After last night’s 82-72 overtime loss to NC Central, on the way home, I saw a rather forlorn yard sign wavering in the cool November breeze: “This Is Our State!”
As I drove past, still stinging from the worst major sports loss for the Wolfpack in at least the past ten years, a slight gust pushed the sign over. Witnessing that was a fitting end to a miserable night in NC State sports.
Considering that NC State has lost to every in-state rival since September save for Appalachian, the Wolfpack has hardly shown the sort of dominance that would make such a brag the least bit appropriate.
And there’s undoubtedly more losses on the way: this weekend, NC State will host a “home” game against East Carolina in Carter-Finley that’s sure to be a bowl-like 50/50 atmosphere, at best. More than likely, it’s going to be full of Pirates, cheering on their team as it tramples the hapless Wolfpack, and in between deriding NC State for “stealing its logo” and “stealing the ECU first down chant.” Sounds like a lovely way to spend the afternoon, especially when on top of that, fans at the game will have to hear about the “This is our State” slogan besides.
Hopefully, ECU’s horde of happy Pirates won’t tear down the goalposts inside Carter-Finley, as is their custom. Hopefully.
And it may get even worse: with Duke getting all it could handle from the Pirates basketball team, and based upon the performance that the NC State cagers put up against NC Central last night, when the Pirates come back next month, they’ll probably go back to Green Vegas with a win in hoops too.
In fact, State’s performances have been so inept in football and now basketball, the slogan has become a cruel joke that Wolfpackers everywhere have to hear when they go to work on yet another morning after yet another defeat. Wolfpackers are a thick skinned lot even in the best of times; it comes with living in the same neighborhood as Duke and UNC — universities that win conference and national championships in basketball on a regular basis. And soon, Duke may well become the second team from North Carolina to play for an ACC Title in football’s modern era of having a championship game. NC State, on the other hand, has never played in a BCS Bowl or for that matter one of the five big postseason games in its entire football history.
This is our state, indeed.
All that in mind, it’s time to quietly retire the slogan and put it on the scrapheap where it belongs. This is not our state, right now, it’s not even our town. Until we have something to talk about, maybe we should stick to “Wolfpack Unlimited.” At least that’s accurate — right now, the Wolfpack seems only capable of unlimited losing.
