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. choppack1 10/01/2007 at 11:53 PM #

    A couple of thoughts here – for one, I don’t think it’s fair to blame Fowler for not firing Amato until this year. Coming into 2006, Amato had been to 5 bowl games in 6 years. Even Statefans thought that Amato had at least one more year left:
    http://www.statefansnation.com/index.php/archives/2006/08/22/amato-on-hot-seat-talk/

    No one was demanding Amato’s dismissal in 2005. However, the collapse was complete and so swift, not many disagreed w/ getting rid of him.

    Well, I’m hoping that the second half of our season gets us a couple wins. I just want to see some improvement – AND someone besides Evans or Beck at QB, unless someone somehow does some things we haven’t seen them do yet.

  2. PacknSack 10/02/2007 at 3:12 AM #

    This might be a Jim Grobe type rebuilding project after seeing those roster numbers. I could live with another 1-win season if — and this is a big if — the whole incoming freshman class is redshirted next fall. I still think there is enough talent on this team for a 4-4 year, but I am starting to believe that CTC’s guys just aren’t grasping the new system.

    As an aside, Levin went to coach’s office to ask about his diminishing playing time. Coach told him to get with the program, starting doing the things he’s being taught and stop trying to play ‘his game.’ Levin quit before he left the office. The person who told me this is incredibly reliable. Just makes me wonder about the backbone CTCs leftovers have.

  3. Mr O 10/02/2007 at 8:27 AM #

    If it’s not fair to blame Fowler for the collapse of the football program under his watch, then is it fair to blame Fowler for relatively mediocre results of both programs considering the millions of dollars contributed by NC State fans?

    Somebody posted some realy interesting numbers from this article on Packpride. Definitely check it out.

    http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i06/06a00101.htm

    This link says we are 14th nationally in annual athletic donations. We are 4th in the ACC(behind UVa, UNC and FSU) and 5th in capital funds raised the last five years. If we were in other conferences, then here would be our rankings for annual donations/capital campaigns

    SEC 6th/2nd
    Big Ten 3rd/1st
    Pac 10 2nd/1st
    Big East 2nd/1st
    Big 12 2nd/4th

    Over the last five years, there are only four teams in a BCS conference outside of the ACC that have raised more capital funds than NC State. We are 9th nationally in capital funds raised and like I said earlier 14th in annual money raised.

    Are the results of NC State’s athletic program in line with what you would expect based on the fact that we are 14th in annual donations and 9th in capital funds raised during the last five years?

  4. LRM 10/02/2007 at 8:29 AM #

    I can’t believe there’s even speculation that TOB might not have been the right man for the job. How could anyone even develop an argument against him this soon?

    Maybe he’s not the right man for the job. But we’re a third of the way through his first season. I doubt Pete Carroll’s or Bob Stoops’ record would have been any different here.

    We’ve had nine 5-plus loss seasons during O’Cain’s & Amato’s tenures, so I don’t see where there’s any evidence a new coach came into a good situation.

    The simple (deplorable) truth is that we’ve never been a national contender, and we’re many years away from getting there — we’re three years away from a Tire Bowl.

  5. LRM 10/02/2007 at 8:31 AM #

    Mr. O,
    I’m not a Fowler fan, but I agree with your comments above.

    I think most of us have correlated spending with winning, but unfortunately that’s just not the case.

  6. cradletograve 10/02/2007 at 8:37 AM #

    LRM, correction State with Chuck Amato playing linebacker on the white shoes defense in the late 1960s, one year was rated about 3RD in the nation before two late season losses to Penn State and Clemson, so yes we have been a national contender. Also, I believe in 1957, we would have been the ACC representative to the Orange Bowl but did not go due to the program being on probation. (Duke went in our place.) Can some one correct any errors here? I know this is pretty close to accurate.

  7. LRM 10/02/2007 at 8:59 AM #

    Duke also won the Rose Bowl during WWII. There will always be outliers.

    I don’t think we’re any further along than we were 15 years ago; except our facilities are “prettier.”

  8. joe 10/02/2007 at 9:03 AM #

    The reason all the money was spent on FB was because NCSU had fallen way behind in the “arms race” for facilities. That money was spent to keep up with UNC, FSU, Clemson, UVa, etc. It also happened that at the same time the coach at NCSU was not really up to the job of being an ACC level coach.

    I don’t see how anyone can say all that money spent should produce a better product since I don’t see the 2 as being directly tied together. UNC spent a lot of money right when Mack Brown left and they had 2 bad coaches in a row so they did not win.

