The N&O comes one step closer to “Understanding Wolfpack Fans”

Chuck Amato Fans Flashback General Media Required Reading Tom O'Brien36

It only took NC State’s hometown newspaper a couple of years for it to sink in, but it’s starting to sink in.

First, a SFN Flashback to March 2005, in an entry entitled Understanding Wolfpack Fans, Part 1:

Today’s myth I’d like to tackle is one that we see quite frequently in the winter. It’s the idea that NC State fans judge a coach just on his personality. It’s usually expressed in this fashion: NC State fans don’t like Herb Sendek because he doesn’t have the personality of Chuck Amato or Jim Valvano.

Let’s examine this statement. Yes, there are a great many (significantly greater than 50) NC State fans who don’t like Herb Sendek. Yes, there are a great many Wolfpack fans who like Jim Valvano and Chuck Amato. It’s true that Chuck Amato and Jim Valvano both have larger-than-life personalities. And it is true that Herb Sendek doesn’t have the personality of Chuck Amato or Jim Valvano.

But does it follow that the coach’s personality is what determines whether NC State fans like him? Does a coach need a larger-than-life personality for Wolfpack fans to like him?

Of course not. That’s rock stupid. … If the experts were willing to investigate the matter further (read: at all), they might ask if there is any coach with a subdued personality that Wolfpack fans liked. It wouldn’t take long to discover Dick Sheridan. The gentleman’s coach. Taciturn, meek, so nice he couldn’t even dump 70 points on Mack Brown when he had the chance and instead called a second half full of dive plays — the man is beloved among Wolfpack fans. Yet even though they coached a few years together, he was the antithesis to Valvano.

So much for the myth. So what else could it be? Why do NC State fans like Valvano and Amato but not Herb?

What was the answer? Those of you who are playing at home already know. Media peeps, take a guess at it before reading on. OK, here it is:

Here’s a novel idea: wins. Herb has coached here nine years, and in that time he hasn’t won a title nor made it past the first weekend of the NCAA tournament, to which he has gone only three times. Valvano coached one year more than Herb, and in that time he finished first in the ACC regular season twice, he won the ACC championship twice, he saw several Sweet Sixteens, a couple of Elite Eights, one Final Four and one National Championship.

Now, here’s where it gets good. Raleigh’s News & Observer ran what, to them, counts as Christmas spirit — an article about WHAT HAPPENED that caused Chuck Amato to lose his job as head football coach at NC State. Here’s a link to the full article, but the headline sums it up well (emphasis added):

Amato’s style wears thin without wins

Surprise, surprise huh? Not to Wolfpack fans. As SFN noted nearly two years ago:

Amato, while not yet winning a title, has given NC State’s lowly football tradition its winningest season and has gone to bowls four out of five seasons. His last season, however, was a losing season — but he was able to recruit well regardless, so Wolfpack fans have continued high expectations for his teams. If Amato has another year or two like 2004, however, don’t think his personality will keep Wolfpack fans from grumbling. … [T]he simple fact is, NC State fans do care about winning. Once you realize that, you’ll see why the Personality of the Coach Myth is a myth.

Funny thing is, that was written back when Amato’s style was “in” because of the wins. But the general principle holds: a coach’s personality is a personal negative when he loses, and a positive when he wins. But it’s related to wins and losses. No one, not even Wolfpack fans, wants a flamboyant loser or a “gentleman” loser. Not because of mass disaffection with the idea of a genteel or flamboyant coach, but because of mass disaffection with losing.

It takes signature ignorance of a fan base to assume, as the old media seem frequently to do, that it’s the personality of the coach that matters most. When it comes to a “foreign” (ya mean they don’t like Carolina? whaaaaat?) fan base such as the Wolfpack’s, reporters apparently need an “insider” such as Reef Ivey to spell it out for them: “If you’re winning, people put up with personality traits they don’t particularly like. But if you do not win …” (To translate: It’s winning that matters! DUH!)

Addendum: Speaking of Sheridan, NC State’s new football coach, Tom O’Brien, has been compared to him. Provided TOB continues his winning ways at NC State, we’ll like him just fine. But not because he reminds us of Sheridan or because he’s “the anti-Amato.”

Here’s the Big Secret in Raleigh: Our judgment of Coach O’Brien, Coach Lowe, and future Wolfpack coaches will rest ultimately on their W’s and L’s. Just like other fan bases’ judgments of their coaches.

Chuck Amato Fans Flashback General Media Required Reading Tom O'Brien

36 Responses to The N&O comes one step closer to “Understanding Wolfpack Fans”

  1. vtpackfan 12/26/2006 at 3:06 PM #

    Tucked in at the end of the N & O article is a quote from Lee Fowler that is interesting.
    “Chuck has had the kind of success that few people have in coaching. It’s remarkable, really.”
    The more I learn about Fowler the more I’m beggining to like him. He and I share the same sort of perspective that allows for some real “loose” interpretations of certain definitions.

