLeone called down and said, ”Hey, we’ve got a heck of a man up here. Just got through playing and wants to get into the coaching profession. Needs a place to go right now,” said former Cortland head coach Dave Murray. ‘I had not met Doug at that point, but because of the respect I had for both coach Pasqualoni and DeLeone, I said absolutely.’

Marrone had just been in Europe for two years playing pro football. He had been a three-year starter at Syracuse and a sixth-round NFL Draft pick. Here he was at Cortland painting the lines before games against Springfield College and Southern Connecticut.

He was coaching tight ends who’d only dream to have half the talent he once had. He was cramming into charter buses where nobody had a seat to themselves.

‘It was a 50-50 call whether the thing would start on fire on the way there,’ Murray said.

It was all a litmus test for a coach’s creds – something Greg Schiano, Jim Leavitt and even Pasqualoni, each of whom spent time at D-III schools, know about. It cuts the fat away from Division I entitlement. And it helped foster a love of pure coaching in Marrone, who has said he wasn’t sure he really wanted to pursue coaching until spending the year with the Dragons.

‘The first thing you learn is you appreciate what those players have to go through to play football,’ Marrone said. ‘It’s not an easy sport. Their love of the game is the one thing that shows. I think they work at it. Their work ethic and just how close they are as a team, those are the things that I remember.’

Murray remembers the budding offensive whiz that would later become one of the NFL’s top coordinators. Then he was just a young assistant curious to the ways of handling a roster and drawing up game plans. It was clear to Murray, though, Marrone had his wheels turning and ears pricked.

He’d trail the wide receivers coach, constantly talking X’s and O’s. He had his hand in special teams, working specially with the long snappers. He drew up a defensive scheme for a game against Springfield College – a way to stop their wishbone attack – that ended up being pivotal in Cortland’s 26-6 win.

‘Doug played an abnormally big role for a first-year coach throughout that entire season, for sure,’ Murray said.

‘I knew at the time that he wasn’t going to be long for the Division III life,’ Murray said. ‘You could tell he was a coach. He could break skill down, had great communication skills with the players, had a tireless work ethic, and got along well with the staff.’

If it’s any sign of what Marrone may bring to Syracuse, it’s a good thing. Already, the football offices in Manley Field House give a vibe of close connection.

Across the hall from Marrone’s office is Van Derzee’s new home as director of football operations, after spending a year as director of high school relations for Tennessee. Van Derzee, who graduated from Cortland in 2000, jokes with Anselmo often about the Red Dragons.

Because Anselmo was the quarterback for Cortland in the early 1970s. And Van Derzee’s dad was the team’s tight end.

‘They like to squabble still about how (Anselmo) wouldn’t throw him the ball,’ Van Derzee said.

Van Derzee hopped onto the Cortland football team as a student manager during his sophomore year, just as ‘something to do.’ It led him to a career in football that has taken him to the NFL, the Southeastern Conference and now the Big East.

‘There was no real money,’ VanDerzee said. ‘The old athletic director would pay me – I’d go into his office and he’d pull up the carpet and pay me. He’d reach into a pocket of a jacket in the closet and pay me. But you don’t do it for the money.’

At the annual New York State high school coaches’ convention at the Turning Stone Resort & Casino two weeks ago, Marrone was surrounded by former players and other Cortland alums.

‘It just reaffirms that good things happen at Cortland, that good ties are made at Cortland,’ said Joan Sitterley, Cortland’s athletic director. ‘It shows that there are students here, that we’ve done a good job with them. And that there are those we’ve hired that obviously we hired some of the best people we could at this level. We’re pleased to be part of their training.’

Cortland, which has made it to the Eastern College Athletic Conference championship game four of the last seven years, was a powerhouse in Division III football even two decades ago. Marrone’s 1992 season came in the midst of a string of six consecutive winning seasons for the Red Dragons, including four playoff appearances.

But anybody that knows football in this area knows that a successful season is only determined by the performance in one game: the annual match vs. Ithaca, once called the ‘biggest little game in the nation’ by Sports Illustrated, for the Cortaca Jug.

In 1992, Ithaca was undefeated and coming off a D-III national championship. But Cortland beat them, 22-20, on Davis Field. And despite spending only that one year at Cortland, it left a mark on Marrone, who still seemed irritated Ithaca took back the Jug in 2008.

The days of charter buses and laundering girdles may seem a long way off now. In truth, they’ve never been so close.

The whirlwind of coaching stints for Marrone over 17 years has careened back at the base of his football foundation – and just up the road from where he, Van Derzee and Anselmo began their respective careers. Unassuming in its character, Cortland State fostered many of the principles each will now use to lead Syracuse back to prominence.

‘What I learned from the coaching staff was it’s not about a lot of money,’ Marrone said. ‘It’s about doing the right thing. Coaching these players like they’re your son. The way the players were treated there, they way they were taught, that was a big thing I learned when I started there.’

When he paces the sidelines of the Carrier Dome in September, the flashbacks may transport Marrone. The surrealism of the situation may hit him. The painted lines may bring him back.

Zach Schonbrun is the sports columnist for The Daily Orange, where his columns appear every Wednesday. He can be reached at zsschonb@syr.edu.

Published on February 17, 2009 at 12:00 pm