Admit it. You saw Toledo on the Syracuse football team’s schedule and laughed. You scoffed at what a weak opponent the Orangemen would face in week four, a real no-name cupcake if there ever was one.

Except last Saturday, the laughing stopped. The joke was on you, and, more cruelly, Pittsburgh. By beating the then-No. 9 Panthers, 35-31, Toledo thrust itself onto a national stage.

Ironically, Syracuse might be able to host its own coming-out Saturday night at the Carrier Dome, where it plays Toledo at 6:30. Now that Toledo’s earned some national notice, the Orangemen (2-1) could do the same against the Rockets.

‘It’s a big game, man,’ SU fullback Thump Belton said. ‘Everybody in the country wants to see this game. They’ll be looking to see what the score is. People want to see, is Syracuse really good? This is going to be the test for people to see that we’re the real deal.’

Wait a second. Syracuse – card-carrying member of the Big East, a Bowl Championship Series member and proverbial ‘have’ – proving itself against Toledo, from the little old Mid-American Conference, a traditional have-not that is customarily left uninvited from the annual Jan. 1 bowl party?

Well, yes. Unranked Toledo (3-1, 1-0 MAC), which received more votes than any other team not in the Associated Press Top 25, has built an impressive resume early this season. The Rockets beat conference-rival Marshall on the road, 24-17, on Sept. 12.

That victory seemed innocuous enough until Saturday, when Marshall toppled then-No. 6 Kansas State at KSU and Toledo pulled off its grand upset of Pitt.

An edict was issued: Take the Rockets lightly, and you won’t like the result.

‘They beat friggin’ Pitt,’ SU guard Matt Tarullo said. ‘They beat Marshall. Come on now. Toledo’s a good team. They’re a quality opponent, just like Virginia Tech and Miami.’

The Rockets’ rise to prominence only magnifies the importance of Saturday’s game. Even if Toledo was just another small-conference pushover, it would still be a turning point in the Orangemen’s season.

At 2-1, Syracuse is teetering on a line between sinking into mediocrity and scraping the Top 25.

‘It’s monumental from the entire psyche of every person involved,’ SU defensive coordinator Chris Rippon said. ‘Now you go 3-1, you’ve got something going. Three-and-1 sounds awfully good.’

As Rippon spoke, envisioning SU at 3-1, a smile creased his bespectacled face.

‘It’s a springboard into the middle of the season,’ Syracuse tight end Lenny Cusumano said. ‘If we come out of this 3-1, the stage is set for a great year.’

After playing Toledo, the Orangemen get a bye week before heading into Virginia Tech and the rest of the Big East schedule. A loss would mean two weeks of stewing, while a win would mean two weeks of confidence.

A win would also continue erasing last year’s 4-8 record. All year, the Orangemen have been reversing the losing feeling that suffocated them a season ago.

‘Around here, you’ve been here long enough, you do an often lot of winning,’ Rippon said. ‘Maybe you don’t appreciate the wins as much until you start to lose. Now we’re in that mode where we know the bad feeling of losing. We kind of like winning.’

If Syracuse wants to avoid the losing feeling Saturday, it needs to contain Rockets quarterback Bruce Gradkowski and Toledo’s no-huddle offense, something Pitt failed at. Using an arsenal of short passes – Rippon estimates that of Gradkowski’s 62 attempts against the Panthers, four were longer than 15 yards – Gradkowski threw for 461 yards last week.

That’s how Toledo made a name for itself. Now, Syracuse wants to push the Rockets out of the spotlight and grab some recognition of its own.

‘(Toledo) definitely put themselves on the map as a team that people are looking at to see what they’re going to be doing,’ Cusumano said. ‘They want to try and sneak into the Top 25. Unfortunately, they’re coming into the Dome. We’re determined not to make that happen.’

Published on September 25, 2003 at 12:00 pm