  2. GAWolf 12/26/2006 at 6:53 PM #

    A couple of thoughts:

    1) VT just confessed that he and Fowler are Clintionian with their varying scope of formal definition. That made me chuckle a bit.

    2) BLS forgot only one point in his impressively thorough hypothesis for the perpetuation of cyberskat… the idea that the more people spew it the more they believe it.

    3) I, too, am very appreciative that as Pack fans we have nothing to truly grumble about outside of bad calls and the occasional bad play for the foreseeable distant future. In other words, our bitching will be limited to that of the average fan of every other team in the country for at least long enough to rebuild our national image of the very supportive fanbase we all know that we are.

  3. GAWolf 12/26/2006 at 6:59 PM #

    BTW: I have good reason to believe Ivey was by far not the lone wolf of the big donors howling about Amato to the WPC and BOT. Based on what I’ve heard the supports among the big boys were tough to find.

  4. BoKnowsNCS71 12/27/2006 at 9:03 AM #

    I thought the N&O Amato article ill timed and unnecessary.

    Right on Christmas Eve and the N&O had to drag up something that really didn’t need to be said (again) and was poor timing.

    The N&O was the pefect Grinch. Chuck and his family (nor anyone) doesn’t deserve to be publicly dragged through the mud on a slow sports news day by something like this on the day before Christmas. Just pretty damn tacky if you ask me.

    I even had a Tennessee Vol fanatic comment the same thing to me at Christmas dinner saying how ugly this was of the N&O — and this from a guy who didn’t care for Amato anyway.

    If this is what they teach at the NC school of journalism — it shows a major lack of class.

  5. choppack1 12/27/2006 at 9:31 AM #

    BoKnows – We know that there are 2 different standards at work here.

    There really hasn’t been any dragging through the mud of Bunting. Of course, with folks commenting like Reef Ivey pouring salt on the wound, they aren’t alone in the blame.

  6. BoKnowsNCS71 12/27/2006 at 10:01 AM #

    /\ Agree on double standard.

    It’s easy to find a “source” to say what a reporter wants to hear/write. A reporter can also lead the interviewee down the path to get the desired comment they need to print. Reef probably had a drink or two or something that increased his sense of self importance.

    Just seems to me, they could have written this any time this week to fill up space. I just think that timing it for Christmas Eve shows a lack of class by the N&O Sports Section.

    As for Bunting — maybe they’ll re-print that pitiful picture of him standing alone on the field at the end of the game, holding his hat over his chest, singing the UNX alma mater after a horrible stomping. They could put that in right on New Year’s Eve — just to make his day.

  7. beowolf 12/27/2006 at 10:13 AM #

    I agree with you, Bo, on the ugliness and timing of the article. That’s why I said it was what passes for Christmas spirit there.

  8. roandaddy 12/27/2006 at 12:05 PM #

    I knew N&O has bad timing when the only free paper I received at home was after John Kerry accepted the Democratic nomination.

    If Amato was eccentric AND won… we would love him. We beat you and we beat you bad. Heck we even saw it at times.. I remember UNC at home, we scored 2 TDs coming out of halftime in no time. HOWEVER, when you lose.. it looks REALLY bad. B/c being eccentric makes you hated… and CTC not winning, being eccentric, just mad the mob even more mad. TOB may heal some wounds, but we still has to win… or be placed in Herbatory.

  9. newt 12/27/2006 at 12:33 PM #

    Our own Sports Marketing Department doesn’t understand us. Read in The Wolfpacker that they are keeping the GoPack store open at Crabtree after “surprisingly” strong sales of Wolfpack merchandise. How long have we begged for more merchandise on the shelves?

  10. redfred2 12/28/2006 at 12:55 PM #

    We’re in a grace period now and I am looking forward to the positive slants coming out as these are all just the first signs of a self serving shift. Folks in the media are smart enough to know that they can fill space and continue to pound on defenseless targets, as long as those targets stay down and show no signs of coming out of their tail spin. But, they are also smart enough to stay slightly out front, while not totally exposing themselves to the world as outwardly biased fools, when there is a change in the wind.

    The local media/N&O will not willingly give up on an easy target or readily change their ways, only undeniable changes for the better can force them to slant their print in a different direction. They won’t bash early success until it becomes engrained and starts to threaten their comfortable status quo. When that happens, the bias will rise to new levels while becoming even more evident and damaging, as we have all witnessed in the past.

    Meanwhile though, I’ll just continue to make my own evaluations, right or wrong, without waiting for those experts in the media to tell me what I should be thinking. Maybe some day, NC State will give the so-called “professional journalists” reason to lower themselves into that dark barrel once again, shamelessly scratching and scraping the bottom for any tidbit in order to knock NC State back down to where they think it should be.

    Good press in this locality is a curse, and while it’s a sad state of affairs to begin with for all but one university, true success in the NC athletics system is directly proportional to the disdain it is met with from the local sports media. That being the reality, I for one, am hoping and praying that they will absolutely hate our guts, ONCE AGAIN, in the not too distant future.

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