ONE TEAM. ONE SPIRIT. FOREVER GRAY AND TIRED.

Every year, the Syracuse University football team has a new slogan or gimmick to get fans FIRED UP about the upcoming season. The Athletic Department always puts up a glitzy billboard and distributes matching posters as far as the eye can see.

This year, the slogan is ONE TEAM. ONE SPIRIT. FOREVER ORANGE. That's fine. Not great, but whatever -- the interest in the team Doug Marrone brings will sell itself. Still, the AD probably wants to portray the team's new face looking intense, focused, and passionate, right?

Uh, yeah, not so much. This is the picture they chose, over all others, to represent the team's energetic new face. Doug doesn't look like he's ready to lead his team to victory. He doesn't look like he's brimming with passion. I'd say it looks more like he just woke up after a hard night of drinking and saw that his cat was hit by a car. Or that someone just told him he stepped in dogshit while he was being arrested for first-degree arson.

He looks gray, shriveled, and tired. He looks, as Jerry Seinfeld once said, "like an old catcher's mitt."

The SU AD has all the free publicity it could ever want with the arrival of a promising youngish coach, yet the one picture they chose looks like it's off the back of a milk carton. Unbelievable.

For the full effect, here's a shot of the whole poster, at a steep angle because I'm an idiot and had to take this quickly before my phone died.

Yikes.