    No amount of money spent can really overcome a coach who is not suited for the job.

  9. Great Dane Guy 10/02/2007 at 9:45 AM #

    “This link says we are 14th nationally in annual athletic donations. We are 4th in the ACC(behind UVa, UNC and FSU) and 5th in capital funds raised the last five years. If we were in other conferences, then here would be our rankings for annual donations/capital campaigns”

    I don’t know what our AD’s daily schedule looks like, or what he does. One thing I think is critical to an AD position though is vision. That unique ability to have a strong vision of what they want and how to get there, and then the strength of leadership to make the tough decisions to get there. With the quote above, its clear Lee’s stay the course/don’t rock the boat/build facilities and hope wins will come strategy isn’t visionary, and his misguided support of Amato even at the end proves his leadership is lacking. My question is if the movers and shakers really gave him the “you can join Amato” speech, how do they feel about Lee and his Leadership and vision now? Mr. O’s link about monetary support sure show that Fowlers vision is lacking given the financial support.

  10. cradletograve 10/02/2007 at 9:54 AM #

    TOB’s comments on Pack Pride posted today demonstrate what an excellent coach he is and will be for his time here, I believe. It is too early to say definitively but just about everything he has done so far has inspired my confidence. Especially when you lose your starter at QB plus three players in a single week, I appreciate the mentality he brings to moving forward and the confidence he is displaying in the team.

  11. PamlicoPack 10/02/2007 at 10:08 AM #

    Mr.O: when you quote those athletic facility spending and fundraising numbers, they DO sound impressive and lend the impression we should expect top 10 finishes as a result of them….until you realize that those hundreds of millions of dollars we have spent over the last 10 years have merely brought us from the BOTTOM of the ACC (and indeed most of the major conferences) to about AVERAGE. Why did it take hundreds of millions of dollars to make us just AVERAGE in facilities? Because we basically spent $0 (ZERO) on major facility improvements from the opening of Carter Finley in 1966 until groundbreaking on the ESA in 1996.

    Know why the early 1970s were the golden era of Wolfpack athletics? Because our physical facilities for athletics hadn’t yet fallen decades behind our peer institutions.

    Willis Casey (long time AD prior to Valvano/Turner/Fowler) was legendarily tightfisted and (in my opinion, though I never met the man) shortsighted. Know what excess revenues were diverted into during most of the 70s/early 80s? Paying off the Carter Finley bonds early. Yep, those bonds, the ones paying something like 4% interest. Thus, fast forward to about 1989 or so, and the Athletics Department finally gets around to commissioning an Athletics Facility study (can’t remember if Valvano or Todd Turner commissioned this, but it was sometime after I graduated in 1989). Surprise, surprise, we have about a gazillion dollars in deferred facility needs. Thus, the massive fundraising and spending of the last 10 years has given us a fairly nice (but not spectacular) baseball field (which won’t even be the best college baseball facility in the Triangle when UNC finishes the Boshamer Stadium rebuild); a basketball arena which was state of the art in 1999, and is still pretty nice, but certainly isn’t one of the top 10 college basketball venues in the country (MAY be in the 18-25 range; I don’t know how many other schools have new projects underway), and a smallish football stadium that ranks maybe 40-50 in the country in seating capacity with a nice locker room/coaches offices complex, but again, doesn’t really stand out as one of the top 10 facilities in the country (we don’t even have an indoor practice facility).

    I think some of you are a bit delusional if you think the massive spending over the last 10 years to correct prior management shortcomings in our Athletics Department somehow have instantly transformed us into Major Athletic Power status. Fowler may not be the best personnel man at AD (as has been amply documented above), but I think he has guided the biggest building program in the history of our Athletics Department ably and steadily. I’d take him any day of the week (and twice on Sunday) over some egotistical interfering hotshot who is willing to fire a coach at the drop of a hat, but can’t manage a construction project.

  12. packbackr04 10/02/2007 at 10:12 AM #

    two words… Bobby Purcell

  13. Texpack 10/02/2007 at 10:13 AM #

    Year three for TOB should tell us whether or not he will be successful at NC State. The types of guys CTC recruited will be tough for TOB to coach his way. Hopefully this season won’t trash recruiting next year.

  14. PamlicoPack 10/02/2007 at 10:14 AM #

    know what? bobby purcell wouldn’t have fired Amato at the end of 2005, or any earlier, either.

