It’s that time of year again.

It’s the time when any unsuspecting person watching college basketball on television can hear over and over how Madison Square Garden and New York City are second homes to the Syracuse men’s basketball team.

Judging by the number of games SU plays at the Garden, it’s safe to say the clich is partially true. Today’s game against Connecticut is SU’s 18th game at Madison Square Garden since the 2003-04 season.

And SU usually draws a horde of orange-wearing fans when it plays in New York. Last year, the crowd at Madison Square Garden treated Gerry McNamara and the rest of the men’s basketball team like heroes, including a standing ovation that lasted for minutes after the Orange unexpectedly won the Big East tournament.

The strong support for Orange basketball in New York City undoubtedly adds weight to the athletic department’s grandiose claim that Syracuse is ‘New York’s College Team.’ But can a school located further away from NYC than seven other Big East schools (including SU’s traditional rival, Georgetown) truly claim to be New York’s team?

It depends on which New York (the city or the state) the slogan talks about.

Syracuse Director of Athletics Daryl Gross said the campaign aims to entice all of New York State, not just those in New York City, to don Orange caps. He wants people across New York to go to suathletics.com, the athletic department’s Web site, and find all the information, multimedia, gear and tickets New Yorkers need to transform into true SU fans. ‘One-stop shopping’ he calls it.

‘The whole premise is if you go through, every state in the Union has their colleges,’ Gross said. ‘We’re the only football, basketball, big-time school in this state. And we’re pushing like mad for the state of New York.’

He’s right about SU’s status as the only big-time college sports program in New York. Syracuse is the only college in New York to belong to a ‘major’ conference and play football.

Army and Buffalo are the only other New York colleges with football teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly called Division I-A). And of those seven Big East schools closer to New York City, just Connecticut and Rutgers join Syracuse when football season rolls around. Not the most imposing bunch, even considering Syracuse’s recent skid in football.

So it seems Syracuse may be the only power in the Empire State. But that still does not prove the entire state has adopted SU as ‘its team.’

And if the athletic department really guns to convert the entire state, it isn’t marketing its efforts that way. It seems SU cajoles the power brokers in the city while taking for granted (somewhat) its traditional upstate fan base.

There aren’t any press releases on the athletic department’s Web site celebrating billboards in Buffalo or an advertisement in Albany.

SU Athletics does promote its campaign in NYC, though. Gross is quick to point out that ‘Orange is in the Apple’ and an SU-related advertisement periodically flashes on ABC Studios’ giant board in Times Square. When a lengthy banner promoting SU’s athletic programs appeared on a New York City skyscraper in late 2005, so, too, did a story on suathletics.com celebrating Syracuse’s presence in NYC.

And don’t even mention that Syracuse has competition for the New York market, as evidenced by the scarlet light that emanated from the Empire State Building during the nationally televised Rutgers-Louisville game in November 2006.

Should the SU football team ever play a game with national implications, Gross plans to top Rutgers’ shining moment.

‘You got to play good,’ Gross said. ‘Once we do, we’ll have the Empire State Building lit up orange. We’ll have the Statue of Liberty orange.’

Great. Outfit Lady Liberty in those new form-fitting basketball uniforms and two New York landmarks will be school spirited instead of just one.

Kidding aside, it’s dangerous to bank so heavily on a city that boasts seven professional sports teams and flutters from one top story to the next. And Gross acknowledges it.

‘It’s a double entendre with New York City,’ Gross said. ‘They don’t identify with anything consistent.’

So, why is the athletic department investing its efforts in New York City?

‘All I know is, when we play in MSG there’s a ton of Orange people,’ Gross said. ‘It gives me chills. It’s incredible.’

As incredible as it is, the scene at Madison Square Garden is only a fleeting moment. Until SU grabs more than the occasional headline in NYC, the Orange will never be what the athletic department hopes it is – New York’s college team.

At least anywhere south of Poughkeepsie.

Rob Anthes is an assistant sports editor emeritus at The Daily Orange, where his columns will no longer appear. E-mail him at rmanthes@syr.edu.

Published on March 6, 2007 at 12:00 pm