Part of the Doc’s Big East Week.

A general rule of thumb in coaching changes is that it takes around three years for a new coach to make a program truly “his team” – his recruits, his rules, his philosophy, his call whether to allow Three 6 Mafia over the PA at practice. Given the depth of the rot at Syracuse after four rock-bottom years under Greg Robinson, Doug Marrone gets an unusually wide berth. Nobody minded that the Orange were 4-8 last year, and the fact that they’re not unanimously pegged for last place in the Big East counts as a sign of progress.

Marrone, though, has accelerated the turnover to nearly Saban-like proportions. Before his first game, Marrone had already sent 14 players packing in less than six months; by the end of his second spring practice earlier this year, the student Daily Orange counted the premature departures at 28, for reasons ranging from curfew violations to bucking against a “boot camp” approach to practices and “petty” rules like forbidding facial hair and wristbands during games. (Leading rusher Delone Carter may be the next to go after assaulting another student in April.) Star receiver Mike Williams openly refuted Marrone’s contention that Williams quit the team in the middle of the season, claiming he was kicked off after a car accident over Halloween weekend. The Orange took the field in the spring with just 52 scholarship players, including specialists and five early-enrolling true freshmen.

Whether you see the exodus as cutting away the chaff or unnecessarily alienating the troops, it certainly hastens the distance between Marrone’s program and Robinson’s, and raises the stakes of taking another step back toward ‘Cuse’s first bowl game since 2004 (even if the coveted International Bowl no longer exists). The vast majority of the starters may have arrived under Robinson, but they’ve bought into Marrone.

Or so he hopes. If some of the roots of progress took hold last year – in the midst of another 1-6, last-place finish in the Big East – a bowl game isn’t as farfetched as that record may suggest. The Orange beat a couple bowl-bound outfits, coming from behind to beat Northwestern on a last-second field goal and stunning Rutgers, a nine-point favorite, 31-13 in late November, outgaining the Scarlet Knights by almost 300 total yards in the most encouraging ‘Cuse win since the 2001 Insight Bowl. They were an overtime against Minnesota (a 23-20 loss in the opener) and a botched extra point at Louisville (10-9) from improbably staggering into a .500 regular season. Ten returning starters on defense, including top pass rushers Doug Hogue and Derrell Smith (both second-team All-Big East picks as juniors), make up on of the most veteran lineups in the conference.

The inexperience at quarterback (sophomore Ryan Nassib has zero career starts after being shunted aside for one-and-done transfer Greg Paulus) and on the offensive line puts a bowl bid on the far side of reality – especially considering the schedule, which includes likely losses against Washington and Boston College and two I-AA/FCS outside the conference, meaning the Orange really have to finish 7-5 to qualify. More likely, progress will be measured by adding a few more plausible could-have-beens to the list. That’s no small victory for an outfit that’s been beaten as often and as soundly as Syracuse over the last years; at some point, it has to come within striking distance of the teams it eventually hopes to pass – Cincinnati, UConn, South Florida and West Virginia have all taken the Orange by double digits at least three years in a row; Pitt’s taken six straight, five by double digits –