EAST HARTFORD, Conn. – Right now, Joe Fields is playing the best football of his college career. But there’s a problem: next week his career is over. And all he has to show for it is 13 wins and 34 losses.

Four years of losing. That’s not what it’s supposed to be like at Syracuse. But as Connecticut completed its 30-7 thrashing of the Orange yesterday, reality has started to dawn on the graduating class.

‘It was a tough game. It was a tough loss. It’s a tough loss for the seniors. It’s a tough loss for the program,’ said Jameel McClain, a senior defense end.

For seniors at SU, the program has turned into a four-year struggle against bigger, better opponents. In the future it looks like more of the same.

The class of 2007 could be considered lucky. At least in its freshman year, the Orange logged a 6-5 record in the regular season. It was good enough to give SU a share of the Big East title and a berth in the Champs Sports Bowl, where Syracuse endured a 51-14 beatdown by Georgia Tech and the firing of a head coach (Paul Pasqualoni).

The 2008 class only can fantasize about getting whipped in a bowl. The best cellar-dwelling teams can hope for is an upset over an opponent the school has no business beating.

That’s all so far next year’s class will be able to retain-an unbelievable 38-35 upset over then-ranked No. 18 Louisville. But it’s just one win.

Not a conference title. One major upset is still five wins short of the magic number needed to become bowl eligible.

This year’s seniors never saw the nosedive coming: that going into their final game as seniors-and even the previous two or three weeks before it-the best any of them could look forward to would be spoiling a rival’s season, not furthering their own postseason ambitions.

Dowayne Davis, a defensive back who has started every game the last three seasons, insisted after his freshman year at Syracuse he did not imagine the program would spend its next three years in a so-called ‘rebuilding’ phase.

‘It’s funny cause we talk about it all the time,’ Davis said. ‘That first year as freshmen we saw the things that we did…We had that taste. And we were like, ‘we didn’t even do that good and look where we were. So imagine what we’re going to do when we actually start playing.’ And it didn’t turn out that way.’

Fields might possess the most frustrating story. He enrolled at Syracuse in the spring of 2004. That fall he became the first true freshman to start at quarterback since 1982. Ever since, not much has gone the way Fields expected.

On Saturday, he returned to the place that could be considered the defining moment in four years of disappointment.

On a rainy, mud-soaked Renstchler Field two years ago, Connecticut was trouncing the Orange. Fields was supposed to sit out the season and save a year of eligibility. However, with the team apparently so discouraged with quarterback Perry Patterson, Fields burned his redshirt to throw three incomplete passes and an interception and be moved to defense a year later.

Fields currently roams the secondary, leading the Orange in tackles and interceptions. Fields took a long road to individual success. It appears he’s achieved it, but the accomplishment only becomes exasperated by the team’s lack of victories.

‘You wish you could win more games,’ Fields said, ‘but I don’t regret making that decision (to play in 2005) because it is what it is. We had our opportunities to make the season go better. And we got to live with it’

The blame has been portioned out everywhere from the coaching to the inexperience to the upperclassmen. But any changes will come too late for any seniors playing next Saturday against Cincinnati.

Senior Day will feature a meaningless matchup between the Big East’s last place Orange and the Bearcats, who were eliminated from conference title contention Saturday by West Virginia.

The seniors claim they’re still motivated. Davis might have the easiest time persevering-it’ll be the first time his family will be able to attend one of his games. He admits it should be one of his most emotional playing experiences, and the harshest part remains that nothing more than SU’s third win of the season will be at stake during Davis’s final moments in Orange. But with the direction the Syracuse program is headed toward, that’s the newest SU tradition seniors must embrace-the era of playing for pride has begun. Matt Levin as an assistant feature editor for The Daily Orange, and his columns appear for sports occasionally. He can be reached at mrlevin@syr.edu.

Published on November 19, 2007 at 12:00 pm