41% attrition rate from 2005 & 2006 classes

'08 Football Fans Football Recruiting General95

Here is a good article from Rob Daniels of the Greensboro News & Record that provides some statistical insight into what we all know and are feeling – NC State’s football program is depleted of depth and currently undergoing a major rebuilding project.

Hopefully our fans have begun to realize that we are in a total rebuild mode and potentially several years behind other schools who made coaching changes at the same time we hired TOB.

Neither is this a watershed season in the evolution of Wolfpack football. The program O’Brien inherited from Chuck Amato in December 2006 was on shaky numerical ground. Of the 41 players State signed in 2005 and 2006, 17 are already gone. That 41 percent attrition rate far exceeds the personnel losses sustained by the other three ACC programs that changed administrations at the same time. (North Carolina’s is at 18 percent; Miami has lost nine of 37 players from those classes or 24 percent; and Boston College, which O’Brien left to come to Raleigh, has seen six of 35 signees or 17 percent head elsewhere.)

Additionally, we have a writer from the N&O who takes NC State fans to task over the booing in Carter Finley on Saturday. I am reluctant to tackle this issue with any commentary as this topic is right up Jeff’s alley.

This is not an argument against booing college players. They get the scholarships. They accept the attention. There’s plenty of good, and they have to take the bad with it. Such is life.

The way State had played through the first five quarters of the season, the Pack probably deserved to get booed, as many State teams and quarterbacks have been booed before.

But this wasn’t just another quarterback struggling to complete a pass. Evans grew up sitting in those same stands, the Broughton High grad as much a State fan as anyone who voiced displeasure with his play.

“I love N.C. State football, and I love this team,” Evans said when Wilson was made the starter in August. “I love my teammates, and I love this university. So I’m really going to do anything I can to help this team win football games.”

That may not matter to some, but it should. If there was ever a player State fans were willing to cut a little slack, wouldn’t it be — shouldn’t it be — this one?

SFN Note – We will update this entry later in the day with more commentary on the ‘booing’

'08 Football Fans Football Recruiting General

95 Responses to 41% attrition rate from 2005 & 2006 classes

  1. VaWolf82 09/09/2008 at 1:29 PM #

    Evans was not a walk-on.

    Semantics. DE got a scholarship for two reasons….Brent Schafer went to UT and he is Johnny Evans’ kid. The fact that he earned the starting job says alot about his willingness to work and the poor QB recruiting by Amato over hie entire tenure. (Amato’s QB recruiting would make an interesting study in the difference between recruiting “talent” versus “stars” based on high school performance.)

    But for the booing….I am with those here who don’t boo our own.

  2. McPete 09/09/2008 at 1:31 PM #

    We would have lost the william and mary game if evans stayed in. 100% sure of it. beck at least saved us from major embarassment. what would the recruits at the game have thought if that happened?

  3. highstick 09/09/2008 at 1:33 PM #

    The booing shouldn’t have been directed at Daniel, but at the admin and pork producers who have let the state of athletic affairs decline to such a level!

  4. pakfanistan 09/09/2008 at 1:39 PM #

    McPete, so your argument is, the booing made the coaches realize that Evans wasn’t cutting it and prompted them to put in Beck instead?

    If that’s the case, our coaches need to be fired.

  5. Dr. BadgerPack 09/09/2008 at 1:39 PM #

    I’m still of the mindset that it’s better to boo as an immediate, in-game reaction than to rake a guy over the coals in public view for weeks on end. Players certainly aren’t oblivious to it.

    I’m certainly not arguing whether it’s right to boo or not; it’s purely a psychological argument. Evans, or any athlete, knows when they screw up. In fact, they are probably so caught up in what happened, talking to the coaches, etc. that they actually can tune out a portion of what’s going on. It’s later in the week when the player is dwelling on these mistakes and will certainly be more attuned to public criticism.

    It’s not an argument about whether to criticize, where to criticize, whether to boo, etc. It’s just what’s going to hurt peoples feelings less, being in the age of PC-niceness and all. 🙂

  6. Dr. BadgerPack 09/09/2008 at 1:40 PM #

    ^But boo refs always. 🙂

  7. Ismael 09/09/2008 at 1:42 PM #

    if i was a recruit i would have been boo-ing too, some of you guys need to stop with the Oprah/Dr.Phil comments. Athletes want to play for fans who know football, who demand a quality product etc. Otherwise no one is gonna show up to watch you play, what is so hard to understand about that.

