Amato Still Needs a Title (?)

Chuck Amato General Media NCS Football38

Less than 24 hours after I wrote this piece, Frank Dascenzo of the Herald Sun helps support my point (just a little bit) with a few stray statements in his article this morning, “Amato still needs a title.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not offering a huge complaint here. The article is full of great statistics and records, and factual information. (Interesting timing after VaWolf ran his awesome piece of NC State Football History 101.) I understand that if you look hard enough for something to complain about then you are likely to find something; I just thought that there were a couple of things that Dascenzo could have done a little better in his article.

First…the good stuff. I think that Dascenzo’s overall summary of what Amato needs to help create a little more breathing room is a pretty accurate representation of the situation:

What Amato needs in ’06 is to finish better than fourth in the ACC, a win at UNC on Nov. 18 and avoid another early season slump. It will not be easy. A Sept. 16 game at Southern Mississippi would be dangerous for any ACC team, and Boston College and FSU are games No. 4 and No. 5.

I’ll generally go with that^ (along with a win over ECU) except I’m not quite as stringent on the “finish BETTER than 4th in the ACC”. Considering how good Clemson is expected to be this season and the general make-up of the “NEW” ACC…I don’t think that a 4th place finish would be unacceptable for such a young team that has as many questions as the Wolfpack heading into the season.

My biggest complaint is with what Dascenzo didn’t share in some of his comparative numbers (and implied conclusions). For example, he wants to compare Amato’s ACC record to that of Mike O’Cain. That makes a little sense as it is always good to use historical results of the program as a benchmark.

Just under the photograph of Amato is the caption “The Amato Era,” which includes his 46-28 (.622) overall record. What it does not report is that Amato-coached N.C. State is 23-25 in the ACC, and that’s exactly what O’Cain’s record was in the ACC during his first six seasons. None of Amato’s teams have been able to finish higher than fourth in the conference, and don’t think that doesn’t terribly bother Wolfpack fans.

But, Dascenzo knows that any such direct comparison would be made significantly more valuable by a clarifying statement (asterick) that makes mention of the new ACC. Mike O’Cain’s ACC record did not include four games against Virginia Tech, Miami and Boston College. Some of you pie-in-theskiers can fool yourself into thinking that MOC might have been able to win some of those games. You people weren’t sitting in the same stands (both in Raleigh and on the road) as I was during those years. Additionally, O’Cain’s record had the luxury of including two extra games against lowly Duke that Amato has not enjoyed.
This all adds up to a six game difference in comparative ACC records.

Maybe that is one of the reasons some boo Amato at the RBC Center when his face shows up on the big screen at a Hurricanes game.

This is just absurb. 20,000 Hurricanes fans are all supposed to be NC State fans because we share the same building? Friggin Roy Williams was also booed (louder) than Amato. I can’t wait to see the mention and the article about how Carolina fans are sour on Roy Williams because he was booed at a pro hockey game. How was this comment even allowed in this piece

It’s always a good question to ask any N.C. State football coach: When will his team win an ACC championship?

Why is that a good question to ask any NC STATE football coach? Why is that not a good question to ask ANY football coach? Someone remind me…was Frank Dascenzo asking Herb Sendek when will his team win an ACC championship? Just curious about the consistency here.

Again, please don’t read this with the presumption that I am going overboard in criticizing Dascenzo. His work is pretty damn stellar. Just a few perspectives on some of his comments. Thanks!

Chuck Amato General Media NCS Football

38 Responses to Amato Still Needs a Title (?)

  1. choppack1 08/09/2006 at 5:08 PM #

    Wouldn’t you give most of the credit for this season to Rivers (an O’Cain recruit) not Amato?

    I wouldn’t. Rivers was great – but it was Chuck who made several key position changes and created an underrated D.

    I think rf made a good point in that if Amato is being attacked by the media – so should Bunting. Of course, I also think our recruiting may have been more negatively impacted by the departure of Doc Holliday than the PrimeTime w/ the Packman’s idiotic diatribes.

