December 7, 2011
NC STATE FOOTBALL
GoPack.com
Football Goes Shopping for Toys for Tots
Ten Wolfpack Football players took a break from studying for finals on Monday to help children throughout the Triangle by shopping for toys for the US Marines Toys for Tots program. Throughout the 2011 season, Coca-Cola donated $500 for each touchdown the Wolfpack football team scored, providing a pool of over $20,000 for the players to spend on Monday.
Each of the players was provided one cart to fill with as many toys as possible. After 30 minutes of shopping and mindful placement of the toys, each of the carts was overflowing with the toys the players selected. During checkout each of the players watched diligently as their cart totals were tallied.
Brett Friedlander (starnewsonline.com)
Wolfpack gets to Charlotte … the hard way
Associated Press
N.C. State’s O’Brien Proud Team Playing In Belk Bowl
“Don’t give up, don’t ever give up.â€
It’s been years since Jim Valvano said those words in an impassioned speech while battling cancer, but it’s one that still resonates with the athletes that attend North Carolina State.
It certainly did for this year’s Wolfpack football team.
The way coach Tom O’Brien sees it his team was “dead in the water†five games into the season.
O’Brien said his players had a decision to make at that point – blame the losing season to the team’s mounting injuries or persevere through and fight back.
N.C. State did the latter on more occasion than once.
ACC FOOTBALL
Brett Friedlander (starnewsonline.com)
Bowl swag or extra benefits? Whatever you call it, here’s what ACC bowl teams are getting
Somebody please remind me again why it’s against NCAA rules to have a friend lend you his car for a week while yours is in the shop being repaired, and yet it’s not considered an “extra benefit†when bowls heap gifts on “student-athletes†that aren’t available to anyone else enrolled at their schools?
While you’re coming up with a suitable excuse, er, answer, here’s a sampling of the swag ACC teams will be taking home with them from their respective bowl trips (courtesy of Street & Smith’s Sports Business Journal Daily):
N.C. State (Belk Bowl): Estimated $400 shopping spree at Belk’s flagship store in Charlotte, Fossil watch.
Gift suites are set up as private events in which game participants and often bowl VIPs are given an order form and allowed to select a gift or gifts up to a value that is predetermined by each specific bowl, not to exceed the NCAA limit of $550 per person.
And the best part is that it’s all legal … unless John Blake happens to be there handing the stuff out.
Brett Friedlander (starnewsonline.com)
Newsflash: The bowl system isn’t fair. But then, it wasn’t designed to be
Nobody ever said college football’s bowl system was fair.
It’s not. Nor was it designed to be.
What most fans – and apparently ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit – don’t understand is that the BCS has about as much to do with crowning a true champion as a Subway turkey on wheat does in helping overweight couch potatoes lose 100 pounds.
If that’s the way it turns out, fine. But that’s only a residual benefit.
The sole purpose of the bowl system in general and the BCS in particular is to make money. A lot of money, most of which is split between the bowls, their sponsors, a certain four-letter television network and six specific conferences that comprise the college sports version of the privileged one percent.
So stop squawking about how Nick Saban voted Oklahoma State behind Stanford in the coaches poll to ensure his Alabama team got another shot at LSU for the “title.†Or how little guys like Boise State and TCU keep getting jobbed.
As corrupt as it is, this is the system they all signed up for. Unless somebody grows a conscience, steps forward and changes it, it’s the system we’re stuck with.
UNC FALLOUT
Aaron Schoonmaker (WRALSportsfan.com)
Fedora to UNC rumored, not a done deal
In recent days, Fedora’s name has surfaced for multiple coaching vacancies including Arizona State and Texas A&M.
New UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham knows Fedora well from his days as athletic director at Tulsa, where he faced Southern Miss in Conference USA.
Cunningham and Fedora, along with representatives from Texas A&M and Arizona State universities are all in New York for the National Football Foundation & College Hall of Fame banquet Tuesday night.
JIM YOUNG (accsports.com)
A Closer Look At Larry Fedora’s Resume
While Fedora did win at Southern Miss, that’s hardly unusual. In fact, the Eagles had already posted 15 straight winning seasons when Fedora took over for Jeff Bower. That streak nearly came to an end in Fedora’s first season, as Southern Miss needed to win five straight games – including an overtime victory over Troy in the New Orleans Bowl – to eke out a 7-6 record.
It wasn’t until this season that Fedora really broke through at Southern Miss. Prior to the 2011 campaign, he’d posted a relatively mediocre 22-17 mark. His 33-19 record with the Eagles is actually quite similar to Bower’s last four seasons at Southern Miss (30-21).
It’s also hard to know how much credit Fedora deserves for his work at Oklahoma State, versus how much should go to head coach Mike Gundy, whose offenses have actually been even more prolific in the four seasons since Fedora left Stillwater.
Josh Goodson (WRALSportsfan.com)
Fedora is no stranger to NCAA
While UNC is awaiting to hear from the NCAA on what penalties whey will be assessed due to their 9 major violations, Southern Miss and Fedora are no stranger to NCAA violations as well.
In the report it states that Southern Miss self-reported 21 secondary violations to the NCAA that spanned 7 sports over a 2 year period.
CONFERENCE EXPANSION
Andrea Adelson (ESPN.com)
Sources: Boise State to Big East
The Big East is set to add Boise State, San Diego State, SMU, UCF and Houston as it begins to rebuild its league, with an announcement expected as early as Wednesday, sources confirmed to ESPN.com.
Boise State and San Diego State of the Mountain West will enter the league as football-only members, while Houston, SMU and UCF, all of Conference USA, will join the Big East for all sports, sources told ESPN.com.
The five schools have been long rumored as candidates to join a battered league that has seen the defections of Pittsburgh, Syracuse, TCU and West Virginia in the last few months, leaving it with five football-playing members.
Navy, a football indepedent, has not yet joined as a football-only member, but is expected to do so once some “loose ends” are ironed out, a source told ESPN.com’s Andy Katz.
