Skip Holtz At Syracuse? Yeah, That Might Work

I'd written on CFN a few weeks back that I thought Syracuse AD Daryl Gross had one chance to make a big, splashy hire to replace Greg Robinson - former USC offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin. Obviously that's not happening. Nor is Randy Edsall going to take what would be (generously) a lateral move to leave Connecticut for the Orange.

With Buffalo's Turner Gill looking like a strong candidate to take the Auburn job, East Carolina head coach Skip Holtz appears to be the frontrunner at Syracuse. It would be a very solid hire - Holtz has won everywhere he's been and has ties to the northeast from his days at UConn. The surname doesn't hurt, either. When your other likely choices were non-descript NFL or college assistants (sorry, Steve Addazio), the son of Lou Holtz seems like a real good bet.

***************************

On a completely unrelated note, it turns out Rutgers defensive end Jamaal Westerman played the second half of the season with a torn bicep, which is just ridiculously manly.

Greg Robinson Is A Fan Of Children's Literature

Greg Robinson was a lot of things during his four-year stint as the head coach at Syracuse. He was the guy who said a lot of stupid stuff: either for real or in parody form. He was the guy who single-handedly took a solid, middle-of-the-road Big East program and turned it into a laughingstock. And now on his way out the door, he's challenged Jim Leavitt for the title of "weirdest presser by a Big East head coach".



It's no Mike Gundy, but hey, Robinson's well over 40 - which apparently doesn't stop him from having an encyclopedic knowledge of children's literature.

On the Greg Robinson replacement front, it's all over the place. The logical choice would be Turner Gill, who has turned a laughingstock Buffalo program into a bowl team in just three seasons while recruiting in basically the same area as Syracuse. But athletic director Daryl Gross - whose job may not be all that secure himself - might want a splashier name, like East Carolina's Skip Holtz. I think some of the names on that list, like Boise State's Chris Petersen, is the result of some hard living and/or wishful thinking.