FBall Implosion Getting Worse

'07 Football General190

On the same day that NC State released an updated injury report that serves to rub salt in our wounds by now including our starting quarterback in addition to the previous injuries to our starting running back, tight end and offensive lineman…we have learned that three scholarship players are no longer with the team – Levin Neal, Nate Franklin and LaMarcus Bond.

After watching Levin Neal lose his job and Nate Franklin punt this year…I guess we shouldn’t be too concerned as TOB now has additional scholarhships to distribute in what has been a stellar recruiting effort, thusfar.

How many football players does NC State currently have on scholarhip? and what is the distribution by class of these players?

Earth to high school stars and JUCO linemen we have plenty of playing time available!!! Come on down!!!

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'07 Football General

190 Responses to FBall Implosion Getting Worse

  1. DRW 10/01/2007 at 5:15 PM #

    ^Noah: I love that movie. It’s one of my all time favorite ‘old’ movies. Even ‘Steve Douglas’ does a good job in it.

  2. packbackr04 10/01/2007 at 5:16 PM #

    noah, not to be an ass but what exactly is it that Lee does then? comb his moustache all day?

    he isnt fixing problems that C-F is having (gameday experiences with secuirty and water)

    he isnt exactly “cutting edge” as far as marketing the program goes

    he had/has no idea what directions his 2 money making sports where headed up until last year when his hand was forced.

    he constantly denegrates his own fanbase, while his contemporaries are embracing them (see robert gates from tex a &m using fan blogs as a way to get a feel for the pulse of the fan base)

    and not to say he should micro manage every meeting Chuck was having but if i have bad year or two (and everyone could see that chucks last few years were indeed bad… hell i could see from my seats, and i need a sherpa to get to my seats they are so high up), dont you think my boss wants to sit on a couple meetings to get the feel for whats been going wrong and why?

  3. PamlicoPack 10/01/2007 at 5:18 PM #

    I think this criticism of Fowler comes from people who have to blame every unfortunate situation on a person. Can’t blame Amato…he’s gone (or, can’t blame him because they drank the recruiting rankings purple koolaid and equate number of stars in some computer geek’s recruiting ranking service with people who can actually play the game of college football well). Can’t blame TOB because he just got here (although that isn’t stopping some folks). So, really, Fowler is just about the only person left to blame. Although, some people are also having a heyday blaming the whole sorry mess on Tom Stafford and EventOne.

  4. packbackr04 10/01/2007 at 5:19 PM #

    wufpax^^ the coaches shouldnt have a choice…. my boss doesnt come in and say… “umm. if its ok… ummm would you MIND if i sat in on a meeting today?” he says” ill be attending your noon meeting, be there 15 mins early to brief me” am i crazy, am i the only one who thinks there should be accountability, and that it goes way up in NC state? its not just the coaches fault we are in this shape today

  5. PamlicoPack 10/01/2007 at 5:21 PM #

    If football takes up more than, say, 20% of Fowler’s time (on a year round basis), then he is neglecting most of his other job duties. You hire good people, and then you let them do their jobs. He thought Amato was a good coach (so did most of us, until the last year or two). Why peer over his shoulder? The wheels didn’t really fall off of the Amato bandwagon until October/November of last year. What, exactly, at that point could Fowler have done?

  6. backinpack 10/01/2007 at 5:23 PM #

    noah, The ‘academic standards’ debate is an interesting one. I think we are going to see a serious shift of talent to the FCS/Div II/III after the NCAA updates its acceptance standards in 2010 (I think that’s right) to the same ones used by the ACC (or is it NC-System schools) this year. Schools that continue not to sacrifice integrity will slowly become terrible programs and the name-recognition that used to draw athletes into those schools won’t help them anymore. I’m not convinced that this will completely happen however. I often think this is an excuse dragged out to justify poor recruiting and coaching. Even Ivy League schools make some concessions for athletes (even if they can’t get athletic schollys), so I’m sure ND and Stanford can do the same.

    Update: ND just scored a lucky TD (2 receivers were in the same spot) and then missed the XP….

  7. noah 10/01/2007 at 5:24 PM #

    “noah, not to be an ass but what exactly is it that Lee does then? comb his moustache all day?”

    I’ve never met Lee Fowler. But the ADs I have met and interviewed spent a tremendous amount of time managing a very large business. It’s not Lee Fowler’s job to make sure your cup smells good and there’s ice and water. There’s a facilities manager for C-F and it’s his job. It’s Fowler’s job to make sure that the guy DOES his job and has the tools to do his job.

    As far as your coaches go, this isn’t a job flipping burgers. There are very few people who can do it. You have to have blind faith in them. You hire them, you give them a large salary and you let them do their job. You do NOT look over their shoulder while they are doing it. When it comes time to evaulate them, you do so and you probably do it pretty harshly BECAUSE you aren’t looking over their shoulder. But you don’t sit in on the weekly meetings and make sure that every letter to a recruit goes through your in-box first.

