NEW YORK –– Strolling the hallowed floorboards in the 107-year-old main room of the New York Stock Exchange, the ear-to-ear grins of Derrell Smith, Ryan Bartholomew and Rob Long never dissipated.

Nodding their heads like cautious college students while greeting NYSE brokers — brokers musing quietly on the topic of Syracuse and Kansas State’s participation in the inaugural Pinstripe Bowl Thursday (3:20 p.m., ESPN) — the three senior captains were in the middle of the business world Tuesday morning.

At 9:30 a.m., alongside trademark all-business SU head coach Doug Marrone, the three SU players were at the forefront of the business world. For roughly 30 seconds full of clapping, at least.

Marrone, Smith, Bartholomew and Long helped to ring the New York Stock Exchange Opening Bell Tuesday morning at 9:30 sharp. With his eyes still scanning the iconic room on Wall Street in downtown Manhattan, Smith said as little as two years ago he never imagined an opportunity like this would ever come for him as a member of the Orange football team.

‘(I would have expected) none of it. None of it man. This is unbelievable,’ Smith said to assembled reporters while standing on the NYSE floor after ringing the bell Tuesday. ‘I have never been here. Very few can say they have been here, and it is definitely an honor.’

The three SU players and the Orange head coach were joined by Kansas State head coach Bill Snyder, KSU players Zach Kendall and Alex Hrebec as well as New York Yankees President Randy Levine.

The event was one of a week’s worth of preliminary events Pinstripe Bowl officials scheduled for the two teams to participate in leading up to Thursday’s bowl game. After the ringing of the bell was complete, and another day of trading on Wall Street commenced, Marrone spoke to the idea of the once in a lifetime opportunity for his players continuing a season’s worth of life lessons.

Maybe even serving as a capstone of those lessons to the three SU players. Throughout Syracuse’s surprising turnaround 7-5 season, which will conclude with the Pinstripe Bowl Thursday, Marrone has preached the value of life lessons above football lessons to his team. After learning all of those lessons, the chance to be at the top of the NYSE podium starting the business world’s day was a culmination well-earned for the three SU captains, Marrone said.

And he made sure to tell Smith, Bartholomew and Long to take a slew of pictures to remember the moment.

‘I think you teach young men how to have the ability to learn, to research history, and to have a great appreciation for it,’ Marrone said of the NYSE experience. ‘Sometimes at the present time you don’t appreciate it as much as you will down the road, so we talk to our players about taking a lot of pictures.’

The Syracuse head coach said it wasn’t his first trip to the NYSE, and said he brought the SU players to the site on Wall Street after driving with them around Manhattan showing them the old house he lived in when he worked for the New York Jets. When he arrived at the NYSE, Marrone spoke with a broker decked out in an orange SU blazer with an SU pin, Paul LaRegina, for several minutes. At the same time, Smith, Bartholomew and Long were shepherded towards one of the NYSE’s monitors by a broker. Smith said the conversation between the players and brokers consisted of casual small talk surrounding the game, and congratulations, even if the brokers may have been pointing out derivatives on the Exchange’s brand-new plasma monitors.

Standing next to Smith on the floor, and at the top of the NYSE podium – which was lit up with two images of the Syracuse and Kansas State logos – was Long. Long, an All-Big East second team punter, made the trip to the NYSE despite the news of him suffering from a malignant brain tumor which was discovered on Dec. 20.

That will keep Long out of the bowl game Thursday and will require chemotherapy. He will end his SU career as the second most accomplished punter in SU history. But, as Long promised earlier this month, he will be with the team in all of their bowl activities. The highlight of those may have come Tuesday morning.

Long described the NYSE experience as one full of awe. Standing atop the NYSE podium taking videos and still photos of the NYSE and his teammates, just like Marrone wanted, Long soaked in the experience.

For a Syracuse team professing life lessons and a business-like mentality all year, this was there moment at the center of not something just football. Rather, the entire business world.

Even if it only lasted for 30 seconds, the scene from the top for all, including Long, was something very different than that most college football players experience.

‘It was crowded,’ Long said of the view from the podium. ‘It was very cool to get a different perspective, instead of looking up at the podium there, looking down and seeing everything that is going on. A lot of technology and a lot of people there, running around.’

aolivero@syr.edu

Published on December 28, 2010 at 12:00 pm