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. Mr O 10/02/2007 at 11:19 AM #

    Pamlicopack: Who is saying anything about top 10 finishes? The question I have is are we supposed to get worse in football and basketball the more we spend?

    Basketball Sagarin Ratings
    2006 64
    2005 29
    2004 26
    2003 16
    2002 23
    2001 73

    Football Sagarin Ratings
    2007 87
    2006 75
    2005 33
    2004 40
    2003 26
    2002 14
    2001 43

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

    Pamlico…do you remember a children’s rhyme that went something like…”For want of the nail, the shoe was lost. For want of the shoe, the horse was lost, for want of the horse, the rider was lost, for want of the rider, the battle was lost, for want of the battle, the war was lost, for want of the war, the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of the horseshoe nail.”

    If Russell Wilson was playing better than the one-two-THREE people in front of him, I believe he would be seeing action. The fact that he’s resting comfortably on the bench indicates that the coaching staff does not believe that he would do better than the (not one, not two, but) three guys ahead of him.

  3. Mr O 10/02/2007 at 11:23 AM #

    What is wrong with how the wolfpack club operates?

  4. noah 10/02/2007 at 11:31 AM #

    One more thing on Burnette…I don’t believe that Mack Brown “ruined” him. I think that Brown’s detractors have unfairly used Burnette as a tool with which to bludgeon his reputation.

    I think it’s safe to say that Burnette was overrated from the start. He played in the run-and-shoot at Burlington Cummings at a time when very few high schools employed such an offense….therefore high school defenses were unprepared to stop it. This was also before run-and-shoot became a perjorative.

    Also, Donnie Davis and Ernest Tinnin put up even better numbers than Burnette at the same high school using the same system. Davis was even more highly-regarded as a recruit than Burnette. Davis was 6-5 and a champion hurdler as well as an extraordinarily prolific QB. He went to Georgia Tech and the coaches raved about his decision making. Yet, he never did much on the field and ultimately, moved to wide receiver as a senior.

    By the time Tinnin came along, college coaches were no longer impressed by big numbers from a Cummings QB. Tinnin ended up breaking most of Davis’ numbers, but couldn’t get a big-time scholarship. He ended up at East Carolina. He probably had a better college career than Davis or Burnette, ironically, and played for a little while in Canada.

  5. PamlicoPack 10/02/2007 at 11:36 AM #

    Mr. O: I certainly think we should expect to finish in the top 40 in both sports year in and year out. By that measuring stick, Basketball was basically OK, with a little dip last year due to the coaching change. Of course, in reality, neither you nor I were particularly happy with the performance of the hoops program, given the level of talent we saw going into it year in and year out. Also by that measuring stick, football was basically in the ballpark until last year. In hindsight, the change should have been made after 2005, but noone foresaw at that time the depth to which football would plunge. In the near to middle term, it is the lame duck 2006 season of Amato that will be most damaging. As Noah set forth above in his history of Mack Brown’s regime at Carolina, a horrific record by a new coach is no particular impediment to recruiting (everyone blames the old guy). A horrific record by an old guy (2006, the last three years of the MOC regime) absolutely kills recruiting. We will have a huge hole in our program where the 2006 and 2007 players should have been until at least the 2011 season…

  6. joe 10/02/2007 at 11:37 AM #

    You can spend $1 billion in FB and you will get worse if you have a coach that is not good. A coach is far more important than the amount of money you spend. Steve Spurrier won at Duke with their crappy little stadium. Bunting and Torbush did not win at UNC with their fancy stadium upgrades. USC plays in an old stadium in a bad section of town but they have Pete Carroll so they win.

  7. EverettBeez 10/02/2007 at 11:38 AM #

    I’d never thought of Casey as tightfisted, I only met him the couple times I got to go down to his box and ask what the gameday attendance was (notice how they all end in double zeros and we would set new records every year or so?) – but as I think back, I can’t recall a single project after the building of the Athletic Center until the Weinsger-Brown building (sp?). I do recall when we paid off the debt on what was then just Carter. But also recall that in the 70s and early 80s the competition in facilities was not, as someone quoted Holtz above said “an arms race.”

    As to Fowler – he attends games, he’s got to sense something is not right on the field and in the field house. He doesn’t have to be in coaches meetings to see this. The revolving door of coaches has to raise a flag or two. I do agree, CTC wouldn’t or shouldn’t have been fired till last year. But even then Fowler seemed reluctant.

    That basketball situation . . . what basketball situation? Hasn’t Sid always been our coach? Can you induce voluntary amnesia?

