Dino Babers said he can’t handle the calories in Orange juice. “I’m basically a water guy.” When Scott Shafer took the same podium in his introduction, he proclaimed he’d bring a lot of “Orange juice” to his new team. Three years later, it was Babers’ turn to open himself up to Syracuse. Here are five things he said.

Seeing the future

“Why Syracuse? Why not Syracuse? Tell me. You tell me why not,” Babers said in the beginning of his press conference.

He told everyone in the room to close their eyes, chiding even the press in the front row to do the same.

“Visualize this,” he said. “You’re in the Carrier Dome. The house is filled. The feeling is electric. The noise is deafening. You have a defense that is relentless. You have a special teams that has been well coached. You have an offense that will not huddle. And you have a game that is faster than you’ve ever seen on turf. Open your eyes.”

Recruiting

Babers talked about recruiting all over the East Coast and beyond, but said first and foremost, it’s important to get recruits in their own backyard. Babers himself, though, admitted to never having been in New York aside from playing the University at Buffalo.

“You need to start in your backyard. We need to take care of the state of New York, we need to get over to New Jersey. We need to start to work to Philly … cross our T’s and dot our I’s. We’re always going to start close to home and work our way up.

Babers said he would have people on the ground recruiting by the end of the day.

In terms of recruiting players that he already recruited at Bowling Green, he said it was taboo. It would be different if they decommitted from BGSU, but if they remain committed, he said he will not go after them.

His philosophy

Babers has always been known as an offensive coach and recently led one of the best offenses in the country at Bowling Green.

“We are going to play at a very quick rate. And the team will be conditioned differently than it’s ever been conditioned before. It’s a total program type thing, it’s not just doing one thing. Defensively it’s special teams, it’s the way we lift, it’s the way we condition. It’s the way we play … I think it’s going to help us get an advantage.

“We have a very unique style. We’ve got to have men in that room that are unselfish.”

What he knows

Babers said he never has time to watch other college football teams during the college football season, but said he’s begun to understand the team he has over the past couple days. Many of his current players were in attendance at the press conference watching in the back of the room.

“The current team, I’ve looked at some individuals … Mark (Coyle) has filled me in on some things. I’ve had some coaches doing some homework assignments on certain things to make sure that we have the right fit.”

“I take great pride in coming into a football team and look at stuff and finding out a way to make it successful … I don’t see what it would be any different than any other place I’ve been to.”

Double meaning

Babers is a native Hawaiian. He played college football there and was a graduate assistant there. His father was also in the Navy. During his plane ride to Syracuse on Monday morning, he said he reflected on the fact that it was also Pearl Harbor day.

“You go on those bases in Hawaii. The warehouses and the hangers still have the machine gun bullets from the Japanese planes. They left those bullet holes in those warehouses in those hangers to remind all of the military men to always stay alert.

“You realize how real that really was. That will always be a big day in the life of any military man or any military dependent, which I am. I take a lot of pride in remembering that.”

Published on December 7, 2015 at 12:13 pm

Contact Sam: sblum@syr.edu | @SamBlum3