How patient has Syracuse been with Dino Babers? Record shows he needs winning season to keep his job

Published Jul. 24, 2023, 6:00 a.m.
By Chris Carlson
Syracuse, N.Y. — Not many college football coaches make it to Year 8 at one school.
Far fewer do it with a record worse than what Dino Babers has compiled at Syracuse.
Unless the university views Babers’ contract as a financial albatross, history and common sense tells us this season will be a prove-it-or-move-along year for the head coach.
Whether you attribute this to the school’s patience or low expectations for the football program, Babers is already in rare company entering his eighth season.
Of the 271 coaches at current Power-Five schools who have made it to Year 8, Babers ranks among the bottom 10% in win percentage. His 36-49 record at Syracuse (.424 winning percentage) ranks as the 17th-worst of that group*.
Of the 16 Power-Five coaches who entered Year 8 having won less than Babers, nine had losing records in Year 8.
Just one made it to his ninth season.
The other seven members of the group went .500 or better in Year 8.
All of them received a chance to build on it.
The 16 coaches who have performed worse than Babers have mostly come from places considered the dregs of the sport and jobs considered among the toughest in college football.
Schools that have tolerated worse stretches by one coach through seven seasons include Indiana (twice), Iowa State (twice), Kansas State (twice), Northwestern, Wake Forest, Washington State, Vanderbilt, Illinois, Purdue and Kansas.
The others, North Carolina State, Penn State (pre-Joe Paterno) and Oregon (pre-Phil Knight), all retained losing coaches in an era before the sport became such big business.
Babers is the first coach to last this long at a Power-Five school with a record this poor in more than a decade. The most recent was Vanderbilt’s Bobby Johnson, who went into his eighth season in 2009 with a record of 27-56.
Johnson, like Babers, entered his eighth year coming off a 7-6 season. It was Vanderbilt’s first winning season since 1982. Johnson followed that up with a 2-10 season and retired for personal reasons six months later.
Only four Power-Five coaches have been kept for eight years with a record worse than Babers since the BCS era began in 1998.
The list includes Johnson, Wake Forest’s Jim Caldwell, Iowa State’s Dan McCarney and Illinois’ Ron Turner.
Other than Caldwell’s success as an NFL assistant, that is not a particularly promising list of coaches or schools to be lumped in with.
There are few professions more cutthroat than coaching. Simply lasting eight years in one place is an accomplishment.
Miami (Fla.) has had only one head coach that stuck around that long despite the school’s rich history. Syracuse has five: Babers, Paul Pasqualoni (.609 win percentage), Dick MacPherson (.589), Ben Schwartzwalder (.627) and Ossie Solem (.526).
Many coaches flame out before coaching through their first contract. Some hit their ceiling and move on, knowing fans crave improvement each year.
A select few manage to land at a destination school where they can acquire enough talent and win enough games to satisfy both themselves and a fan base for the long-haul.
Syracuse athletic director John Wildhack declined to specify last month what Syracuse must do to ensure Babers coaches a ninth season at SU.
Wildhack said Babers has multiple years left on his contract. He said he hopes the coach is successful enough to maintain his position.
Left unsaid was exactly what constitutes success, the exact number of years remaining on the contract and, importantly, the buyout the school would have to pay if it wanted to fire Babers after this year.
ESPN reported the buyout would have been $10 million at the end of last season. That amount will decrease after this season, although the exact number is unknown.
History says Babers, who has not strung together back-to-back winning seasons at Syracuse, can put himself in a good spot by going at least .500 for the second year in a row.
The 62-year-old Babers deserves credit for the 10-3 record he delivered in 2018 — one of the best over the last three decades at SU. It earned him a contract extension that has contributed to his lengthy stay in Central New York.
His worst season (1-10 in 2020) coincided with the coronavirus pandemic, when New York imposed heavier restrictions than other states. The school has also traditionally trailed many of its peers in football resources, like an indoor practice facility, increased support staffing, a football operations center and a full-time nutritionist.
On the positive side for Syracuse and Babers, there are three coaches who rebounded from worse starts to deliver widely respected results at the Power-Five level.
Unfortunately, it’s also been decades since it happened.
The only coach with a worse record than Babers over his first seven seasons that survived a losing season in Year 8 was North Carolina State’s Earle Edwards, who coached from 1954-1970, a different era in college sports.
Edwards oversaw the racial integration of the N.C. State football team and also played an abnormally small number of home games early in his career, helping the school save money for the building of Carter-Finley Stadium in 1966. He went on to win a share of five ACC titles before he resigned.
Bob Higgins went 21-33-3 through his first seven years at Penn State from 1930-36. He went on to coach 19 years at the school, finishing as high as No. 4 in the country.
Rich Brooks went 24-49-4 during his first seven years at Oregon from 1977-83. He went on to finish with bowl appearances in four of his last six seasons, including a Rose Bowl bid.
More recent coaches such as Duke’s David Cutcliffe, Colorado’s Bill McCartney, Virginia Tech’s Frank Beamer and Rutgers’ Greg Schiano won only slightly more than Babers during their first seven seasons and went on to be lauded for their work.
In each case, those coaches had clearly found their footing by the end of their eighth year.
McCartney went 11-1 in Year 8, while Schiano and Cutcliffe were both on the right track, delivering at least their third-consecutive winning season in Year 8. Beamer weathered NCAA sanctions early in his tenure before making back-to-back bowl appearances in Years 7 and 8.
If Babers hopes to join the list of coaches who turned things around, he’ll need to start showing signs this season.
Otherwise, Syracuse’s well of patience seems likely to run dry.
*Editor’s note: Ties were omitted from the winning percentage calculation to create consistency across eras. Ties have not occurred in college football since the overtime system was adopted in 1996.