  2. Big Worm 08/09/2006 at 5:18 PM #

    tcthdi-

    O’Cain identified Philip as a real talent but Amato still had to seal the deal. Had Amato not convinced young Phil to run with the Pack even though O’Cain was fired, Philip may have decided not to come to State.

    If Sidney convinces Wright or McMillan to come to State and they end up being an integral part of our success over the next few years, should we give the credit for that to Herb? At worst, the entering and exiting coaches share the credit for recruiting, landing and “re-landing” the recruit in question after the exiting coach was fired.

    Most importantly, you can’t separate great talent from great coaching. Nobody wins big without big talent. Was Philip a disproportionate part of our success from 2000-2003? Undoubtedly. But he had some really good players around him also. Amato & staff have proven themselves to be superior evaluators and developers of talent. The disconnect lies in our inability to fully utilize that talent on the field.

  3. choppack1 08/09/2006 at 5:59 PM #

    Also – let’s admit that the offense installed by Amato/Chow and Chow himself would have never been present if MOC was HC. I don’t think Rivers would be playing in the pros now if he’d played for Paul Johnson either.

  4. 82grad 08/09/2006 at 6:40 PM #

    funny how every topic turns into unc bashing.
    difference between amato and bunting is that unc wins basketball championships, that lessens the pain of losing at football. also, their (bunting and amato) records are indeed comparable, margin of victory doesn’t mean squat.
    pointing out how unc has been trounced a few times under bunting doesn’t make chuck’s record vs. him any better.
    prove your supposed superiority on the field.

  5. doatesjr 08/09/2006 at 10:20 PM #

    Big Worm,

    First of all, I was comparing Amato’s record to Bunting’s during the time Bunting was coaching at UNC (this is his 6th year, Amato’s 7th). Therefore, while both Bunting and Amato were coaching AT THE SAME TIME, Amato was 3-1 and Bunting was 1-1.

    Margin of victory doesn’t mean crap, especially when one team plays an OOC schedule that is significantly more difficult than the other team. What matters at the end of the day is wins/losses, and whom those wins/losses come against.

    I will concede that Amato has recruited superior talent, but that almost makes matters worse. Which sounds like better coaching: achieve mediocre results with superior, NFL-quality talent or achieve mediocre results with sub-par to mediocre talent? What good is recruiting studs if you don’t make good use of their talents? Amato has had great talent at positions, but has never assembled a superior team. You said yourself ” The disconnect lies in our inability to fully utilize that talent on the field”. Is that great coaching??

    In State’s high-water mark year they finished 4th (5-3) in the league, and received the Gator Bowl invite ahead of Maryland (#3 at 6-2), even though Maryland had beaten State. The Gator Bowl normally goes to the 3rd ranked team, but they chose State because they knew they would sell more tickets (which was of course within their rights). Kudos to State for the invite and win, but it could have just as easily been Maryland vs Notre Dame and State vs Tennessee in the Peach Bowl. And also remember that State beat a Notre Dame team that was not playing up to their usual standard, having had a 5-6 record the year before and a 5-7 record the year after.

    Also during State’s high-water mark year, 3 of their wins came against the powerhouses of East Tennessee State, Navy, and Massachusetts. And they only beat Duke (2-10) by 2 points in Raleigh (since margin of victory is important to you).

    I will agree with you that you can’t give credit to O’Cain for Rivers. O’Cain was such a poor coach that I doubt he could have even finished 4th like Amato did.

  6. Glen Sudhop54 08/09/2006 at 10:21 PM #

    The ONLY team we should be worrying about at this point is Appalachian State.

    Anyone who thinks this will be an easy win will be sorely disappointed.

    SFN: Don’t think that anyone is suggesting ASU is an easy win. But, none of us are suiting up for the game and our minds can be anywhere that we would like for them to be without impacting the team. We are all fans…NOT players or coaches.