    McPete, spot on, W&M eventually put up 24pts on the board, does anyone here seriously think that a DE directed offense was gonna lay 24 on W&M??

    Somebody start a clemson thread

  8. pakfanistan 09/09/2008 at 1:53 PM #

    Ismael, if that was true UNC wouldn’t ahve a football program 😛

  9. Ismael 09/09/2008 at 2:00 PM #

    pakfanistan – hahah, i was actually gonna throw in a well-deserved jab at TARHOLE fans but i got distracted at work.

    From Tammy’s press-conference, this is why Russell is gonna start
    Question: Is it hard to get a read on their quarterback?

    Tommy Bowden: “The biggest read you get from him is that he can beat you with his arm and legs. That gives them more flexibility, and gives us more problems to worry about defensively. That presents more problems for you defensively. It allows you to do less defensively because of his running and throwing skills.”

    Clemson loaded the box last year and dared us to throw and we couldn’t, they will certainly start that way again, Russel just needs to complete a few passes, open up the D, and let Andre/Curtis AND Russell beat them on the ground.

    WE CAN DO THIS!!! (Well, the team can, im just sitting at a computer)

  10. Trip 09/09/2008 at 2:26 PM #

    “Booing isn’t going to magic 20 pounds off of Beck.”

    I could give a damn less what shape Beck is in as long as he can throw the ball, run some, and win games. He could weigh 350 pounds, but if he can win football games for the pack he can throw a football all day as far as I’m concerned. Right now it’s not a matter of “Can beck do it?” it’s a matter of “Evans sure as hell can’t so let’s try ANYthing else”

  11. howlie 09/09/2008 at 2:26 PM #

    Here’s another way to look at the booing. What if TOB & staff continued to pay Ant Hill with a busted sternum and ripped chest muscle through this game? On every play, over and over and over and over again we would watch the DE blow past our ALL-ACC–perhaps 2nd or 3rd round NFL pick–and watch our RB’s and QB’s getting creamed and crushed on every play.

    What would happen? We would BOOOOOO.

    NOT because we don’t love and appreciate Ant Hill, but simply because he was obviously HURT and NOT HELPING us–actually HURTing us by trying to play hurt. It would be PAINfully OBVIOUS to everyone in the stadium that he should come out. And until he did, people would BOO. When Ant is well, we will CHEER when he returns. But we won’t “give him a free pass” when he’s hurting us horribly playing injured.

    I don’t know if Daniel’s is actually healed–I can’t see improvement from the time when he played hurt. Healed or not, it DOESN’T MATTER, because he was hurting the team in “the condition he was in.” It was apparent he wasn’t going to “get any better” over the course of the game–he NEEDED to come out. The ‘boo’ was like ‘honking the horn’ to TOB & staff when they’re looking down at their playbook at the stoplight and didn’t recognize it was now green.
    It isn’t because anyone “hates” Daniel or TOB or D.Bible etc.–it was a ‘blowing of the horn’ to get ‘the vehicle’ ahead of us going.

  12. pakfanistan 09/09/2008 at 3:07 PM #

    For the record, I don’t think Evans should be playing.

  13. Moose Hunter 09/09/2008 at 3:33 PM #

    TOB also had the misfortune of having 1-3 kids who had verbaled injured in high school, The LB is one who might have played some.

  14. bradleyb123 09/09/2008 at 3:43 PM #

    I don’t like to hear the fans booing our own team — EVER. Boo the officials. Boo any bad calls that happen. Boo the other team (I really don’t like booing the other teams, unless they do something unsportsmanlike or something…) but don’t boo your own team.

    Having said all that, I felt like the boos were the fans’ way of sending a message to the coaching staff that it was time to sit Daniel, so I kinda understood it. All I know is possession after Daniel-led possession, I kept yelling “Put in Beck!!” I mean seven total possessions with ZERO first downs??? What does it take to get yanked!

  15. partialqualifier 09/09/2008 at 3:52 PM #

    “Regarding the boos – it was tempting to boo – but folks have to realize its just wrong. It doesn’t matter whether you were booing the coaches or the kid, the kid hears them and takes it personally. I would just recommend folks to think of it as their son or brother out there.”

    I gotta say that I love my brother dearly, but if he was playing QB like Daniel Evans….I would Boo the hell out of him!

