Last basketball season when Carolina, Duke, and Wake Forest were spending the entire season ranked in the Top 5 of the country and NC State was struggling to squeeze into the NCAA Tournament for the 3rd time in our “great” 4 straight appearances, one of the more credible members of the Pack Pride community posted a great thread about a conversation that he had with Athletics Director, Lee Fowler.
The poster’s comments about his conversation with Fowler, and the resulting thread that followed were fantastic (I just wish that Pack Pride had saved it). The crux of the conversation centered on Lee Fowler’s comments that he expected NC State to have a better 2005-2006 basketball season because most of the other teams in the conference were going to be worse.
If you are someone who has to perform in your job to meet certain goals, or someone with standards of excellence or who has generally been successful or classified as a “winner” in your life, then you immediately understand how sad and ridiculous that amazing “management philopshy” is.
If you are someone who is generally loser and always finds a way to blame things outside of your control for your lack of success, then you are scratching your head right now wondering what is so wrong with Lee Fowler’s “plan” to make State a successful basketball program.
The comments & perspective that Fowler shared with the donor – and with others at the time – served to help write one of the next chapters in the Herb Sendek Sunshine Squad Manual:
“Just continue to construct future success propositions and proclaim them as if they are fact. Continue to hold firm to the irrational predictions no matter how much historical records and performance would lead a thinking human to conclude otherwise. Then, hope that in the years that the ACC is down, just like the year State finished second in 2004, we can have a pretty good year that you can then point to as all of the other teams cycle back through to their huge seasons.”
Well, after State’s loss to Carolina today, the same poster chimed in today on Pack Pride recalling Fowler’s comments:
Last year, when I talked to Fowler, he told me we would be much better this year when the Carolina, Wake and Duke Players went pro. When you have a strategy of your improvement on competition getting worse you have exactly what happened today.
Congrats the the Tar Heel Freshman that kicked the crap out of our team. Wonder what Fowler’s strategy will be now that their freshman are better than our seniors.
Keep up the great work Fowler!! You are the best AD Carolina ever had!