  7. redfred2 08/10/2006 at 10:11 AM #

    I just heard from a pretty reliable source that Amato has opted for some pretty drastic changes on offensive. He is saying that he will use the running game, even though there’s NFL quality and it is undoubtably the strongest asset of the team, only very sparingly and only when absolutely necessary. Then he says the idea is to burn the first three downs of every possession, in order to control the game clock, keep the scoring down and alter the pace of the game. Next he’ll have the players on the field do passing drills while the 4th down possession clock ticks down to the final seconds. Then trudge slowly and methodically up to the line just before the whistle blows, snap it, then Marcus Stone, maybe even the center, or hell anybody, will hurl an errant bomb towards the end zone every time. Don’t forget this a positionless system here now. Besides, nobody recruits 300lbs linemen who can’t play any position and throw the ball 40 yds down field, with touch of course, nowadays anyway, do they? It’s either that, or Amato says he’ll call a time out, meet with all of the assistant coaches out at about the hash marks for about 30 seconds, walk over to the players and whip out the dry erase to scribble for a second, then send the players running back out onto the field just in nick of time…snap the ball…take a knee…and hand the ball back to the official. Then set up on defense.

    Hey, give the man some credit for progressive thinking, no one’s ever tried it in football before…..It could work.

    Plus Amato’s only just beginning his seventh season at the job, that kind of performance would assuredly mean three more years are virtually guaranteed at any NCSU athletic program. With this new philosophy I think maybe our boy Mr Chuck Amato may have proven to be a lot more cold and calculating than some of us ever gave him credit for.

    side note: This smart a*s post will surely summons some wrath from my old buddy Wulfpack in pretty short order. He can sniff out these types of posts from a mile away. Sorry.

  8. Big Worm 08/10/2006 at 10:46 AM #

    Doates-

    I see where you’re coming from with the apples-apples comparison of Bunting/Amato’s bowl records, but I still assert there is a big difference between the historical averages for both coaches. Amato leads State to a bowl at over twice the rate Bunting leads Carolina to one and wins those that he goes to at a substantially higher rate as well.

    With the sample size for college football seasons being so small due to the relatively few numbers of games played you’ve GOT to look at margin of victory in addition to record when determining the relative strength of teams. The same argument is made for re-emphasizing victory margin in the computer ranking system and it makes a ton of sense. With seasons being so short, how badly a team wins or loses is very relevant in determining how good or bad they are.

    Too many teams have records that are very similar to simply use the records themselves and strength of schedule to differentiate between teams. A team that has the capacity to consistently get their ass handed to them by 25+ points (and not-so-infrequently 40+ points) is likely not the same caliber team as a team with similar record that rarely loses by more than 10 points.

    For a similar reason, the whole “never finished better than 4th” argument doesn’t hold much water when ONE win a season is often the difference between tying for fifth place and tying for second place.

    Amato’s ability to get the most out of the teams he coaches has absolutely got to improve, but given the choice of a superior recruiter that has a hard time getting players to play at 100% instead of 90% and an inferior recruiter who maximizes his talent, I’d take the superior recruiter every day and twice on Sundays. You make sneak up on good teams occasionally and beat them with a lesser team but unless you’re an incredible coach (and Bunting is not) you won’t do that consistently. Recruiting and raw talent is probably 70%-80% of the winning equation in D-1 football and basketball. Although neither is an ideal situation, superior talent will offset inferior coaching or motivation more frequently than the converse of that scenario.

    As stated previously, you put Matt Baker, a servicable ACC QB, on State the last two years and we’re not having this conversation. State would likely have been coming off the heels of a couple of 8-3/7-4 type seasons, which would have been considered “rebuilding” years after the best QB in the history of the ACC graduated. You replace any one player of your choice on Carolina the last two years with a servicable player from another team and their record is exactly the same as it was.

