Syracuse football coach Fran Brown wonders why his team isn’t ranked: ‘I don’t know what it takes’

Syracuse, N.Y. — The Syracuse football team will have one of its biggest home games in a while when No. 8 Miami comes to Central New York this weekend.
At his press conference on Monday, Fran Brown expressed his excitement about hosting the Hurricanes but didn’t harp on the rankings aspect of the game.
Brown said he doesn’t give much weight to rankings because he still has questions about them and is curious about how some teams are ranked with Syracuse being left out of the national polls.
“I don’t really look at like where they’re ranked at, stuff like that because I’ve seen a lot of 8-3 teams in the country, we’re not ranked,” Brown said. “So I just go through all these guys’ ranks. I don’t know what it takes to be ranked anymore. So I don’t really kind of pay attention to that because I know I’ve seen a few teams that lost to some teams that lost to teams we beat. So I was wondering how would they still be ranked. So I don’t really understand the ranking anymore.”
The Orange just missed receiving enough votes to be included in the Associated Press Top 25 poll this week. It received the third-most points of the teams outside the Top 25.
Most of the ranked teams with 8-3 records play in the SEC: No. 13 Alabama, No. 15 Ole Miss, No. 16 South Carolina, No. 20 Texas A&M and No. 24 Missouri. No. 22 Illinois and No. 23 Colorado are also 8-3 on the season.
Brown backed off a bit when asked directly if he believes the Orange should be ranked.
“If we were supposed to be ranked then I guess they would rank us and I don’t really know how that goes,” he said. “And I haven’t been coaching a long enough to be like getting hit with fines and stuff so I’m just going to be very, very respectful of what I say because every dollar counts for me.
“So I think they’re doing a good job. They just don’t want us to be ranked at the moment. So we just have to wait until that time comes.”
Syracuse was also left out of the Top 25 in the coaches poll. The Orange came in at No. 29 in that poll this week.
Brown said he doesn’t care about Miami’s ranking but respects the pedigree that coach Mario Cristobal’s team enters with this weekend.
Both Brown and Cristobal previously coached under Greg Schiano, and the Syracuse coach believes that has led to him and Cristobal having similarities in their approach to the game.
Syracuse (8-3, 4-3 ACC) and Miami (10-1, 6-1) will square off at 3:30 p.m., on Saturday inside the JMA Wireless Dome. The game will be broadcast on ESPN.
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