Great Wolfpack fans help save another bowl

'08 Football Fans General NCS Football60

So sorry for the lack of activity on the blog over the last week or so.  In addition to the holidays I went down to Birmingham for the game and my laptop is having some issues; I am just now getting back to something that resembles a normal life.

I’ll have more from Birmingham later, but I just wanted to start off with a big shout out to Wolfpack fans for their awesome support of the program. The Wolfpack’s presence in Birmingham was fantastic. The only thing that saved Rutgers from major embarrassment was that their colors are identical to Wolfpack red.

(Update: We’ll also be posting a huge gallery of tailgating and inside the stadium when I get time to dump the cameras and put it together.  — Alpha)

In the midst of a deep economic recession and a season when a bowl trip was not naturally ingrained into the fanbase’s psyche, it was a fantastic testament for NC State to take over 10,000 fans to a destination as lackluster as Birmingham. (I guess we should expect nothing less from fans who sit in the rain over the holidays just to watch practice).

The draw of this year’s game will go a long way to helping the PapaJohns.com Bowl to live to fight another day. The announced attendance of over 38,000 was the highest in the bowl’s three year history despite last year’s game that featured Southern Miss whose campus is approximately 250 miles from Birmingham.

The first PapaJohns.com Bowl announced a grossly inflated attendance of 32,000 fans for East Carolina vs South Florida game. The game was attended by so few fans that the bowl attempted to force most fans to sit on only one side of the field so television wouldn’t show the large number of empty seats.

Rob Daniels shared the following in the Greensboro News & Record:

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — The N.C. State football team didn’t win the Papajohns.com Bowl, but its fan base staved off potential disaster for the three-year-old game.

With an estimated 10,000 State supporters in attendance, the contest announced a crowd of 38,582 — a slight increase from the 35,258 figure of 2007. The Pack was a late replacement for the SEC, which was unable to provide a team when it placed two clubs in the BCS and everybody moved up a spot in that league’s pecking order.

Some context for the 10,000 figure:

* ACC champion Virginia Tech had sold 4,700 of its allotted 17,500 tickets for the Orange Bowl as of Tuesday.

* Miami distributed 4,000 of its 10,000 allocated seats for the Emerald Bowl in San Francisco.

* About 5,000 Southern Mississippi fans attended last year’s Papajohns.com Bowl against Cincinnati. The Golden Eagles’ campus is 235 miles from Legion Field. N.C. State is 553 miles away.

A lot of you younger fans have never known the Peach Bowl (aka Chik-Fil-A Bowl) as anything other than a resounding success. So, you will be surprised to learn that in the mid-1980s the Peach Bowl was so close to the edge of extinction that the Bowl committee was throwing hail maries by re-branding the game ‘The NEW Peach Bowl” with the hopes of attracting enough local support to breathe some life into the bowl’s death spiral.

After five consecutive years of announced attendance under 51,000 fans, the 1985 Peach Bowl match-up between Army and Illinois generated attendance of only 29,857 and left the game financially reeling. Then came NC State.

The Peach Bowl hit a financial home run with their selection of NC State and Virginia Tech in 1986 as the two schools combined for an attendance figure of 53,000 fans – almost exclusively comprised of out of town visitors. The success provided the Peach Bowl the opportunity to live to fight another day and ultimately evolve into its current-day success. The 1992 Peach Bowl between East Carolina and NC State was the last bowl played in Fulton County Stadium before the game moved to the Georgia Dome. That game generated more attendance (59,322) than any Peach Bowl in history at the time (23 games).

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'08 Football Fans General NCS Football

60 Responses to Great Wolfpack fans help save another bowl

  1. Trip 12/31/2008 at 7:36 PM #

    Wow. 31 points in 23 minutes? That is ridiculous for Smith. Something tells me that it isn’t the play of Smith that is keeping him on the bench… Is Sid too worried that Mccauley is going to cry like he did last year?

    Scary first half, but we beat them soundly in the 2nd when they weren’t hitting 25 foot 3’s. Mays also had 5 assists and no turnovers, which is not something to overlook. He has that Javi scrappiness and more physical talent… he’s going to be a good PG, hopefully sooner than later though.

  2. DT44 12/31/2008 at 7:43 PM #

    Wufpup, I for one appreciate your contributions here. Please continue….

  3. redfred2 12/31/2008 at 9:08 PM #

    Trip, McCauley got about the same amount of PT tonight as did Simon Harris, around 16 minutes. That may, or may not be, some kind of an indicator right there?

  4. EverettBeez 12/31/2008 at 11:38 PM #

    Wolfpackers – I, for one, appreciate your support yesterday – for the team, the bowl, and for your sh**y tax collection system. I personally apologize for any bad experiences you had in The Ham. I didn’t have a good feeling when I found out the team was in the Sheraton downtown. B’ham has some great locations and neighborhoods. Unfortunately Legion Field is not in any of them. Its a rust belt city in the sunbelt and suffers for that and a century of ugly racial issues. I hope the majority of you had a great time. I was so proud to hear clearly the Wolf-Pack cheer, and the band repeatedly came through loud and clear.
    Hope everyone made it home safe. Come back and golf (Robert T. Jones Trail) or visit Mobile or Huntsville, or hell, even me in little ol’ Jacksonville.

  5. ADVENTUROO 01/01/2009 at 8:38 PM #

    Took our own sweet time returning from Birmingham in the Motor Home. Here’s my tale. I called ESPN and spoke to them about security for the RV Lot. They said it would be in place until Tuesday AM.

