Usually, I try not to read columns (especially hockey) by Luke DeCock, sports columnist for The News & Observer, but Monday’s rambling about NC State getting screwed out of a Tier I bowl because of the wacky selection process in place due to the football playoff caught my attention. I read his prose because, if you didn't know, I'm a Wolfpack fan and thought he may shed some good light on why the Wolfpack fell to a Tier II bowl when Tier I was expected, sort of. As an aside, I find it interesting to be talking about State playing in a bowl game at all, but rules are rules and six wins qualify for a bowl and seven puts you in post-season celebration, no matter how nominal it may be, especially with a plethora of bowl games available.
Whether Luke meant to do it with a serious tone or whether
it was with tongue in cheek as he said the process would boost Wolfpack
theorists blaming State’s placement in the Bitcoin Bowl in St. Petersburg FL
against Central Florida coached by resume builder George O’Leary squarely on Atlantic
Coast Conference Commissioner and UNC-Chapel Hill grad John Swofford and his
counterpart of the Big Ten, Jim Delany, also a UNC loyalist, grad and booster,
DeCock put it out there, probably to further infuriate State fans than to have
a serious discussion of what happened. I’m reminded that State’s on-going woes in anything can always be traced directly to Swofford who probably had something to do with the academic scandal at UNC but fails to admit it. Ask any rabid NC State loyalist from
the members of the NC State University Board of Trustees down to the equipment
manager for women’s soccer and the thousands in between. State's woes are not our
fault. So be it.
The Wolfpack, with a 7-5 overall record, was hoping and
thinking, thinking and hoping for a better bowl game, maybe against a team from
the Southeastern Conference, maybe in Charlotte at the Clothing Store Bowl or
maybe some other better destination, though St. Pete has a possibility to be
rather nice in late December with hopefully warmer climate than what can be
expected in Charlotte, Nashville and points above the Mason-Dixon line
(Shreveport is in the list somewhere). Thankfully, good weather or bad, the
game will be indoors, unlike a trip earlier this season to Tampa for a game
against South Florida, one of the Pack’s four non-conference wins.
Though there are many positives about playing in this bowl
game in a warm weather location against a team that’s obviously just seconds better
than State’s cousin in Greenville NC, playing a co-champion of the AAC, the
American Athletic Conference with a bunch of leftovers from Conference USA and
other leagues that came before them, is probably just what the Wolfpack
deserved instead of a chance to knock heads with, say, Florida or Tennessee or some
other of the weaker sex of the SEC.
State's football accomplishments this year came down
to success in one game, that dazzling 35-7 horse-beating of our brethren in Chapel Hill in
pine-shadowed Kenan Stadium in front of way less than a sellout and just a
handful of blue-black-gray (whatever their school colors are) shirts in the
last quarter of the game. Poor horse. One friend, who graduated from Carolina too many years ago
to remember when, said that watching the last 55 minutes of that game was
possibly the most-painful 55 minutes of his life, at least in recent years,
like ever since Duke dominated Carolina in anything. That win by the Wolfpack
made State’s season successful, as far as I’m concerned with the same being
true for many other Red and White faithful and hopeful, and saved the season, despite the other six wins, two
against ACC members Wake Forest and Syracuse, league bottom feeders this year
with 1-7 conference records and 3-9 overall marks, and four against teams of
lesser stature than those two.
We all know that State fans—me included—believe going
1-11 each year is a successful season as long as we beat the damn Tar Heels.
Mission accomplished and then some this year. Yes, 7-5 with three conference
wins in 2014 is a lot better than 3-9 with no league wins (including a loss to
UNC) in 2013. But without that last win,
State would have been 6-6, clearly disappointing at the very least. I
always expect much better of the Wolfpack football team; therefore I am
disappointed a lot because I finds ways that 3-9 should have been 6-6 which should have been 9-3 which should have been 12-0 and playing for the national title. (By the way, the purple and gold in Greenville believes that State and
Carolina live just to beat them. They should re-think that. The Pirates are
no more than an irritation on our shoulders that should just go away. Thankfully to
the downsized coverage and early press deadlines by the N&O we are subjected
to minimal coverage of East Carolina which for some reason thinks it’s an important
part of the Triangle of Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill.)
