SU fires Babers before final game of the season
SU fires Babers before final game of the season
The football head coach compiled a 41-55 record in his eight-year tenure with the Orange.
Syracuse fired football head coach Dino Babers on Sunday morning. ESPN’s Pete Thamel first reported the news.
The decision came after a 31-22 loss to Georgia Tech on Saturday night. The defeat marked the sixth loss in seven games after a 4-0 start to the season.
According to Thamel, tight ends coach Nunzio Campanile will serve as the interim coach.
Syracuse Director of Athletics John Wildhack thanked Babers for his time with the program but did not specify what led to the decision. Still, it follows two consecutive seasons with five straight losses. Babers joined SU in 2016.
After this season’s hot start, the team lost the next five games, all ACC matchups, by a combined 113 points.
SU received criticism for a stagnant and conservative offense during their losses.
The team managed to right the ship for a win against Pitt in Yankee Stadium, but were not able to keep the momentum going in the loss to Georgia Tech.
This season had a familiar feeling for Babers and the Orange. Last season featured an impressive 6-0 start — the best the program had in over 30 years — followed by a 1-6 finish.
Babers joined Syracuse’s football program in 2016. The then-new head coach led the team to two consecutive 4-8 finishes, scoring upset wins over Virginia Tech and Clemson in his first and second seasons respectively.
In his third year, Babers led the Orange to a 10-3 record, won the Camping World Bowl, and finished the season ranked in the top 25.
The successful year would prove to be an outlier. The historic season was followed by three under .500, including a 1-10 mark in the 2020 COVID season.
Last year proved to be Babers’s only other winning season in Central New York.
While Babers’s 41 wins rank as the fifth-most in program history, his 20-45 mark in the ACC since 2016 is the second-worst record in the league during that window.
In Babers’s eight seasons, Syracuse tended to fold down the stretch, compiling a 7-22 mark in November games.
The decision to move on from Babers with one game left in the season came as a bit of a surprise, especially with bowl eligibility left on the table.
It is not yet clear what a buyout from Babers’s contract will look like.