  16. Par Shooter 09/09/2008 at 3:58 PM #

    Don’t we have 3 pretty good looking recruits from last year who are on the shelf all year with knee injuries? There is little doubt that Mario Carter would be playing this week if he were healthy and the LB would have almost certainly made the 2-deep on his own. Not as sure about Colby Jackson playing this year but you never know.

    Of course this is just another example of bad luck and if they can come back at 100% it isn’t attrition since redshirthing them wouldn’t have been a bad idea anyway. It just reduces our numbers further when things like the current mess at TE crop up.

  17. partialqualifier 09/09/2008 at 4:00 PM #

    Furthermore….

    I actually blame TOB and his coaches for the boos. I predicted as much when he announced DE as the starter for Bill & Mary. My prediction to anyone who would listen…lol…is that TOB is going to be subjecting Daniel to the wrath of fans who are tired of having a middle of the road DI-AA QB playing for three friggin years! After seeing how putrid he was against USC, I knew the wolves would be howling…figuritvely and litterally as it turned out…if he came out and played like that again.

    So…blame the short-sidedness of this coaching staff for the boos…and not the ones who pay the hard earned money to watch this crap!!!

  18. gopack05 09/09/2008 at 4:10 PM #

    TOB runs a tight ship, and Beck’s attitude and work ethic do not fit. If he was willing to work in the off season, he would have been over Evans. That is not the case. Evans had the back up to Wilson, because of his attitudes, not his abilities.

    And booing your own team? The coaches, their decision, or Daniel Evans, it doesn’t matter. That is what the classless fans in Chapel Hill and Greenville do. I cannot believe that State fans stooped that low. There is not a day that I am not proud to be a Pack fan, but during this time last Sat., it did not feel so great.

  19. Ismael 09/09/2008 at 4:13 PM #

    bradleyb123 – what’s the difference in yelling “put beck in” and “boo”ing. If the crowd had started chanting in unison “put beck in”, how do u think that would make DannyBoy feel?

    Booing is so efficient for a number of reasons

    1) its a deep tone so it carries well
    2) girls and guys can do it
    3) not a hard word to remember
    4) easily pronounceable
    5) it has a variable quality such that if a player even remotely suspects he stinks, even if the boo is not directed at him, then he probably feels like the boo is directed at him, this way you don’t actually have to call out a specific player.

    The booing i saw could have been directed at coaches, linemen, WR’s, TE’s, QB’s etc. Booing is awesome!

  20. El Scrotcho 09/09/2008 at 4:28 PM #

    I seriously hope anyone playing 1A football is tough enough to weather a few boos. I would expect to get booed and even boo myself if I played that bad.

  21. bradleyb123 09/09/2008 at 4:28 PM #

    “bradleyb123 – what’s the difference in yelling “put beck in” and “boo”ing.”

    The difference is that is constructive criticism. We’re not just blanket booing, which is open to interpretation. Some players might take it as a slam on the entire offense for not moving the ball. Some might think it is because we hate Daniel (which we don’t). Some take it as “tooting the horn” at the coaches to get them to move and put someone else in.

    If the crowd yelled “Put Beck in” in unison, there would be no question what the message is. Daniel knows he wasn’t getting the job done. And he would surely know we just want a QB that can get the job done.

    I say it’s very different than booing.

  22. wolf2003 09/09/2008 at 4:36 PM #

    Why boo?

    Everyone knew how the offense was going to perform before we even took the field. Everybody who is a playmaker on offense is on the injured reserve.

    We can’t run. 67 yards against william and mary
    We can’t pass.
    We can’t block.

  23. redfred2 09/09/2008 at 7:12 PM #

    You probably should have STARTED WITH “we can’t block” and then used the word “therefore” to sum up your last two points.

  24. BladenWolf 09/09/2008 at 7:27 PM #

    Boo or not to Boo…that is the question, for we shall surely sucketh this season.

    The answer therfore must be: TOB better not play Glennon, no matter how tempting and under no (booing) circumstances whatsoever.

    Now that we have identified that our attrition rate is far above average and has severly impacted our ability not only to compete, but to field winning teams, may I ask why that is?

    Some have aluded to bad breaks (no pun intended) and some have suggested caliber of recruits and even homesickness. Any more hypothesis on why we are bleeding from the ranks? That seems to be the disease and not a symptom (losing) or external response (booing).

  25. Scooter 09/09/2008 at 7:39 PM #

    Save Glennon! We’ve already had one quarterback almost get killed. In the interest of the health of our future legend and his career as a football player, the redshirt must stay on!

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