  15. packbackr04 10/02/2007 at 10:21 AM #

    fowler gets all the credit for leading us through all this construction and fundraising when it was Purcell who was the visionary behind all the funds that were raised. and who cares what Purcell would or wouldnt have done in 2005? it wasnt his call, it was Lees call, and he failed to make the necessary moves. TOB i belive is the right man, but he better get it turned around quick or recruiting is going to be harder than ever… if he thought it was tuff to get kids to come to Chestnutt hill give it a yr or so of 1 win seasons

  16. PamlicoPack 10/02/2007 at 10:25 AM #

    Mack Brown managed to outrecruit Dick sheridan in-state, even through back to back 1-10 seasons while we were going to bowls each year (and beating the crap out of them head to head). You can recruit through bad seasons with the right approach. The elite kids these days seem to care more about (1) playing time; and (2) whether the coaching staff will prepare them for an NFL career. I’m pretty sure we have (1) in spades; only time will tell about (2), although the paper credentials of our staff don’t exactly blow me away the way Amato’s original staff did…

  17. noah 10/02/2007 at 10:27 AM #

    Spending on facilities requires a gifted mind. There’s not really any rule of thumb.

    I’ve read policy papers (yes, there are some at schools that offer sports management programs) that talk about the need to maintain a slight defecit in your books. It’s supposed to help fundraising. You’re supposed to spend dollars in the black on infrastructure projects. There are just as many policy papers that say the exact opposite.

    There’s also a worry that you’ll be slightly ahead of the pack…and suddenly find that no one is behind you. The Charlotte Coliseum, for instance, was built under a design that everyone was using for coliseums in that day. Then, suddenly, luxury boxes were the new source of revenue and the coliseum was outdated and irrelevant.

    Technology changes awfully fast. I know that Reynolds was no longer feasible not just because the damn roof was about to cave in, but because it took so much to feature a televised game because of the related costs to getting fiber optics in place for the networks.

    Everyone saying, “We should have stayed in Reynolds,” never stopped to consider that not only would that have meant forfeiting ticketing revenues from an additional 10,000 fans, it would have meant forfeiting all of the luxury box revenues (which are substantial) and all of the PSL revenue AND then still incurring huge capital costs in production for about 10-12 games.

    It’s tricky.

  18. PamlicoPack 10/02/2007 at 10:37 AM #

    point taken, Noah, but really….should it have taken over 30 years to get public restrooms and locker rooms built at Doak Field?

  19. noah 10/02/2007 at 10:56 AM #

    PamlicoPack – a couple of things…

    First of all, Mack Brown is probably the greatest recruiter the ACC has ever known. You remember. So do I. They hired Mack in 1987 and suddenly, ever Carolina fan had this big, dumb grin on their face.

    “We’re going to be great. This guys is awesome. Mack Brown is the greatest thing since the forward pass and he’s going to be our best coach ever!”

    Meanwhile, everyone else in the ACC looked at one another in complete disbelief. “What the hell are they talking about?” We all went back and looked at his record at Tulane…1-10, 4-7 and 6-6. There were no quality wins. He beat a couple of bottom-feeding SEC teams, and then he beat a bunch of Louisiana-Monroe/Lafayette-type squads and then lost his one bowl game.

    He came to UNC and promptly went 2-20. His first year, he had an excuse. Dick Crum didn’t leave him a whole lot. Crum’s recruiting base had fallen into total disarray. There WERE a couple of highly-recruited players, but not many and they were surrounded by awful players who belonged at App. State, not the ACC. Derrick Fenner was still there, I think. Deems May had been one of the most highly-recruited quarterbacks in the nation. Torin Dorn was there. Kevin Donnalley was there.

    (hey, this starting to sound familiar)

    Carolina had a BRUTAL schedule in 1988. They opened with an 8-4 South Carolina squad, played Oklahoma the year after they played for the national title, and had Auburn (who would win 10 games, the SEC and play in the Sugar Bowl) on the road. They lost decisively in all of those games, but they played Louisville, Maryland, UVa, Wake and Dook close.

    The next year was the low point. Another 1-10 season, but the non-conference schedule included VMI (the one win), Kentucky, Navy and South Carolina. They lost to Navy 12-7 on homecoming…and years later, Mack Brown would talk about how he almost lost his job that day. He said he waited until everyone left and then he went to his car and just sat there, crying like a little kid. He didn’t think he was going to get it done and he didn’t think he was making a bit of difference.

