Like Kentucky and Kansas, Duke and UNC, Syracuse is one of the few schools where college basketball -- and not football -- actually is king.
It takes a special combination of having a tradition-rich history, a mediocre football program and a lack of professional teams in the region, but when the perfect storm forms, it creates a fanbase that is equal parts rabid, passionate, defensive and diehard.
That’s why Syracuse is able to play basketball in the Carrier Dome and pack it with 34,000 people. The folks in Upstate New York care about the Orange. A lot.
Former Orange guard Dion Waiters, who declared for the NBA Draft last month, is writing a diary for Dime Magazine, and in his first entry he touched on just what it is like to be a Syracuse basketball players:
Waiters will be getting paid a lot of money in the NBA. He’ll be living out a dream that every kid has growing up. Sports will make him rich. It’s the life.
But he’ll never experience a fanbase quite as passionate as Syracuse’s ever again. He may never play in front of a crowd as big as the ones that pack into the Carrier Dome ever again. He may never again have fans that take pictures of him while he is getting a pedicure.
Wait, what?
The image of Waiters sitting in a robe with cucumbers over his eyes while a group of fish eat away at the dead skin on his feet is too much for me right now.
Rob Dauster is the editor of the college basketball website Ballin’ is a Habit. You can find him on twitter @robdauster.