Only a few of you will still be here when Syracuse adds a new Division I women’s sport in the 2010-11 school year, as first reported Tuesday in The Daily Orange.

But based on the history of non-revenue sports on the Hill, women’s ice hockey or golf-SU athletic director Daryl Gross’ top two choices-may not exactly excite the masses.

Non-revenue sports rarely generate publicity at any university, but Syracuse has always floated in anonymity in most of the non-revs, save men’s lacrosse, a program with a national record nine national championships.

Gross’ goal is to crack the top 100 in the Director’s Cup standings, compiled annually by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics. The standings are determined based on points awarded for success in every sport.

Since Syracuse did not finish in the top 100 in 2006, a spokeswoman for the NACAD would only release SU’s point total. The 21 Division I Orange teams earned 93.75 points. Stanford won the cup for the 12th straight year with 1,197.38 points. Portland and Southern Illinois tied for 100th with 163, meaning Syracuse isn’t close at all.

While former SU athletic director Jake Crouthamel said Syracuse never finished in the top 100 since the Director’s Cup was established in 1995 and remained highly skeptical of Gross’ goal, the more important point is Gross wants to improve Syracuse’s non-revs.

Bright spots exist looking back.

Besides men’s lacrosse, men’s rowing won Syracuse’s first national title in 1959 and normally competes at regattas with the best in the country. Women’s basketball won several Big East championships in the late ’80s. Tennis finished first or second in the Big East in its first 11 years of competition in the conference from 1982-92.

Most recently, volleyball posted winning seasons every season since 1994 and women’s lacrosse has reached the NCAA tournament in six of the last seven seasons.

But none has ever made a splash on the national level. The majority of non-revenue seasons at Syracuse have ended without much postseason success and little publicity-and what there is, is usually negative.

For example, women’s basketball only has one winning season since 1990 and has witnessed 10 people-seven players, two assistant coaches and one director of operations-leave the program since 2004.

‘This is turning the Titanic,’ Gross said of the whole process. ‘This isn’t an overnight fix. But you have to set it up. It’s just like we haven’t broken the top 100 in football, but I know we will.’

Gross already accomplished the major goal behind the scenes to improve the non-revs across the board.

Michael Wasylenko, chairman of the Athletic Policy Board (one of three faculty oversight committees for athletics), said 2006-07 will be the first school year all sports at Syracuse will be fully funded. That means SU will offer the full amount of scholarships allowed for each sport.

‘Our goal has always been to get into the Big East tournament, try to win the Big East tournament and get into the NCAA tournament,’ men’s soccer head coach Dean Foti said. ‘The thing is, now that’s become more realistic just because we’re a fully funded program.’

In terms of more visible changes, Gross has hired new head coaches in cross country/track and field (Chris Fox), softball (Leigh Ross) and tennis (Luke Jensen, a 1993 French Open doubles champion). In women’s basketball, Gross promoted Quentin Hillsman to interim head coach for the 2006-07 season after Keith Cieplicki abruptly resigned in June.

Gross downplayed the idea of bringing in his own coaches, saying, ‘I look at it as I want to have a program that has great leadership, whoever hired (the coach).’ But there is clearly something special about being a Gross man or woman.

Gross gushes over Fox and his recruiting abilities (‘He’s a stud.’). When asked which non-revenue sports he expected to see an improvement in, cross country and track topped his list alongside men’s soccer and women’s lacrosse.

‘Look for cross country,’ Gross said. ‘Watch them, they may make some differences this year and definitely next year.’

Gross isn’t that overly optimistic. He understands Syracuse’s position in the athletic landscape. He pushed Fox in particular to recruit distance runners, allowing schools such as Texas to take the sprinters and Arkansas, the jumpers.

‘I was more interested in (Fox) than someone who was more comprehensive because of where we are and where we’re located,’ Gross said. ‘Every place has an angle and ours is distance.’

‘We think we’re going to be a lot better than top 25 in a few years,’ said Fox, who Gross said is bringing in six of the top 10 high school distance runners in the country for recruiting visits. ‘Making the NCAAs is how you get those (Director’s) Cup points.’

If anything, Gross has simply breathed life into the non-rev programs. Not all sports can have an easy angle for recruiting like track. That isn’t at all to suggest Crouthamel wasn’t supportive, but Gross’ infectious enthusiasm trickles down through his coaches.

‘He tells us to be as selfish as we want to be,’ Fox said. ‘He says, ‘Pretend you’re the only sport at Syracuse.’ We approach him with whatever we need and he helps get what we need.’

But there remains one significant doubter to Gross’ ambitious plan to reverse the fortune of the non-revs: Crouthamel.

While praising Gross for his commitment to the non-revs, the former athletic director was adamant that reaching the top 100 in the Director’s Cup was completely out of the question.

‘I think that it is very difficult if in fact impossible (to reach the top 100) because of some of the academic standards-and rightly so because of the kind of institution Syracuse University is,’ said Crouthamel, who retired after a 26-year tenure in 2004. ‘There are some things that are realistic athletically and others that I don’t think are realistic athletically.’

If there’s a specific sport in which Gross and Crouthamel disagree, it’s women’s basketball.

Gross guaranteed improvement in the program under Hillsman while Crouthamel sounded defeated about whether the program would ever reach national prominence.

‘I have wondered quite frankly why we have not done better when I was there in women’s basketball,’ Crouthamel said. ‘I don’t know the answer. That sport is the anomaly.’

Crouthamel said while sports like women’s lacrosse and women’s soccer clearly benefited from their male counterparts, he said he decided the success of the men’s program actually hurt women’s basketball. In effect, he said the men’s team shrouded the women’s from the rest of the campus.

Perhaps a changing of the guard is what’s needed in the program. Gross hinted Hillsman has a good chance at earning the full-time head coaching job vacated by Cieplicki, who left after a tumultuous three-year tenure.

‘People were uneasy about it,’ Wasylenko said. ‘Sometimes you look at that and you think, ‘You know, there’s a little too much turnover there to be comfortable. What’s going on? What’s all the tumult about?”

In the end, Syracuse will never become Stanford in the non-revs. But while Gross and Crouthamel differ on how successful the non-revs can be on a whole, there is certainly room for improvement and Gross is committed to it.

‘You may not see the results now,’ Gross said. ‘But change is happening in Olympic sports.’

Published on September 12, 2006 at 12:00 pm