Nine Years of Sellouts – What Have We Gotten In Return?

'09 Football AD & Department Editor's Picks Fans NCS Football Stat of the Day60

This season is the 9th consecutive where football season tickets have sold out at Carter-Finley. Here is a recent entry about selling out season tickets.

For this entry, I am going to focus only on home football games. Set aside the LTRs, gas, hotel and airfare for road trips, donations to the Wolfpack Club, merchandise, tailgate food and beverage, etc.

What have we gotten as far as wins and losses for the face value price of our tickets over the last 9 seasons?

Our record at home from the 2001 season to the current 2009 season is 34-25 (.576). So basically the customers go home happy 58% of the time.

Under Chuck Amato our home record was 24-16 (.600) and under Tom O’Brien it is 10-9 (.526).

Our ACC home record is only 15-18 (.455). So against our conference peers the customers go home happy 46% of the time. And that makes our non-conference home record 19-7 (.731).

That non-conference record includes some 1-AA cupcakes over the years. We are 10-0 against 1-AA schools (including 2-0 this season), meaning our 1-A home record is 24-25 (.490). So against “real schools” the customers go home happy just under half the time.

Against schools in BCS conferences our home record is 19-22 (.463), which includes our 15-18 ACC record, making our record against non-ACC BCS schools 4-4 (.500). Against 1-A non-BCS schools our record is 5-3 (.625).

By the way, the only 2 seasons where we were more than 1 game above .500 at home were Philip Rivers’ junior and senior years.

Where is our home field advantage? The fans show up and are loud and the stadium is improved. Do we need more pine trees?

After the Duke game it seems like a lot of folks have been regretting investing in football tickets. Have we been getting a good enough return on our investments? Not to mention all the other aspects of football mentioned above where we also spend our time and money. I realize you can’t win ’em all but are you, the customer, going home happy often enough?

And if you’re not going home happy often enough, what can you do about it? If you have LTRs, they have you over a barrell. And you have the dilemma, if you don’t support the program financially it won’t improve but if you do you feel like you’re supporting the status quo. E-mailing the AD won’t help unless “Thanks for your support, Go Pack” makes you feel better.

What do you think?

Record Breakdowns
ACC
Boston College 1-1
Clemson 1-3
Duke 1-1
Florida St 2-2
Georgia Tech 0-3
Maryland 1-3
Miami 1-1
North Carolina 2-2
Virginia 3-0
Virginia Tech 0-1
Wake Forest 3-1
BCS
Indiana 1-0
Louisville 0-1
Ohio St 0-1
Pitt 1-0
South Carolina 0-1
South Florida 0-1
Texas Tech 1-0
UConn 1-0
Non-BCS
Akron 0-1
Central Florida 0-1
ECU 1-1
Middle Tenn St 1-0
New Mexico 1-0
Ohio 1-0
Southern Miss 1-0
1-AA
Appalachian St 1-0
E Kentucky 1-0
East Tenn St 1-0
Gardner Webb 1-0
Murray St 1-0
Richmond 1-0
UMass 1-0
W Carolina 1-0
William & Mary 1-0
Wofford 1-0
Yearly
2001: 3-3
2002: 6-1
2003: 6-1
2004: 2-4
2005: 4-3
2006: 3-4
2007: 3-4
2008: 4-3
2009: 3-2

About WV Wolf

Graduated from NCSU in 1996 with a degree in statistics. Born and inbred in West "By God" Virginia and now live in Raleigh where I spend my time watching the Wolfpack, the Mountaineers and the Carolina Hurricanes as well as making bar graphs for SFN. I'm @wvncsu on the Twitter machine.

'09 Football AD & Department Editor's Picks Fans NCS Football Stat of the Day

60 Responses to Nine Years of Sellouts – What Have We Gotten In Return?

  1. GoldenChain 10/14/2009 at 2:47 PM #

    “We’re closest to being a NOTHING school, ala Northwestern. By far”

    Have to disagree; NW is ranked 12th and we’re 88th.
    http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-universities-rankings/page+4

    NCSU is a whole lot more of a nothing school than Northwestern.
    Besides, I bet Northwestern has some non-revenue sports that are actually good.

  2. whitefang 10/14/2009 at 3:27 PM #

    Maybe I’m stupid, but I am not ready to give up on TOB by any stretch. I look at it sort of like I did when I was a VP of Ops for a multi-facility company in my younger days. We would review results from our factories each month with the bean-counters. They would hammer the hell out of me over a plant manager who had a less than expected month. BUT the month before they had just praised this same guy as a “hero” for having a great month “we need more guys like him, blaa, blaa…” I knew of course that the guy didn’t just come in and decide to screw off that month and tell all his staff to do the same. He ran into circumstances that he had to deal with like bad product mix, supply issues, etc, and that it wasn’t a lack of competence. I am sure many of you have had the same issues in business over the years.
    Now to apply this to State athletics: I don’t think TOB got stupid or lazy in the last 3 weeks. His history of results don’t point to this being the case. Yeah maybe he ain’t Urban Meyer, but it’s not like he has no experience improving a program over time even without having all the best players in the country. Three weeks ago as well as 10 months ago O’Brien was the “right guy.” I am not one to believe that he has now turned into a goat. I am sure there are issues and circumstances we may know something about and many others we don’t that he is dealing with. Coaching a football team or running a business is a dynamic process. Making chicken salad out of chickensh__ is not done in a straight line.
    Applied further to the basketball program: Obviously Sidney Lowe had never run this kind of “business” and I was at the time surprised and frankly disappointed in his hiring. When he beat UNC his first year and went to the finals in the ACC Tourney, even though it wasn’t a great overall season, I began to think that he’s a fast learner and maybe he’s going to be alright. But then with the disaster of the following 2 years and the lack of a good previous track-record in this “business”, I began to think that he’s over his head.
    I don’t think TOB is over his head. He’s been here before and eventually put it together. Lowe never has (I do hope he does though).
    We could have definitely hired a more experienced coach with a better track record than Sidney Lowe no matter what anyone says now. PERHAPS we could have hired a more experienced coach with a better track record than Tom O’Brien, but it would have been a pretty damn short list. He’s got a lot of work to do, but he’s done this type work before so I for one think he needs more time to get it done.
    We’re fans though so complaining and speculating is what we do.

