"Daryl Gross" is the athletic director for Syracuse University.

Formerly, Gross coached and worked at the University of Southern California in intercollegiate athletics after being a graduate coaching assistant. While serving as senior associate athletic director, Gross was credited for bringing in head coach Pete Carroll for the USC Trojans football/Trojans football team. In 2008, ESPN.com named Carroll's hiring #1 in a list of the Pac-10's Top 10 Moments Of Bowl Championship Series/BCS Era.

Gross received his bachelor's degree and played college football at University of California, Davis. Gross was a New York Jets scout when Pete Carroll was the Jets head coach, a relationship that led to him pushing for Carroll to be hired by USC.

More Daryl Gross on Wikipedia.

We have a young team and I think they've shown me they have a level of commitment and desire to compete. It's really exciting.

I was getting a lot of bad e-mail about, 'How could you do this? You and Garrett are just destroying USC football.

I wouldn't be interested in our coaches recruiting players from Duke, given the situation. I think it would be inappropriate.

I think that was a significant step because the old turf was hard and it was being used against us in recruiting. Coaches from other schools were saying, 'You don't want to go there and play on that surface because it's dangerous and you might get hurt.' Well, that issue has been eliminated. This stuff is the closest thing to grass.

That was my first game ever. I thought, 'Am I at the Final Four?' I just loved it.

I think it would be inappropriate.

It's truly amazing when you think about it. A sellout at Madison Square Garden would be perceived as a bad crowd here.

Being my fourth year, I'm getting more familiar with our conference. We're hoping we can compete with teams like Salisbury (Christian) and Greenwood. We're hoping we might break into the top three in our conference this year.