Each off-season the Orlando Sentinel college football blog ranks every team in Division I football. Last year, we took issue with them ranking the Orange 104th -- which ended up being wildly off as SU went 8-5 overall, 4-3 in the Big East and beat Kansas State in the Pinstripe Bowl.
This year Syracuse moves up 33 places in their rankings, checking it at number 71. According to the Sentinel, the only team Syracuse is better than in the Big East is Rutgers.
The rankings are a fun exercise and ultimately meaningless, so we're not going to get all fired up over this year's position -- even though it once again is about 20 spots lower than it should be. While the Orange lost a lot of talent on defense, this year's team will have a very experienced, deeper offensive line, a vastly improved receiving corps, and a quarterback with a year of valuable starting experience under his belt.
The defense will be young and undersized, but Scott Shafer has worked miracles in his first two years with the Orange and if he can utilize the speed of a small, young crew and continue to play a style that attacks the ball and creates turnovers, that will be enough to keep Syracuse in games. We actually believe this is the year Syracuse can out-score some opponents, so they won't have to rely on the defense as heavily.
We'll leave the real complaining to Rutgers Scarlet Knights fans as they checked in at number 107 on the list, and that's especially awkward since the picture of the coach used in the College GridIron 365 logo looks a lot like Greg Schiano.
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