    Don’t make me defend Lee Fowler. But I don’t think you have an accurate picture of what he actually does. If you’re just bitching because he’s “the man” and you don’t know the name of the guy who you’re actually pissed at, that’s fine. I get it.

  8. PamlicoPack 10/01/2007 at 5:24 PM #

    OK, so when Fowler arrives 15 minutes early at the coaches meeting, what, exactly, is he supposed to ask? What is he supposed to do? Tell the offensive coordinator to throw downfield more? Good grief people, you are trying to apply management techniques from a friggin’ insurance agency to a multi-million dollar Division One Athletics Program.

  9. noah 10/01/2007 at 5:24 PM #

    Pamlico Pack slips in with two similar posts.

  10. packbackr04 10/01/2007 at 5:25 PM #

    again, Pamlico^^ it IS someones fault, its a dog-eat-dog world. You dont just sit back and expect good things to happen just beacuse your Lee Fowler, or Chuck Amato, or jo blow auto insurance salesman. you have to go out and make it happen.. and when and if it doesnt, yes it IS SOMEONES fault. like it or not. and in the REAL WORLD, heads roll for it… why this doesnt apply to NCSU athletics does not compute with me

  11. Mr O 10/01/2007 at 5:27 PM #

    Pamlicopack: Lee Fowler is in the charge of the entire athletic department. There are businesses at NC State that matter most to Lee Fowler’s customers – men’s basketball and football.

    What specific achievements have been accomplished by these two programs after massive facility improvements were built by Lee’s customers?

    Last year both of these programs went through “transitions” to a new coach. How well were these transitions handled? Right now, football is in the middle of an 11 game losing streak that may last into next season and is the 2nd longest in the country. The basketball coaching search was a PR nightmare after trying to hire 5-6 people prior to finally offering Sidney Lowe after 2.5 months(when most searches last about two weeks). You could argue the delay cost us Dan Werner, Larry Davis and an NCAA tournament. Where was Lee going to go next if Sidney didn’t bail him out? We had already got turned down by Steve Lavin.

    What exactly has Lee done at NC State to make anyone feel comfortable that when a tough decision needs to be made that he will be well-prepared and willing to make that decision at the time it needs to be made? You know, prior to situations getting so bad like 11 game losing streaks and coaches leaving you high and dry and ill-prepared to carry out an effective personnel search.

    Maybe we just have different ideas as far as what an AD is supposed to do in managing their primary businesses at NC State.

  12. PamlicoPack 10/01/2007 at 5:27 PM #

    And like Noah, don’t make me defend Lee Fowler. Should the guy who handles gameday stadium operations be fired? Maybe, but the symbolic gesture of firing him in the middle of the season, which some on here appear to desire, would only ADD to the chaos some are suffering from (again, I haven’t had a single gate delay or run-in with security the entire season, so I don’t think we are getting the full story on some of the horrific anecdotes we are hearing).

  13. noah 10/01/2007 at 5:29 PM #

    backinpack – The Ivy league schools make minimal numbers of exceptions…and those exceptions usually mean that the guy had a 3.8 instead of a 4.0. I’d say something about SAT scores…but they reconfigured the damn thing twice and added an essay section since I took it. I remember when breaking 1,000 on the SATs was pretty good. Then they readjusted it so that 1,000 was the average.

    Stanford has said they won’t sacrifice academic excellence for the sake of winning games. Notre Dame’s top priest has said the same. Holtz had been told that he wasn’t going to get the top facilities that everyone else got (Holtz called it an arms race) and that certainly held true. He quit when they told him they were changing the admissions standards.

    I have a friend who graduated from Notre Dame and he said that 80 percent of Holtz’s recruits would not be accepted at ND today.

  14. packbackr04 10/01/2007 at 5:30 PM #

    management is management, motivation is motivation. it doesnt matter if you run a mom and pop burger joint or a large football program… and if Lee cant find people to do their jobs and do their jobs well, it is HIS responsibiltiy to find people who can.

  15. PamlicoPack 10/01/2007 at 5:31 PM #

    And, Mr. O, Fowler’s performance in the coaches searches, which I agree were incompetent, really has nothing to do with the criticism of him voiced on this thread, does it? It simply isn’t the AD’s job to interfere in the football program. The AD’s time to interfere is when the decision is made to hire and the decision is made to fire. Between those times, his role should be that of encourager and enabler for his coaches.

  16. PamlicoPack 10/01/2007 at 5:33 PM #

    Again, Packbakr04, what should Fowler have done that he didn’t do? Amato is gone, TOB is here. Are you suggesting he should have fired Amato at the end of 2005? Because if you are, that is nothing more than 20/20 hindsight.

