Schools Take Different Approaches

'07 Football General NCS Football31

Schools take different approaches in promoting new coaches

Butch Davis has been everywhere for North Carolina this offseason.

On a billboard overlooking a busy highway in Burlington, staring back at newspaper readers in a full-page ad, even in streaming video form filling up fans’ e-mailboxes. It’s all part of the Tar Heels’ aggressive attempt to boost season-ticket sales, attract new fans and cash in on their new coach’s popularity…

North Carolina State, with coach Tom O’Brien, is in the middle of a comparatively low-key campaign. O’Brien is featured in the Wolfpack’s ticket mailings. But officials say there’s less need to attract first-time season-ticket buyers because they’ve sold out their entire allotment of season seats every year since 2001.

“We’ve had a waiting list going since we hired Coach O’Brien, which is a pretty positive thing,”

ACC: What we know, what we don’t

The ACC’s reputation took a beating when its marquee teams – Miami and Florida State – both struggled to 6-6 finishes in the regular season.

Its image was further tarnished when ACC teams went 4-4 in bowl games, but needed Miami’s one-point victory over Nevada – Nevada? – and Boston College’s one-point win over Navy to break even.

There are new coaches at North Carolina (Butch Davis), Miami (Randy Shannon), Boston College (Jeff Jagodzinski) and North Carolina State (Tom O’Brien).

Six ACC teams have new offensive coordinators and eight completed spring football without settling on a starting quarterback, so there could be a lot of new faces under center next fall.

NC State
Source: Matt Carter of Wolfpacker.com

What we learned from spring practice: The running backs are still very talented.

It was well known that the Pack had a talented group of runners, but all three dazzled with strong performances. Each went over 100 yards in the spring game, with Toney Baker leading the way with 23 carries for 163 yards and two touchdowns. Jamelle Eugene had 15 rushes for 174 yards and Andrew Brown ran 11 times for 112 yards and a pair of scores.

The biggest question remaining for fall: Who will be the starting quarterback?

Returning starter Daniel Evans looked the sharpest in the spring game by completing 20 of 34 passes for 275 yards and three scores, but has not done enough to nail down the job yet. Harrison Beck showcased the strongest arm of the trio vying for the job, but struggled with accuracy (7-for-26 with an interception returned for a TD). Justin Burke was inconsistent while completing 13 of 24 passes for 121 yards and a touchdown. He had three interceptions

Anyone who has watched ACC football over the last several years has seen a number of teams struggle to find a productive QB. This article lists QB as one of the biggest open questions for:
– Clemson
– Florida State
– Miami
– UNC
– NC State
– Virginia
– Virgina Tech

QB was listed under “What we learned from spring practice” for:
– Duke
– Georgia Tech
– Maryland
– Wake Forest

About VaWolf82

Engineer living in Central Va. and senior curmudgeon amongst SFN authors One wife, two kids, one dog, four vehicles on insurance, and four phones on cell plan...looking forward to empty nest status. Graduated 1982

'07 Football General NCS Football

31 Responses to Schools Take Different Approaches

  1. noah 05/15/2007 at 3:23 PM #

    Carolina is promoting Butch Davis so hard because…as we all know…UNC fans (for the most part) don’t give a damn about football. Especially when basketball is doing well, football is just sonic and visual wallpaper for a social gathering in the fall.

    You know why everyone talks about Kenan being so beautiful? Because no one’s watching the game!!! Are there trees at C-F? I don’t know. I’m watching the football game. I’m not really concerned about the status of the leaves and their annual migration to the ground during the fall. I’m concerned about the status of our linebackers.

  2. kbstokes09 05/15/2007 at 3:25 PM #

    wonderful point noah

  3. the_phisherman 05/15/2007 at 3:25 PM #

    “The transition from a predictable, power running game under former coach Tom O’Brien to a zone-blocking, wide-open offense under Jeff Jagodzinski might not be as easy as once perceived. The offense struggled in the spring game and appeared out of sync on more than one occasion. There was also discord on the coaching staff, and offensive line coach Jim Turner asked for and was granted his release.”

    Sounds like another case of a pro-style offense that may just be too complicated for the college game.

  4. STLPACK 05/15/2007 at 5:32 PM #

    That first excerpt contrasting Davis and O’Brien was priceless! “We don’t need to promote him ’cause we’ve been sold out for 6 years.”

