Tom Sorensen from the Charlotte Observer in today’s article:
We hear about bubble teams. N.C. State’s Herb Sendek is a bubble coach.
He’s too good to fire but he’s not good enough to fire up fans.
He has a winning record but he can’t beat Duke or North Carolina.
He always gets to the NCAA tournament but he never competes for the championship.
The best word to describe his work is solid. His seasons at N.C. State have been devoid of scandal. He is a solid citizen. He does a solid job.
Question: What happens to solid coaches at North Carolina and Duke?
Answer: Ask North Carolina’s Matt Doherty and Duke’s Pete Gaudet.
Sorensen’s piece goes on to talk about how tough it is to be at NC State and compete with Carolina and Duke…yada…yada…yada. All the same ridiculous crap that you’ve heard before. As if we play Carolina and Duke every game and as if no other school in the country has to get by Carolina and Duke in the NCAA Tournament. (More on this later).
The problem with all of this “Carolina & Duke” stuff is that it is wrong. NC State DOESN’T have to compete with Carolina & Duke. Can’t you tell? The losers in our athletics administration and at the University DON’T feel that they have to compete with Carolina and Duke and they prove it over and over and over again every single day and in every single (not) decision that they are cowardly to make.
The media talks about competing with Carolina and Duke. The fans talk about competing with Carolina and Duke. But, the only time Lee Fowler and folks at NC State talk about competing with Carolina and Duke is when they are making another excuse for why their version of NC State can’t succeed.
As Lee Fowler so eloquently stated last year,
“Our fans are comparing ourselves to Duke and North Carolina. Every program in the country doesn’t do well when you’re compared with those two on a day-to-day basis. I understand that our fans want to be able to compete with them; we all do. But you can be real good on a daily basis and not be better than those two programs.�
Don’t you get it…NC State can be “real good” without competing with Carolina and Duke. Here’s a question — are we? Are we “real good”? I guess only Lee Fowler can answer that since only Lee Fowler knows the definitions of such immeasurable terms. But, this year’s performance didn’t at all match Fowler’s preseason expectations.
If this is the way that NC State wants to run its Athletics Department and the University, then that is great. Unfortunately…that is not what was told to all of the thousands of NC State fans who the Wolfpack Club solicitied for millions of dollars over the last 15 years. For 15 years…all we have heard is how we have to have these great facilities to compete with the best. We have to have these great facilities to be the best. Suddenly, we are told and we run our program in a completely different manner than we were marketed. It’s called bait & switch. And, you and I are called suckers.
Today, we have a coach that has been given a DECADE of opportunity to succeed. We have a coach that has had the nation’s top college basketball arena at his disposal and has recently added one of the top practice facilities in the country. With those resources, this coach has succeeded in destroying the NC State fanbase’s sense of community in route to compiling:
* The second worst record of performance in the history of the NC State program
* performance that clearly ranks him ahead of a ONE of the 17 coaches in ACC history that have been provided the honor to coach for a decade or longer in the ACC.
Folks…it is as good as it is going to get.
This is obviously as good as the administration wants to aim. You need to know this. You need to realize this. And, you need to stop acting like everyone else in the world has your historical perspective and has your standards of success. The administration doesn’t care about having a championship-caliber program. They never address the topic and at this point, if someone from NC State would dare make such a claim then you need to move away quickly before the lightening strikes them. So, why should we care?
When you finally accept the truth…perhaps you can a chuckle at the University that is currently raising over a billion dollars in what they call the “Achieve!!” campaign so that NC State can compete with higher ranked universities. Gee…where have I heard that before?
I think that they should rename it “Solid!!!”
