I remember walking around in my boys-size 6 LA Lights sneakers and following my father who was sporting the ball cap with the old diamond-styled “N-S-C” logo. My father, who worked as a technical salesman for a textile company (which I still associate as the most NC State-esqe of the NC State degree-fields you can pursue), was meeting up with one of his bosses, also an NC State alumni, to watch the spring game. I remember following pretty close behind my father as we took our seats in the upper deck because when you are less than 3ft or 4ft tall, section 11 feels like it’s a 100 miles in the air.
My father started explaining the game of football to me and telling me little things about when he used to attend NC State games as a student. He pointed out the lawn and talked about my mother and he sitting on the lawn, and watching coaches that I would never know beat Carolina. My father’s boss gave me a deck of NC State cards that I no longer have.
Shortly after that, my father signed me up for a basketball camp that was taking place in Reynolds. Basketball camp for 7 and 8 year olds is essentially watching a bunch of kids throw youth-sized kickballs into the regulation goals and celebrating when someone hit’s the net, but I was still star-stunned to see all of these giants walking around in red and white warm-up suits. Of course I had no idea who any of them were, but that didn’t matter. They were in my colors and because of that, they were like gods to me.
When it came to basketball, I only barely recall watching my father sit in his command chair (AKA, the recliner) and hearing my mother say “why do you even watch the TV if you are going to get mad at it?” My father would later tell me about this man who was coaching when I was born who had lead an unsuspecting NC State team to be the best in the country and how he told every player who wore those terrible 1980’s uniforms to “Never give up.” He told me how those players believed, no matter what the odds were or the statistics said, that they could win each and every game that they played if they just remembered to “Never Give Upâ€. He told me about how even on this death-bed as he gave a speech on TV, he would still utter those words “Never give up”. It clicked when I was still not even 10 that the reason my father watched NC State wasn’t because we were top 5 in the nation and not necessarily because people would see him sporting his NC State memorabilia and be impressed with his affiliation; he rooted for NC State because to be an NC State fan, you had to “Never Give Up”. The stats and numbers were important, but when it came to being a fan, it was all about belief that your team could pull anything off, announcers and statistics be damned.
Go from those years in the 1990s to the year 2003, which was obviously the year following the 2002 season where NC State had gone to the Gator Bowl and defeated Notre Dame 28-6. That was about the time when I had to make a decision on where to attend college. I never really admitted it to my mother, who desperately wanted me to confirm my acceptance to Virginia Tech, or my father (who by the way is GoldenChain on this blog), who was supportive of any of the engineering schools I had opportunities with, but there was never a doubt in my mind that I would attend NC State. I could have been accepted to MIT, and I bleed NC State so deeply that it would have taken a miracle for me to go anywhere else. My father obviously gave me his blessing on one condition: I not major in textiles.
Looking back at my life and how much NC State has meant to me as a boy, and now as an alumnus, it’s pretty clear why I am still such a huge NC State fan. It’s not because of the 2 “impressive” bowl games NC State has gone to out of the past two decades, and it’s definitely not because of the sub-standard basketball performance of the 1990s and mildly acceptable performance of periods in the early 2000s. The reason why I keep coming back to the whipping post is because to be an NC State fan is to never give up. That doesn’t mean we don’t form our opinions, bitch and complain about administrative woes, or call for the heads of coaches that “just can’t get it done”.Â
No, what it means is that NC State is more than a statistic generator that I follow. It’s more than a few stand-out players. It’s more than a coaching era and it’s more than any one individual analyst or wellspring of insider knowledge on a blog. I don’t follow NC State because I know the results and I don’t follow NC State because of the money I give them. I don’t follow NC State because anyone will think me a “winner” or because I know my team will give me a good game each and every single season.Â
Simply put, I follow NC State because I refuse to ever… ever… ever give up. Not ever.