  3. elvislives 10/14/2009 at 3:46 PM #

    @ GoldenChain

    Hey what do you know, we’re #88 and tied with Iowa State on that list.

    I think the comparisons can stop right there, NC State has found it’s doppelganger. It lives in Iowa and has as similar pathetic major sports programs as our beloved Wolfpack.

    Only one way to settle this rivaly, a home/away series with the Cyclones from Ames. There can be only one truly inept school.

  4. WV Wolf 10/14/2009 at 4:32 PM #

    Northwestern has won 5 straight women’s lacrosse national championships.

    In the Director’s Cup standings Northwestern finished 44th, Iowa St finished 58th, NC State finished 74th. BCS schools we actually finished ahead of:
    Boston College
    Kansas St
    Rutgers
    Pitt
    Mississippi St
    South Florida
    Washington St
    Cincinnati

    And just to clarify after a couple of comments, my intent on this entry wasn’t “Fire TOB” or I want a title now, it more along the lines of are your priorities changing on spending your time and money on tickets when you only go home happy around half the time. I know apathy is setting in for me.

  5. Wolfpack704 10/14/2009 at 7:39 PM #

    @ those who think TOB is the guy:

    I respect your opinion, and you all made good points. I also admit that i could be in the minority on this, which is perfectly fine. Personally, I take absolutely nothing positive away from the Duke game – we shouldn’t consider keeping pace with Duke’s offense a positive. The fact that many of us do (in my opinion) is a problem. I think everyone (the university, alums, fans, etc) need to decide what we feel is acceptable. I think (and have always thought) that TOB is a good guy and a decent coach, but let’s be honest – he’s not going to walk into a blue chipper’s livingroom and impress them. Maybe the parents, but not the 18-year old that runs a 4.3 40. Say what you want about Amato, but we used to have enough talent to simply overwhelm a team like Duke (who lost to the Richmond Spiders earlier this year), even when we made 6-8 stupid penalties a game. I’m not saying we rehire Amato … lol … but we don’t have the level of talent we used to have, especially on defense.

    My point is that I think our university has an opportunity to own NC in recruiting, dominate our in-state opponents annually, and be a top 25 program consistently. 3 years may not be enough time to determine final state, but can we say that we’ve made significant improvements over 3 years?

    I simply think that our head football coach position could be one of the most attractive at year’s end. TOB’s track record is exceeding expectations at BC by winning 7-9 games a year and never won a conf title. I’d like to think that our expectations are a little higher than that, and i think we have the resources and climate to achieve more.

    Regardless of where we go from here, just beat Carolina at the end of the year – losing football games to Wake, Duke and UNC going into basketball season will force me to go into hiding for several months.

    Go State.

  6. packplantpath 10/14/2009 at 8:12 PM #

    Have we already forgotten losing to teams like Akron? Everybody seems to remember the early amato and forget the one who we had at the end. Sure, the Akron game was close, but it was just a horribly mismanaged game and a microcosm of the Amato era.

    Amato was an awful coach who lucked into the best quarterback in NC State history. Think about Amato, without Rivers, and reconsider what kind of team Amato left. This is not a criticism of you or anybody else who remembers things this way. It’s human nature to remember the good times. But, the bad times were pretty bad.

  7. Wolfpack704 10/14/2009 at 9:30 PM #

    @ packplantpath …

    Totally agree – I liked Amato strictly as a recruiter (all postions other than QB), not as a head coach. Ideally, I’d like to find a complete staff that could both coach and recruit.

  8. howlie 10/15/2009 at 6:51 AM #

    In answer to the original question of “what have we gotten?”

    Quite simply, “Coach FOULer” –who manages, guides, encourages, facilitates, and oversees muddling ineptness and painful mediocrity. The man who says we cannot compete with nearby “giants” and “titans” of athletic prowess.
    The man who insults his entire customer base as a model of increasing participation and market share.
    The man our Board of Trustees [& just how are THESE people ‘selected’?] have awarded a ‘Vote of Confidence & Appreciation’ for his exceptional body of work on behalf of our Trade School–err, College–err, are we even a University yet? And… we’re still in the Southern Conference, aren’t we?

  9. whitefang 10/15/2009 at 10:09 AM #

    I’m not sure I would concede that Amato was a better recruiter than TOB. Sure he brought in some great athletes. But to use the business analogy again he was sort of like the guy who bought great equipment for one part of his process, but didn’t have the other depts. equipped to support it so he didn’t get the “payback” he thought.
    Amato was also widely disliked by NC high school coaches (or so I was told by several I knew at the time). I doubt if there is a greater influence on a high school player than his own coach. TOB seems to be more than holding his own with NC high school talent.

  10. waxhaw 10/15/2009 at 12:28 PM #

    Part of the reason we have sucked so bad in football is that Amato didn’t recruit any linemen. Also, many of the highly ranked skill guys didn’t make it on campus and the ones that did were prima donnas or trouble makers who’ve been kicked off the team.

    I liked Amato a lot in the beginning but his recruiting strategies caught up to him and we are still paying the price.

    Say whatever you want about Fowler but I hope anyone thinking O’Brien should be fired at this point is WAY out on the lunatic fringe.

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