There are plenty of Syracuse fans who have never seen Donovan McNabb play a college football game.
And that’s a shame.
Because if you’re under 30, it’s almost impossible to appreciate just how big he was.
The Athletic recently ranked the greatest college football players of the 1990s, and McNabb came in at No. 20 nationwide.
That may actually undersell his impact in Central New York.
For an entire generation, Donovan McNabb wasn’t just Syracuse’s quarterback.
He was college football.
He finished fifth in the 1998 Heisman Trophy voting after throwing for 2,134 yards and 22 touchdowns while adding another 438 rushing yards and eight scores. Over his career, he accounted for nearly 10,000 yards of offense, won Big East Offensive Player of the Year three straight seasons, and was later voted the conference’s Offensive Player of the Decade.
The numbers are impressive. The feeling around the program was even bigger. McNabb made Syracuse nationally relevant.
The Orange weren’t hoping to crack the Top 25. They expected to be there. They played in a Fiesta Bowl and an Orange Bowl. They went to the Big House and won. They crushed the Miami Hurricanes at the Dome when the Canes were just years removed from their ’90s dominance.
Every Saturday felt like Syracuse belonged on national television because No. 5 was playing quarterback.
Then came the NFL Draft.
McNabb was selected second overall in 1999, immediately becoming one of the faces of the NFL.
He went on to lead the Philadelphia Eagles to five NFC Championship Games, a Super Bowl appearance and became one of the league’s premier quarterbacks for more than a decade.
In fact, McNabb may have permanently changed the sports landscape of Central New York. There is an entire generation of Eagles fans scattered across Upstate New York who root for Philadelphia for one reason:
Donovan McNabb.
They followed him from Syracuse to the NFL and never left.
Walk around Central New York in the ’90s and early 2000s and No. 5 jerseys were everywhere.
Ironically, McNabb never made a dollar from any of them. This was long before NIL allowed college athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness. His jersey became one of the most recognizable in college football, yet none of that revenue found its way to the player wearing it.
Young Syracuse fans should understand what McNabb represented.
He wasn’t simply a great Orange quarterback. He was the engine of one of the greatest eras in program history.
An era when Syracuse expected to compete with anyone. An era when NFL scouts filled the Carrier Dome.
An era when the Orange regularly produced stars who became household names. Fran Brown is working to bring Syracuse football back to national relevance.
The blueprint already exists.
Donovan McNabb helped write it.