Overall there was improvement for the Wolfpack, primarily at
quarterback, Jacoby Brissett, who was a pretty good threat to hit his mark as a
throwing quarterback and who had the desire and ability to run for a first down
and then some when necessary instead of dumping the ball to the dirt, out of
bounds or into the hands of the defense as his predecessors did last year. And,
because of his prowess leading the offense, the running game was better because
the blocking was better, and there were some young receivers who stepped up,
most of the time. The ability of the offense helped to improve the defense, yet
not for every game. Overall the team played inspired some of the time. That
last game (did I mention State beat Carolina 35-7 that day?) was truly inspiring offensely, defensively and in the kicking game as coach Bill Dooley would say.
(Sidebar: Did you hear the one about Bill Dooley and Lou Holtz at the NC State
Fair? Lou dressed in his NC State red and white, was walking down the midway
and Dooley, decked out head to toe in Carolina blue and carrying a pig under
his arm approached. Lou smiled and asked, “Where did you get that?” And the pig
answered, “I won him here at the Fair.” Yuck; yuck.)
So, might you ask, why did the Wolfpack get what was coming
to it when selected for the Tier II Bitcoin Bowl in St. Petersburg which is, at
least, in Florida and not in Russia? Well, that’s because State played like a
Tier II bowl team with a Tier II schedule for the most part, except against Carolina (4-4 in the ACC
and 6-6 overall) and a week earlier against very weak Wake Forest. The Wolfpack
also won four games against four teams that, if all could have been selected
for a post-season bowl, would have been no higher than a Tier II bowl and lower
if there had been a lower level. Let’s face it, Georgia Southern (9-3 and the
best of the bunch but not bowl eligible because of a stupid NCAA rule), Old
Dominion (6-6), and South Florida (4-8) may be in the Football Bowl Subdivision of
the NCAA, but that’s a far reach from quality wins against quality teams, with
all due respect to those colleges. And then there was Presbyterian (6-5), of
the Big South Conference, one of those football playoff division teams. Yes, the
likes of Alabama, Oregon, and Ohio State have similar games on their schedules,
but those three teams along with Florida State which, on paper, played a tougher
schedule with Oklahoma State, Notre Dame and Florida, have earned the right to
play the weak sisters of the poor because of their respectful and righteous
place in upper levels of college football society.
In future years, State Athletics Director Debbie Yow (surely
with coach Dave Doeren agreeing) has decided to shape the Wolfpack's non-conference
football schedule with “one
Power 5 conference team, two FBS opponents from among the American, C-USA, MAC,
Sunbelt and WAC, and one FCS opponent,” according to a school press release in
August. That means games with Notre Dame, West Virginia and Mississippi State
(not all in the same season) will be supplemented by games with Georgia State,
Old Dominion, Ball State, Eastern Kentucky, William & Mary, Furman, James
Madison, Delaware, Western Carolina and Charleston Southern. Troy and South
Alabama are on the 2015 schedule. Memo to Debbie: Football is not listed as a
sport in the WAC (Western Athletic Conference) so playing a MAC member should be interesting. Maybe State can schedule UAB. Whatever??? State fans get
weak non-conference home games each year with an exception here and there. No wonder the fans arrive late and leave early.
I’m
actually happy for State’s players this year, for going 7-5 and getting into a
bowl game, no matter when and where it is being played. It adds practice days
to the entire year. It’s a reward for something. It hopefully will help with
recruiting (though that 35-7 victory over UNC in Chapel Hill probably did more
for in-state recruiting). By the way, the NCAA needs to change its practice rule
from the end of the season through the beginning of the next season in August.
Instead of rewarding post-season teams with additional practices and leaving
those without bowl games in the cold, the NCAA should give all member teams an
additional 40 days of practice from the last regualr season game of one season to the
pre-season practice start day of the next. Those days can be used for bowl game
practice or for spring drills or for both, but it would level the practice playing field for all teams.
As
happy as I am for the post-season game that was dependent on four wins against
weaklings, I’m disappointed that those who schedule the games don’t upgrade the
entire schedule. We’ve been told that if it looks like a duck and quacks like a
duck then it probably is a duck. Well, if it looks and feels like a Tier II
Bowl schedule then it probably is. With the weak teams in non-conference games,
the Wolfpack will need to be an upper tier team in the ACC, winning more games
against upper echelon conference teams than against the non-conference foes to
be considered for a Tier I bowl. It’ll take more than that to get to the higher
levels of “New Year’s Day” games, and, of course, the national championship
final four, six, eight, or sixteen, whatever the number gets to be, for that
matter. I'm hopeful, because I'm a State fan, realistic or not.
