By Sarah Hall
Editor
If you’ve ever seen Salina Supervisor Mark Nicotra on the day of a major Syracuse University men’s basketball game, then you’ve probably seen The Suit.
“I don’t want to say where I got it — then everyone can go out and get one,” Nicotra joked. “I got it online. There’s a site that sells crazy suits in solid colors, like for St. Patrick’s Day. My nephew found it and said, ‘You have to get this.’”
The solid orange suit, special-ordered and usually worn with Nicotra’s SU fedora, only comes out for the big games.
“The suit only comes out for special games,” Nicotra said. “I’ve only worn it to the Dome a couple of times—the North Carolina game, the Duke game. Just the bigger games. I don’t want to muddy the waters.”
It’s gotten lot of wear in the last few weeks as the men’s team busted its way through countless brackets, heading into the Final Four in the NCAA tournament. Nicotra wore the suit Saturday, when the team’s season came to a heartbreaking end as they fell to North Carolina 83-66.
Nicotra said he wears the outlandish outfit — much to the embarrassment of those who attend games with him — along with other unique pieces as a way to show his support for his team.
“People don’t like going to games with me when I wear that, especially my nieces,” he said. “They won’t say no and not go, but they’re always a little embarrassed to be seen with me. My buddy and I share season tickets. He’ll never not go, but he says, ‘If you’re going to dress like that, I’m not sitting with you.’ But he always seems to be taking a picture and posting it.”
In addition to the suit, he has a “hideous SU sweater” his sister gave him, as well as an old leather SU jacket he “acquired” from his brother that he wears during tournament season.
“I don’t want to wear what everybody else wears,” he said. “That’s the way I am. I don’t like to blend in. Everyone else can wear the T-shirts, and I do buy those. But that’s the way I show my support. And it’s fun.”
The supervisor’s love for SU started in his childhood in the early 1980s, when Dwayne “Pearl” Washington lit up the courts and made SU basketball exciting for fans.
“At that time, it was really when SU basketball started to pop,” he said. “I was at the age when I was playing rec basketball and trying to emulate all that kind of stuff. It was really exciting to watch them and be a kid.”
Nicotra recalls the devastation of the team’s loss in the championship in 1987 and the elation of returning to the Final Four in 1996. He remembers the stunned feeling of watching Hakim Warrick block that final shot in 2003 and letting it sink in that, at last, SU had won a championship. But most of all, he remembers the change in the air when Syracuse managed to go all the way.
“It’s amazing how much happier the city is, the whole region is, when SU does well, not only during the season, but during the tournament,” he said. “People are much more chipper. There’s a skip in their step. It’s amazing to see how the whole town turned upside down, in a good way.”
That feeling has definitely permeated Central New York, from the pep rallies to the Orange T-shirts. Despite his penchant for out-there fashion, Nicotra admits he’s got quite a collection himself.
“This week, 8 a.m. Monday, I was at Holy Shirt,” he said. “It gets expensive, with all the money you spend on T-shirts. I think I’ve bought a T-shirt every day this week.”
Nicotra does need plenty of orange in his wardrobe—he said he wears something orange on every game day during the season, and from Selection Sunday until SU is out of the tournament. Given the team’s season this year, he, like plenty of other fans, was a little nervous going into Selection Sunday that his orange-wearing days might be done for the season.
“Going into Selection Sunday, I was just hoping there was some way we’d get in so we could play another game. It was a tense moment,” he said. “I do a million brackets, but if Syracuse isn’t in the NCAA, it’s just not as fun.”
While he’s disappointed that the season’s over, Nicotra said he’s happy to have seen the team do this well.
“If they’d just won the one game against Dayton, I’d have been happy. It would have capped off an up and down season,” he said. “But this is through the moon. And now, since the tourney is over, I can finally finish ‘House of Cards.’”