  8. PamlicoPack 10/02/2007 at 11:39 AM #

    Noah: I’m worried the three guys in front of him may all get hurt…one down, two to go. And then we’re down to Wilson. And then we officially throw in the towel on this season…

  9. EverettBeez 10/02/2007 at 11:42 AM #

    On leaving Reynolds – man what a hard thing to do, but it was time. anyone go to games when you could smoke in there? It’d get so bad you could hardly see from the old Longness Clock at the west end, lol. And it was really bad for TV – looked dark, and those crows nests were hard to work in, get to.

    I remember the regional final being there in 82 I think – I only remember Alabama being there, cause Joel Thomas had been our chancellor before he went to Bama, and Villanova or St Johns – but it was one of those super warm spring days and it had rain. I can recall some fans from up north saying “this is suppose to be the greatest arena in college ball and they don’t have friggen air conditioning?”

    Parking was also insane. But it was great to walk with the crowds, through the tunnels, across campus – excited on the way in, often thrilled on the way out. Driving to the big lot that Finely Meadows has become is just not the same.

    But man was it filled with history.

  10. PamlicoPack 10/02/2007 at 11:43 AM #

    “I’d never thought of Casey as tightfisted”

    Good Lord…then you’ve never heard the stories of how he ran off both Lou Holtz and Norm Sloan by refusing to pay them what their performances merited?

    Why do you think Bo Rein left after four years? LSU wasn’t quite the powerhouse in 1980 that they are today.

  11. noah 10/02/2007 at 11:43 AM #

    You don’t need a savior in football. You need a base.

    Amato had it with his first full class. Sheridan had it with his first full class. O’Cains came in 1997, I think.

    Amato’s first full class had guys like Pat Thomas, T. Hall (later, of course), Andre Maddox, Greg Golden, Sterling Hicks, and all of those guys. It wasn’t as highly rated as some of his others, but there were very few busts in that class. It was full of guys who contributed…so we had depth and really solid play from a bunch of guys.

    He also had the luck of taking over a program that had just enough to get something started. That came from O’Cain’s class in 1997 and 1998. O’Cain left him a foundation with guys like Levar Fisher, K-Rob, Colmer, Adrian Wilson, Brian Williams, and Thunder Dan.

    All of those guys came out of two classes.

    Everyone talks about Glennon being the guy to lead us back. That’s fine…but what we need is for guys like the guard we got from Georgia and Tobias Palmer and Dwayne Maddox and Terrell Manning to all be solid contributors.

    That’s the thing that will fix this mess. Like I said a couple of days ago, it really doesn’t matter if 99 percent of your roof works perfectly.

  12. EverettBeez 10/02/2007 at 11:48 AM #

    Pamlico – I’d just never thought of it, and now that I do, I agree with you. I tell my students never to over look the obvious – knowing all to well how easy it is.

    Holtz left to try his hand at the NFL as much as anything. Was there anyway to keep him from that?

    You could be right on Sloan and Rein – but LSU might not have been the powerhouse they are now, but they had the tradition, and played in a football conference. Those 80,000 seats weren’t built in the last 20 yrs.

  13. PamlicoPack 10/02/2007 at 11:49 AM #

    I’ve just about reconciled myself to the fact that this season and next will be a disaster. TOB gets a pass, in my book, until mid-season 2009 (although, if recruiting next year falls off from the “new coach excitement” of this season that will be a warning sign).

  14. PamlicoPack 10/02/2007 at 11:51 AM #

    Everett: and listen to Kay Yow talk about the early days of the Womens hoops program and her stories about “Mr. Casey”….basically the womens basketball recruiting budget was $2 bucks for a dozen Krispy Kremes on the weekends when the recruits visited.

  15. EverettBeez 10/02/2007 at 11:53 AM #

    ^ lol, point made Pamlico. I recall being excited because for conference basketball games we’d get domino’s pizza in the press room! Otherwise it was just sodas.

  16. noah 10/02/2007 at 11:59 AM #

    That’s not ever, Beez. There were cookies in there too. Good ones, as I recall. And the pizza was usually from Brothers.

    There’s something I miss. I was telling my wife that when there was a really good conference game on a weekend, the thing to do was to go to the game and then hit Brothers or Two Guys afterwards. The lines were around the block, the place was packed and it was all kinds of fun.

    Things change, though.

  17. noah 10/02/2007 at 12:00 PM #

    Sorry, meant to say, “That’s not fair”

  18. PamlicoPack 10/02/2007 at 12:05 PM #

    yeah, instead of Brothers or Two Guys being the cool post game hangout, we have the dreadful and sanitation-challenged, generic sports bar decor Damons as the “new” postgame choice by default.

