Corso Rejects Davis-Love; Lauds Wolfpack’s TOB

'07 Football General NCS Football Tom O'Brien37

ESPN’s Lee Corso appeared on Mark Packer’s syndicated Primetime radio show this afternoon for a conversation on college football.

Packer was doing a great job pumping Corso for as many comments as could be generated in the allotted timeframe of the interview when Packer brought up the obligatory ‘isn’t Butch Davis great?’ topic. (Please do not read this as criticism of Packer; we are huge Mark Packer fans).

After being asked about Butch Davis, Corso immediately responded by talking about Tom O’Brien and NC State football. It was classic. Corso completely ignored Butch Davis and shrugged off the topic to immediately sharie that he expects the future of football success in this area would be generated by NC State’s Tom O’Brien. Additionally, Corso described how he was responsible for recruiting Tom O’Brien to play football at West Point and is therefore responsible for TOB’s appointment to the Naval Accademy at Annapolis in the late 1960’s. Corso continued to praise Coach O’Brien and was obviously very proud of the personal bond the two men share.

No offense to Coach Davis, but boy it was nice to hear this after witnessing/listening to every pundit in the world ordain UNC-Chapel Hill a cliched “sleeping giant” who will immediately rise to national prominence under the leadership of Butch Davis. I guess Corso understands what most in the football fraternity already know – Butch Davis has to stay in Chapel Hill long enough to build this presumed success, and very few informed people expect that to happen. Additionally, there are some folks out there that remember how Mack Brown built his ‘power’ in Chapel Hill by taking advantage of a weak ACC while feeding on out of conference cupcakes and compiling an atrocious record against ranked teams. (Hence the reason that the Tarheels tried to avoid playing ranked teams at every turn).

For some Corso-related fun, you need to click here. This reminds me that it has been almost two years since we linked this Corso-entry that is always a favorite.

Corso’s ESPN colleague, Kirk Herbstreit is following the elder partner with a lot of love for Coach O’Brien and NC State. In his 7th annual “Herbie Awards” released this week, Herbstriet picks NC State as his 2007 sleeper team in the ACC and Tom O’Brien as one of the five new coaches that will have “instant success” in his new job.

In light of all of this current TOB-love, I think that we all need to give old Trev Alberts some attention for saying much of the same back in January!

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'07 Football General NCS Football Tom O'Brien

37 Responses to Corso Rejects Davis-Love; Lauds Wolfpack’s TOB

  1. newt 08/30/2007 at 9:25 AM #

    I caught about 5 minutes of Morgan Patrick yesterday trying to discuss the Miami QB situation. He could not stop drifting off into a UNC/Butch Davis festival of intrigue. I thought he must be the biggest Homer I’ve ever heard and it’s no wonder he’s been relegated to the “unemployed afternoon beer drinkers” timeslot.

    The national media seem to realize instinctively that they’d better give a nod to NC State and TOB. I’m thankful for the press, but Corso’s opinions are never safe bets. Herbstreit has been on the NC State bandwagon for years. I’m surprised he hasn’t fallen off yet after being burned a couple of times. It must be something he sees in the big picture ingredients that makes him feel like the Pack could break out.

    In reality, Butch Davis’ resume isn’t much different than Mike Archer’s. It’s been almost a decade since his 2 or 3 years of success at Miami, so seems he would be needing to prove himself all over again.

  2. PamlicoPack 08/30/2007 at 9:45 AM #

    “From what I can tell, the tailgating restrictions seem to be impacting about .001 percent of the attendees.

    The die-hards, the folks who show up at 4 a.m. to start cooking a pig are affected.”

    I agree completely. And the die-hards, of course, are WAY overrepresented on Internet message boards and blogs. When I talk to “ordinary” pack fans out there, including ones who buy tickets and go to games, I get a blank stare usually when I bring up the fact that there are these controversial new tailgating restrictions. These people also laugh at the idea of wanting to even go out there more than 5 hours before the game.

  3. McPete 08/30/2007 at 10:42 AM #

    I’ve heard Herbstreit bash nc state as recently as ’05, when he said watching nc state play is good if you like defense and penalties. he was right. as a fan i enjoyed watching the defense dominate games that season (capped by the South florida bowl win), but an impartial observer probably wouldn’t have found it very exciting.

    i think the combination of TOB’s track record + the early sucess in recruiting has alot of national people taking notice again of nc state.

    i also heard Corso say on the radio that he was only outcoached once or twice in his career, and once was against lou holtz at nc state. he was saying that 95% of wins and losses are due to talent disparities. i don’t think i can agree with that, maybe specific mismatches due to talent disparities (o-line vs. d-line), but overall talent for the majority of acc schools is comparable, IMO. and then there’s Duke.

  4. StateFans 08/30/2007 at 12:15 PM #

    ^ How is honest analysis “bashing NC State”?

  5. McPete 08/30/2007 at 1:42 PM #

    it was just one example of herbstreit not giving amato’s program any ‘love’, as someone else mentioned. no need to argue semantics about the word ‘bash’, but his comments weren’t positive nevertheless.

  6. noah 08/30/2007 at 2:40 PM #

    So in other words, he did his job as an impartial announcer and didn’t blow smoke up anyone’s butt?

  7. VaWolf82 08/30/2007 at 3:27 PM #

    What’s the over/under for Butch Davis’ career at UNC?

    If he’s there for three years, I’m personally going to be shocked.

    I said the same thing about Chan Gailey at GT. I figured that he would either be successful and move back to the pros or be unsuccessful and fired after a few years. I would never have guessed that Chan would introduce GT fans to his version of “Herbatory”. Sooooo……anything is possible.

  8. noah 08/30/2007 at 3:33 PM #

    I’d bet large amounts of money that Butch Davis never returns to the NFL.

  9. McPete 08/30/2007 at 3:58 PM #

    noah, yes that’s what he did. i’m not arguing with what he said. someone pointed out that herbstreit was on the nc state bandwagon and he was surprised that he never got off. i disagree with that statement.

  10. noah 08/30/2007 at 5:24 PM #

    Ah…I understand.

  11. Primewolf 08/30/2007 at 11:06 PM #

    I don’t think the holes will win many games this year. Next year they could go to a minor bowl, at best. They have had two good recruiting classes in a row, while our classes were very weak, about the same level as Duke.

    If TOB can hold on forf 3 years, he will have his own recruits beginning to make a difference.

    Arkansas could get desparate and hire Butch before he does anything decent.

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Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. StateFans Nation » Blog Archive » How Sweet it Is! Saturday’s Football Entry - 08/31/2007

    […] We didn’t run a whole lot of preseason football preview entries because they all started to blend together and look the same. Despite NC State’s selection as a ’sleeper’ by a few well-respected pundits, the almost-unanimous prediction for the Wolfpack’s 2007 is a last place finish in the Atlantic Division. There were a couple of previews who boldly put the Pack in the 5th spot of the division; and this one got us to our highest placement of 4th! […]

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