  5. WolfPup35 05/15/2007 at 7:46 PM #

    The fact that it takes NCS absolutely NO TIME to sell out FB tickets is simple. We LOVE our university and our teams regardless of the W-L record! People go to Keenan to drink $7 wine and eat old cheese while conversing about how superior they are. People go to the Carter to get rowdy, scream at the coaches, and loose howls of victory well into the night. You can have your pretty trees, we’ll take the scoreboard!

  6. wufpack 05/15/2007 at 9:12 PM #

    “a predictable, power running game under former coach Tom O’Brien”

    2006 BC Passing Yardage – 3135
    2006 BC Rushing Yardage – 1488

    First Downs Passing – 158
    First Downs Rushing

  7. wufpack 05/15/2007 at 9:16 PM #

    Crap, accidentally pressed the wrong key.

    2006 BC Passing Yardage – 3135
    2006 BC Rushing Yardage – 1488

    First Downs Passing – 158
    First Downs Rushing – 83

    Passing Attempts – 460
    Rushing Plays – 436

    That’s a predictable, power running game?

  8. primacyone 05/15/2007 at 9:24 PM #

    I think we should schedule a home and home with Texas!

  9. WolfPup35 05/15/2007 at 10:16 PM #

    Didn’t we already beat them at their house?

    Mack Brown was quoted as saying that “Losing my home opener to NC State” was one of the worst moments of his coaching career!! HE LOST TO MOC!!!

  10. whitefang 05/16/2007 at 6:34 AM #

    Noah. Maybe its just me, but I don’t think Kenan is a beautiful stadium anymore. Looks like concrete and steel on the inside, but still old and decrepit from the outside. And it has a nice PARKING DECK on the open end to tailgate in. What trees?

  11. crackdog 05/16/2007 at 7:43 AM #

    SMQ feature’s coach O’Brien in a “dear diary” feature.

    http://www.sundaymorningqb.com/story/2007/5/15/155914/145

    FYI, he’s apt to pick on pretty much anyone in these entries, so he doesn’t really have anything against State per se.

  12. redfred2 05/16/2007 at 8:05 AM #

    “Schools take different approaches in promoting…”

    That’s all I needed, I pretty much knew what the storyline was after that. Somebody at one university is out there working hard because they need to, and somebody at the other is just sitting there kicked back and waiting, giving that other university every possible opportunity to catch up. Don’t touch it until you have to, or until it takes a real turn for the worst. That’s promotion at it’s finest, the NC State way.

    I’d hate to see what would happen if the roles were reversed and NCSU didn’t already have it’s built in loyalty and passion for football. Does anyone else think seeing Butch Davis and unc plastered everywhere all over the state, might just be helping their cause in more than one season of ticket sales?

  13. noah 05/16/2007 at 9:07 AM #

    Have you ever read the book, “Everybody’s All-American” by Frank DeFord?

    DeFord and David Halberstam are my favorite writers and both are brilliant at putting you in a different time. The movie version is set at LSU, the book version is set in Chapel Hill. Carolina fans like to point out that the book is based on Charlie Justice. LSU fans like to point out that the book is based on Billy Cannon.

    Actually, it’s not based on either one. DeFord just knew some people who could help him on background stuff for the book. The movie takes place at LSU because they could shoot in the middle of winter and it would pass for Fall. They wouldn’t have to paint every leaf or build huge soundstages.

    The book is about the invariable “sic transit gloria” nature of athletics. And life, I guess. We all get old. Or we die too soon. We’re all doomed to remember glory that never really existed from battles and wars and games of years too far away and our heroes inevitably fall short of the dreams we have for them.

    Kenan Stadium is no different than the Grey Ghost. It’s a relic of another time. You want to see a really pretty stadium? Go to the Wake Forest stadium. No, not that one. The original Wake Forest stadium…in Wake Forest…where Rolesville plays high school football. It’s REALLY set back among the pine trees. On a crisp fall night under the lights, it’s about as pretty a place to sit as you’ll find….just like a good minor league stadium under the lights is about as fine a place to sit during the summer as you’ll find anywhere this side of the Outer Banks.

    When people tell me how beautiful Kenan Stadium is, I usually assume they’re just re-living a really good day they spent a long time ago watching an event that really…no longer exists.