  19. EverettBeez 10/02/2007 at 12:06 PM #

    Forgot the cookies, and right you are about the pizza Noah, my bad.

    But it was the brownies in the press box that were out of this world. One and you were done. You had to time it right, because you couldn’t eat anything else for a looooong time.

    During NCAA games, there was a whole hospitality suite, with an open bar. I am afraid as a 17 yr. old I did not exercise much self-control there. The next day’s games were hard on me since I had to go from the floor to a crow’s nest with stats at ever time out. the people in the row I had to go through were never happy to see. they just started passing them down the row, and handing them up to those broadcasters themselves. Another reason we had to leave The Barn.

    I told everyone that would listen – put the new arena downtown, where people can walk for a meal or a drink afterwards. Nope. too much traffic, bla bla bla. And so where do all the new arena go? Just like Charlotte with no luxury boxes and having to move – in many ways the RBC is very 1970s in the planning.

  20. joe 10/02/2007 at 12:09 PM #

    The city and county wanted a new arena dowtown. It was NCSU that vetoed that idea – they thought it would be cheaper to build it on land they already owned rather than having to buy land downtown.

  21. RAWFS 10/02/2007 at 12:13 PM #

    Last time I was at the RBC, I sat in a luxury suite as a friend’s guest. Secondly, the area around there is and will be developing over the years. It is in essentially a mid-town area and will have plenty around it as that development takes place.

  22. EverettBeez 10/02/2007 at 12:17 PM #

    Indeed joe – but considering how much the state/city/county governments ended up putting into it – especially after the foundation had to be ripped out and repoured for hockey – they should’ve gotten their way.

    It does seem to me that there were a slew of Fetzer-type conservatives in city government who were opposed to anything downtown, and spending any money that didn’t improve their north Raleigh subdivision heavens.

  23. EverettBeez 10/02/2007 at 12:19 PM #

    That was a big part of their argument RAWFS, that this would be/is the center of the triangle. But when is the development around their going to occur? We’ve been waiting a long time. And even when it does, you will have to get in your car and drive to whatever is there. Arena’s with vast parking lots are great if you want to drive in, go to the game, and drive out. That’s about it.

    Charlotte’s arena was built with out the luxury boxes, not ours.

  24. Mr O 10/02/2007 at 12:22 PM #

    That isn’t all Amato had to work with. That 2000 team had Terrence Holt(NFL starter), Scott Koostra(NFL backup), Jericho Cotchery(starter Jets), S Locklear(starter Seahawks, Corey Smith(still in the NFL and forced two fumbles a week or so ago), and Ray Robinson(all-ACC) in addition to the guys mentioned above.

    Then as Noah points out, Amato brought in a lot of solid guys in his first couple of classes with Philip Rivers to lead the way.

    Pamlicopack: The last thing I will say in regards to the Sagarin #s I posted is that while those numbers aren’t terrible, the possibility is there that both basketball and football could struggle in the upcoming years. We may not have a bowl quality team(.500 record is all it takes) until 2010 or 2011. As far as basketball, we are going to be fine this year, but if we lose 2+ players to the NBA and the 2009 class doesn’t pan out, then the basketball program is going to struggle after next season.

    You are judging Lee Fowler purely on the past while not considering the outlook for either of the programs he just managed through coaching changes. How well are those programs positioned has to be factored into the equation of how you judge the performance of Lee Fowler.

    Essentially, Lee Fowler has put Sidney Lowe and TOB squarely behind the 8 ball IMO.

    We are probably looking at 2-3(maybe more) finishes higher out of the top 40 in football and there is no guarantee the basketball program is going to sustain itself in the top 40 starting with this year. It might, but there are still plenty of question marks.

    Our football program is on its way to 3 losing seasons in 4 years. We are probably 95% certain on our way to a 4th in 5 years after next season. The last time that happened was 1987 and it has only happened twice since the formation of the ACC. The three straight 3-8 seasons we had in the 80s were a part of both stretches. At this point, it is probably better than 50% that we will have a 5th losing season in 6 years which hasn’t happened since the early 40s.

    If we are on our way to five losing seasons in six years in the era of the 12 game schedule, then is our AD effectively doing his job considering all the facility improvements that are in place? I don’t see how anyone could answer yes to that question if you look at what is likely to happen with the football program the next few years.

  25. BJD95 10/02/2007 at 12:44 PM #

    IIRC, it was mostly Fetzer and his closest allies who were opposed to pretty much anything. I think it was Kiernan Shanahan (and maybe one other City Council conservative) who broke ranks with Fetzer and got the project moving forward again.

    We had the good-hearted liberals from hello (especially since one of them was a former Wolfpack cross country star). 🙂

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