    Believe it or not…it would actually get worse. Maryland, Clemson, NC State and then finally Dook utterly humiliated Carolina. Dook would take the famous photo by the scoreboard…41-0.

    They had thrown their one hope into the fire in desperation…Chuckie Burnette, the state’s top player, as a true freshman. And he’s probably still on a psychiatrist’s couch reliving the horrors of that year. I think he completed a single pass against us…and it was for negative yardage. He got sacked for a safety, and afterwards, Ricky Logo said that he was about 10 yards away looking at him and he just saw these huge, terrified eyes staring back at him. Burnette ended up quitting football a few years later.

    Through all of this though…UNC STILL recruited well. In 1987, we won the in-state recruiting battle, getting 12 of the top 25 players. Ledel George, Robert Hinton, Scott Adell, Anthony Barbour, Mike Gee, Ricky Turner, Ray Griffis, Jessie Campbell….those guys would all be the foundation upon which Sheridan built his success.

    Carolina ended up getting something like eight of the top 25. Julius Reese, a big time WR out of Kannapolis and Burnette, were the top catches. Reese always had knee trouble…so that didn’t work out real well.

    The next year, it was fairly even. I think that was the year we got the top player in Dewayne Washington, but UNC got their share. Again, this is coming off of a horrible year and we were going to bowls.

    The next year….State got four of the top 25. UNC got 17. And not only did they do well here…they did really well in Virginia and South Carolina as well.

    Sheridan, reportedly, hated recruiting. But he put more of an emphasis on it after that. He had a pretty good class the following year. That was the year we got George Hegamin and all of those really good lineman out of state. Steve Keim, the Redmon Brothers, Hegamin…and I think we got Seamus Murphy out of Pittsburgh as well. Unfortunately, we were losing a lot of our old recruiting help. We used to have a true pipeline out of Greensboro Page. There was a guy there that would consistently steer players to Raleigh. It was a shock when we DIDNT get Tripp Welbourne. But he either died or retired or moved…something. And we stopped having any success.

    But UNC was turning into a recruiting juggernaut. They got a QB out of Illinois whose name I always forget…blonde afro, good option QB, decent passer. He was a very-highly rated player. Then they hired the Northern Durham coach. As Dave Glenn says…when a new coach comes in, it’s “Hello, here’s your office…and here’s Ken Browning. He’ll be your recruiting coordinator.”

    Pretty soon, they were landing guys before anyone else had a shot. Marcus Jones committed to them as a junior. And they were covering the entire SE, hitting Alabama, Texas, Georgia, SC, Florida and Virginia. They owned the state of NC.

    State fans used to joke about giving Mack Brown an extension…but when he took the Texas job, everyone on “Wolfchat” was elated.

  20. noah 10/02/2007 at 10:57 AM #

    Boy…that was way too many words in praise of Carolina.

    And no, I’m not saying that our approach to facilities was appropriate or wise.

  21. LRM 10/02/2007 at 11:07 AM #

    I find it hard to believe people would want Purcell as the AD as dreadfully inept as the WPC operates. Just because he’s a good fundraiser doesn’t make him a good manager.

    It’s a common misnomer that excellent salesmen make good managers, but it’s just not always true. Anyone that works in manufacturing knows this.

  22. PamlicoPack 10/02/2007 at 11:11 AM #

    I don’t think TOB will ever dominate in-state recruiting to the extent that Mack did…but if we don’t get at least 10 of the top 25 players in the state every single year, we cannot have a successful program. How many of the top 25 did Amato get in 2005 and 2006?

  23. noah 10/02/2007 at 11:13 AM #

    Not very many.

  24. PamlicoPack 10/02/2007 at 11:15 AM #

    So Noah, reading your excellent description of Chuckie Burnette…substitute “Russell Wilson” and you have an excellent description of what will happen if that poor kid gets thrust into action. Its gotten so bad that I don’t want any of our young quarterbacks playing this year for fear of career-ending injury due to the ineptitude of our offensive line…

  25. noah 10/02/2007 at 11:16 AM #

    BTW, 10 out of the top 25 these days is a remarkable accomplishment. South Carolina, Clemson, Georgia, Tennessee, UVa, Wake, Dook, NC State and UNC hit this state very hard. And they’ve all get in-roads and pipelines and connections and what have you.

    I’d like to see us get at least one from the top five, at least three from the six to 15 range, and at least four from the 16-25 range. If we do that, that gives us a good base from which to move and build a good national class.

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