  17. noah 10/01/2007 at 5:37 PM #

    “management is management, motivation is motivation. it doesnt matter if you run a mom and pop burger joint or a large football program…”

    Well…actually it does. A lot of people can run a mom-and-pop burger joint. A lot of people DO run burger joints.

    A large football program is NOT a burger joint. There are 115 D1 programs for football? How many of them will go to a bowl? 60 or so? How many of them will do so in consecutive years? Maybe 40? How many will do so 75 percent of the time? Maybe 15?

  18. packbackr04 10/01/2007 at 5:38 PM #

    agreed, pamlico, i think it is just an overall sense that i have reached my boiling point with Fowler (which includes Lees problems detailed in MR O’s post) and im sorry for ranting on this post about it, but it is just beyond me the numerous ineptitudes over the past few years that i directly attribute to the AD’s office. Shortcomings that in any other business (with the exception of gov’t and the airlines) would get someone canned long ago.

  19. wufpaxno1 10/01/2007 at 5:39 PM #

    packbacker04 – I am not disagreeing with you or the frustration that we all feel, but when you hire someone at this level who in most cases is making more then you are, part of the initial agreement is that you have the leverage to do your job unencumbered unless you break the rules. On of the obvious draw backs of this freedom of control are that if you are not successful you get the ax; something that I saw coming, and felt should have happened years earlier in the case of Amato. But with all of the publicity that D-1 coaches receive, they can’t help but develop an ego to some degree just as the star performer in most offices would. Also, coaching at this level is a small fraternity, what would it do to a coaches level of respect among his peers if word got out that he was being hen pecked and mothered by his AD, and worse, who would want to be his replacement if they felt that they would receive the same treatment.

  20. BJD95 10/01/2007 at 5:40 PM #

    I blame Lee Fowler for being STRONGLY against Amato’s dismissal during last year’s meltdown. He should have gone into the year with a skeptical mindset, given all the buzz in the air.

    If a group of simple bloggers like us could know there was trouble in the football program (and we published such, after much debate), then Lee Fowler should have known.

  21. RegularExpression 10/01/2007 at 5:40 PM #

    Even with the sorry state of our program today, I don’t think Chuck could have been fired any earlier given our on field results.

    I do think an AD should have his finger on the pulse of his major athletic programs – moreso than Lee apparently does. I would hope that he gave every coach that left for another program an exit interview. We have had hundreds of combined years of football coaching experience leave our program in the last 6 years. I’d sure would have liked to get their candid assessment of the situation. Maybe Lee did this but isn’t good at asking the right questions or seeing patterns among develop among employees. I say this based on Fowler’s apparent willingness to give Chuck more time after last year. I’d also be interested to hear from graduating players as to their experiences in the program. Interview enough players and I’m sure some interesting information would come out.

    Often times to me it has seemed that our administration in general and Lee specifically doesn’t see the big picture very well. Unfortunately I don’t think that is going to change anytime soon.

  22. packbackr04 10/01/2007 at 5:41 PM #

    point taken noah, but those people who are good at motivation and good at managment will have a mom and pop burger joint that is succesful and stays in business for 50 yrs(the equivalent of a long bowl run in your post) they will rise as the cream of the crop and i just cant comprehend anyone at this juncture thinking that Lee is capable of taking NCSU to the next level

  23. packbackr04 10/01/2007 at 5:45 PM #

    good discussion guys and all points i have taken to heart… i am dealing with alot of frustrastion right now with the state of the program. sorry for the rants. it is like i said, all beyond me how it could have gotten this bad and how Lee could still be employed by the university.

  24. backinpack 10/01/2007 at 5:47 PM #

    noah, I’m fine with Stanford an ND making those calls, but they need to be prepared for all men’s sports programs (with the exception of maybe Cross Country and Golf) to take a serious hit. While I respect their decision to do so, big-time sports on campus are not only great revenue boosters, but create great opportunities for students to have fun. Those that decide competitive, big-time, college sports are an important part of their college experience will find themselves somewhere other than ND, Stanford, and any other place where these ‘standards’ are upheld.

    ESPNU Update: I can’t stop watching this game — it’s like a trainwreck. There was just a banner in the background (on the wall just above the ‘left’ end-zone) that read “Rudy could start THIS YEAR!” I love it!

  25. GAWolf 10/01/2007 at 5:55 PM #

    Pamlico… the decision to fire and hire is exactly why you have an AD among a few other less important responsibilities. I don’t get your point at all. He’s the CEO of this company. When we have incompetent employees within the company it is his job to see that and to act on it. Who else makes the decision to hire and fire upon which he is supposed to act? In our case it’s been the fans (for which we’ve been ripped a new one over) and the big money boosters…. neither of which should make that decision if the AD is doing his damn job. I think your allocation of the responsibility in a NCAA athletic department is way off. I’m agree that this is the way it’s been here in Raleigh for way too long, but that doesn’t make it right.

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