    I know people who saw shows at the old Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. Not the Fillmore West, the OLD Fillmore…when on a Sunday, you could pay $3 and spend the entire day watching sets from Big Brother and Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead and Sopwith Camel and It’s a Beautiful Day and the original Steve Miller Band and Quicksilver Messenger Service and a 100 other groups no one ever heard of. I know folks from New Jersey who talk about paying $5 to see Bruce Springsteen and the original E Streeters at the Stone Pony.

    They get the same sentimental look in their eyes as the fans of Kenan Stadium. Memories from your youth are as powerful as anything you’ll ever experience. Flip on the song “American Girl” and you’ll get some guy in his 40s go to pieces because he remembers being 17 years old and free and wild and thinking he could do anything.

    Glory fades….(they’ll pass you by…)

  14. noah 05/16/2007 at 9:09 AM #

    BTW, I have no idea if this is true or not, but in the book “Everybody’s All American,” there is some mention of a rule or condition that said that Kenan’s upper rim could not exceed the height of the surrounding pines. So before they could expand, they had to wait for the pines to get tall enough so they wouldn’t break the rule.

    Again…I don’t know if that’s true, but it made me laugh.

  15. redfred2 05/16/2007 at 9:44 AM #

    ^Kind of like Katie Mauney, the best looking girl, for a fourth grader, that God ever put on the planet.

  16. crackdog 05/16/2007 at 10:50 AM #

    As someone who was educated in forestry at NC State, I feel obligated to point this out:
    Unless they’ve planned for multiple age classes amongst their pine trees, one summer they’ll have a beetle attack, lose all their pines, and find themselves in violation of their own rule.

  17. noah 05/16/2007 at 11:09 AM #

    Didn’t the original Kenan get built right before the depression?

    It’s an OLD OLD stadium. or at least, it’s an old site…

  18. highonlowe 05/16/2007 at 12:30 PM #

    Maybe UNC should bundle their products at Wal-Mart.
    Buy a sweatshirt, get a free football ticket. (after mail-in rebate)

  19. Trout 05/16/2007 at 12:43 PM #

    Noah, Kenan was built in 1927. FYI, Riddick Stadium was built in 1907. The oldest on-campus football facility is Boddy Dodd Stadium at Grant Field, built in 1913.

  20. noah 05/16/2007 at 12:57 PM #

    Old buildings are great sometimes. I’ve been to Trinity College in Dublin and they have a library that was built in 714. It’s awe-inspiring. Notre Dame started in 1160 and was finished in something like 1340. The guy who put the first stone down…his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandkids went to the first mass there. How cool is that?

    But being old when you’re a football or basketball stadium is NOT a good thing though. Look at old Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Yeesh.

  21. joe 05/16/2007 at 1:09 PM #

    Some people may not know the last remaining section of Riddick Stadium was torn down last year. The west stands stood for 40 years after the stadium was no longer used for FB. They are building a new math and statistics building on the site.

  22. noah 05/16/2007 at 1:32 PM #

    My father, while a student at NC State in the 1960s, was a student at Syne, Syme? Slime? dorm right there by old Riddick. My brother spent his four years in the same dorm. When my father would visit his old stomping grounds, he’d often look across what had become a parking lot (the concrete stands were still there) with the same look in his eye that I mentioned previously.

    We all do it…

  23. PamlicoPack 05/16/2007 at 1:48 PM #

    “Didn’t we already beat them at their house?

    Mack Brown was quoted as saying that “Losing my home opener to NC State” was one of the worst moments of his coaching career!! HE LOST TO MOC!!!”

    Ummm, nope…MOC was 0-7 against UNC. Mack’s first 4 teams lost to Dick Sheridan teams. The transition to MOC signaled the shift of in-state football dominance from us back to UNC. We never have really assumed that mantle of dominant in-state program since, although we came close under Amato. Really the most damaging loss to UNC from a long term program perspective was the 17-9 egg we laid in C-F in 2001, Amato’s and River’s second year…that loss set the stage for the three losses the last three years. UNC knew no matter how bad they were, they could beat us…

  24. DireWolf 05/16/2007 at 2:02 PM #

    Is the fieldhouse from riddick still standing? It was a public safety building when i was at State. I bet they tore it down with the remaining stands.

  25. Trout 05/16/2007 at 2:12 PM #

    Noah – Syme is the name of the dorm. The nickname given to residents, including my Dad, was Slimy Syme

    Dire – yes, the Fieldhouse is still there and still home to PS

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