    I don’t know if Amato will be able to do it, but he’s substantially closer to turning the corner and jumping one tier ahead of the middling ACC teams than UNC. Is that something to brag to a Miami or F$U fan about? No, but given the historically middling nature of the two programs, that is substantial and meaningful progress.

  9. Pack92 08/10/2006 at 11:14 AM #

    Did someone actually say Mack “the Whiner” Brown was a great coach? The same guy who was DRUBBED by Dick Sheridan 5 straight years and did not beat a top 20 team his last 2 years in the ACC? That clown could not hold Chuck Amato’s jock strap.
    Yes, I know, Chuck has not won a national title. Nor has he lost consistently to another coach on a national stage the way the Brown clown has to Bob Stoops. Without Vince Young and a split second lapse of concentration by the Ohio State tight end Brown is just whining again for another year.
    I could not agree more that I think we are close to turning a corner. The defense will be better than expected and I really do think Trestman having another year with the offense and Stone is going to pay huge dividends. We’ll know for sure in 4 months.

  10. TampaPack 08/10/2006 at 12:34 PM #

    Also, when comparing Bunting to Chuck head to head, it is only fair to point out that UNC plays Duke every year thanks to the conference realignment system – something State has not had the luxury of the past couple of years…

  11. redfred2 08/10/2006 at 12:41 PM #

    Big Worm

    I don’t necessarily agree with raw talent overriding great coaching ability by the margins you gave, but I think everyone keeps forgetting to factor into the equation the “new look” ACC. It took a while for anyone to catch up and get ready to compete in that one really big game against FSU every year. The “middlings,” every one of the old ACC programs, have kinda been put in “talent shock” by Swofford’s new heavyweights along with his vision of the new ACC grid iron hierarchy. The old ACC schools weren’t part of any of his consideration with regards to football, and all are struggling to keep up in hindsight. Add the NC system academic standards and you’ve got a mess on your hands.

    I have questioned a lot of things but I am still 110% behind Amato. That being said, I think if you eliminate all of the new ACC schools, including FSU, from the recent in-conference records for both NCSU and UNC, and all of the OCC games which UNC has admittedly played a tougher schedule and gets the nod, you will see that the two “old” conference records do parallel each other, more than maybe any of us would care to admit. It’s also more disturbing considering Bunting has won the most recent head to head matchups lately. That’s admittedly taking liberties with reality and probably not a good way to think, but even the media experts will give anyone some respect for winning, or even well played losses against better teams. It’s when a less talented, underdog arch rival and national basketball powerhouse, shows the ability to reach up and bite you on the ass, year in and year out, that all of the respect kinda drys up blows away.

  12. tcthdi-tgsf-twhwtnc 08/11/2006 at 1:16 PM #

    Rivers came to State Amato’s first years so the comparison to Wright isn’t very appropriate. Rivers would of had to sit a year if he had gone somewhere else after Mic O’cain.

    O’Cain was not much of coach but he has always been a pretty good QB coach so to say Rivers would of sucked if it wasn’t for Amato is selling Rivers short. Amato (so far) has shown that he is much of a coach either. He has had some good assistants come through the program that is clear. I may be wrong but without a D coach didn’t we have won of the worst rated D’s in the country Rivers senior year- Something like 115. I remember Amato boasting after one games something like it doesn’t matter if the other team scores 45 points as long as we score 46. A genius I tell you.

  13. redfred2 08/11/2006 at 5:30 PM #

    t-t-t

    Early on it was the O taking up the slack for the D, recently it’s been the D carrying the team. This is it, no lopsided talent scale on either side, with the exception of the running back position, no excuses Chuck. Not expecting an unbelievable season but not expecting to lose games (plural)on stupid mistakes, or to noticiably lesser talent either.

    *”Spotlight on Chuckie Amato ya’ll, he’s the ki…..”

1 2

Leave a Reply