    We were cooking dinner after the game and a wandering brawl moved close to our site. I raised my voice and told them to get back into the street…which they did. I called 911 and my BIL tried to get the yellow jacketed security forces involved. Security told him they were “off duty”…and had NO radios.

    A Birmingham policeman…very polite…called in back-ups and they cleared up the melee. Afterwards, a guy came by and apologized. He was a State fan in a MH about 3 sites down. He and his party were INSIDE the MH when a wandering, drunken band of Rutgers fans KICKED IN HIS GRILL. He came out to investigate and the ruckus started. Since he could NOT identify the “kicker” out of the band of 10 or so drunks, he could NOT file a police report.

    We finished our dinner…then decided that security was LESS than adequate…we beat a hasty retreat to the nearest Flying J and spent the night there.

    It was a GREAT game…up to Wilson’s injury. No offense to Harrison…but he is RUSTY.

    I was pleased that Daniel scored and that the crowd recognized him…a lot better than the LAST time he was on the field in CF.

    Yes, I wish he had the BC game magic and we had won….BUT if you have to lose, that loss was about as good as it could have been.

    We REALLY need to have a better record and find a REAL bowl…

    OK…one final comment. For those of you, with me, that went to the Citrus Bowl in Orlando in the mid 90’s, the neighborhood around Legion field was GREAT. We drove to the Orlando Stadium with the WPC’s chartered bus (convinced them that my $35 was a good price for unoccuppied seats). We went through ONE of Orlando’s Red Light districts…most of them are on the North. There were topless clubs, early hookers (these are ones who work the early PM shift so they can put their kids to bed later that night), and drug deals going down EVERYWHERE.

    Birmingham was a slice of Americana compared to Orlando…

    GO PACK.

  6. choppack1 01/01/2009 at 10:00 PM #

    I’m excited about what I hearing w/ Mays. When I saw him play earlier – it’s obvious he has better overall basketball skills than Javi or Degand – nice rise on his jumper – good form – appears to be a smart player.

    What has happened w/ CJ Williams?

  7. tobaccordshow 01/02/2009 at 9:04 AM #

    For those of you who thought this was a great game… I’m sorry but a close score is not an indicator of a great game.

    WHERE WAS THE DEFENSE? Secondary got slapped around, the D-LINE got manhandled, we couldn’t stop the pass, we couldn’t stop the run.

    SPECIAL TEAMS? Ok, yea we got a blocked extra point, but we allowed a critical blocked punt. The blocked punt takes away the blocked extra point plus some.

    OFFENSE? Without RW, we’re lost. Even with RW, Spencer is lost.

    This has been a mediocre team all season with an extraordinary player. It goes to show you just how much Wilson means to this squad. I fully recognize that with him, perhpas we’re an above average team.

    ADVENTUROO: “We REALLY need to have a better record and find a REAL bowl…”

    We gotta learn how to win the crappy ones first. We can’t go dissing the bowl because… we lost.

  8. Noah 01/02/2009 at 10:49 AM #

    OK…one final comment. For those of you, with me, that went to the Citrus Bowl in Orlando in the mid 90’s, the neighborhood around Legion field was GREAT. We drove to the Orlando Stadium with the WPC’s chartered bus (convinced them that my $35 was a good price for unoccuppied seats). We went through ONE of Orlando’s Red Light districts…most of them are on the North. There were topless clubs, early hookers (these are ones who work the early PM shift so they can put their kids to bed later that night), and drug deals going down EVERYWHERE.

    Do you mean the Hall Of Fame bowl in Tampa? That was against Michigan in 1993. I don’t think we’ve ever played in the Citrus Bowl. We played in the All American Bowl in 1990, Peach in 1991, Gator in 1992, HOF in 1993, Peach in 1994, and then didn’t go bowling again until 1998 against Miami.

  9. BladenWolf 01/02/2009 at 12:06 PM #

    I had never been to Birmingham (but heard the descriptions) and they (and the comments above) are right on the money. The stadium was old and looked like it was last used in 1926. The neighborHOOD was scary. The only saving grace in the parking lots were the huge contingent of Pack fans. It certainly looked like a home game in comparison to the number of Rutgers fans.
    The game was great but the sneaky fake field goal at the outset scared the shit out of me. When we came roaring back I thought we clearly would beat the crap out of them…until Wilson went down and we became one dimensional. The Knights completely shut down our running game after halftime so we could only play-action fake and let Wilson/Burk/Evans do the rest.
    Overall I had a good time because of our fan base and thought we should have won given no injuries. The 8 hour trip home was tiring, but “do-able”. However, I expect a better bowl game next year and will travel anywhere we are invited to go. GO PACK!

  10. ADVENTUROO 01/05/2009 at 8:49 PM #

    NOAH,

    I APOLOGIZE for the name of the bowl and the year…My wife says that my memory is like a steel trap…only rusted open…

    I was talking about the Tangerine Bowl…in 2001 with Chucky and Company…

    Now…you gotta admit that a Tangerine IS part of the Citrus Family…

    Yes, it WAS in Orlando. I was talking to a fellow fan earlier this week and he commented on the SEEDY area in Orlando and remembered the Adult Entertainment Clubs and the Adult Entertainers plying their wares on the street in the early PM. These young ladies usually, I am told, work the early shift so they can tuck in their young’uns…

    We LOST to Pittsburgh….19 – 34. I refused to go to a bowl game again until the Gator Bowl….ND – WE WON…

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