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36 Responses to “The State of State Part Five - ACC Rankings (Bar Graphs Galore)”

1. 1 wufdog
   Jul 18th, 2008 at 2:26 pm

   Ouch. That hurts. We are in the bottom tier in most sports(sorry, I realize I am overstating the obvious). While winning isn’t everything, loosing is even less. Nowhere to go but up…right guys

2. 2 CharlotteWolf
   Jul 18th, 2008 at 2:33 pm

   Kind of depressing. Never realized how bad we suck in volleyball and soccer. Oh well. Hopefully TOB and Lowe can get us going in the right direction for football and basketball.

3. 3 old13
   Jul 18th, 2008 at 2:38 pm

   Bottom line - Wolfpack athletics suck - as does the (lack of) performance by it’s leader!

4. 4 66pack
   Jul 18th, 2008 at 2:40 pm

   wufdog you are wrong for we are not the worst in all sports as of yet.

5. 5 partialqualifier
   Jul 18th, 2008 at 2:47 pm

   As an average…looks like we are slightly below average (7th in a 12 team league). That’s actually better than where I thought we would be. I guess that says it all…lol!

   One thing tho…with all the hype around the football program for the last several years…to only be ahead of Duke, UNC, and Wake is very eye-opening! UGH!

6. 6 EverettBeez
   Jul 18th, 2008 at 3:07 pm

   Hey, in football, we are top in the Big 4!!

   We all agree that Foul-up is not overseeing anything like the glory years here at the college - so who is our greatest AD?

7. 7 tooyoungtoremember
   Jul 18th, 2008 at 3:41 pm

   For there to be a greatest, there has to be more than one who has reached the level of being great. I think our greatest AD is yet to be hired, and is hopefully coaching his last few years of baseball at USC.

8. 8 howlie
   Jul 18th, 2008 at 3:43 pm

   Well… Lee can take comfort in the consistency of his work across all sports. In his defense, he’s declared he’s the paid at a level of “11th place” among all AD’s [not including his under the table Capital Sports TV slush money], and to his credit, his department is right there around 11th in all sports.

   Take pride in your consistent work, Lee.
   A hearty Wolfpack salute to you!

9. 9 redfred2
   Jul 18th, 2008 at 4:21 pm

   Thank goodness for wrestling and cross country!

   woo…hoo

   I doubt it, but would anyone be interested in selling their LTR’s in either of those two sports?

10. 10 redfred2
    Jul 18th, 2008 at 4:30 pm

    “One thing tho…with all the hype around the football program for the last several years…to only be ahead of Duke, UNC, and Wake is very eye-opening! UGH!”

    Ah but, were it before expansion, we would be…we would…uh…we would at least be…or rather… have the appearance of being…

11. 11 wufpup76
    Jul 18th, 2008 at 5:38 pm

    As usual, good stuff WV - thanks for putting all of this together …

    Very sad and depressing stuff - but good work nonetheless

    (Oh, and ‘The Dark Knight’ - go see it … NOW. It’s that good … you at least won’t be thinking about the depressing state of Wolfpack athletics while you’re viewing it)

12. 12 RabidWolf
    Jul 18th, 2008 at 6:34 pm

    I think I’m gonna get banned from sending questions to the “ask Ol’ Jed” radio show on WPTF. This weeks question…..

    “Are you still actively seeking a higher paying post with less responsibility at another school? Just hopin….wondering”

    Think it was a bit much?

13. 13 redfred2
    Jul 18th, 2008 at 6:38 pm

    But wufpup, didn’t the Joker, or rather the guy who…

    Oh well, never mind.

14. 14 redfred2
    Jul 18th, 2008 at 7:34 pm

    “he’s declared he’s the paid at a level of “11th place” among all AD’s”

    I assume you’re talking about 11th place in the ACC? If that is truly the case, then Fowler is the #1, and the ultimate lackey/laughing stock in the league. Apparently he can’t even garner enough support AMONG HIS SUPERIORS, to be properly paid BY HIS SUPERIORS, for doing EXACTLY WHAT HIS SUPERIORS, have asked of him.

    Or is another just “noble/class act” sham, not wanting to appear as if they’re taking more than the others in similar positions? Just enough, but not too much, so that it looks good on the surface? Also, is it so that no one can point fingers while saying that they’re not doing their jobs like their equally compensated peers around the ACC?

    If either is the case, loosen the purse strings already, pay Lee Fowler to do the job and compensate him on scale like everybody else in the league, then fire him without any remorse, when he doesn’t get the T O T A L job done!!!

15. 15 nycfan
    Jul 18th, 2008 at 8:06 pm

    WFU has to have more ACC championships than that … didn’t they win 3 in a row in baseball (?), plus one in football, several in field hockey …

    But a nice job. Basically, State is dead average, though there is some skew with BC, Miami and VPI late-comers.

    WV Wolf note: As stated in the notes at the top, field hockey is one of the sports excluded from this particular analysis since State doesn’t field a team. Wake won back-to-back ACC baseball titles in 1998 & 1999, which is before the timespan for this analysis.

16. 16 redfred2
    Jul 18th, 2008 at 8:53 pm

    For myself, I’d say the rating of “dead average” is a relative term, depending on what criteria you’re using. As far as saying what NC State is, at the present time, when compared to it’s history and where it was just a few decades back, then “dead average” must be the politically correct version of SUCKS OUT LOUD.

17. 17 choppack1
    Jul 18th, 2008 at 9:14 pm

    WV Wolf - this is good stuff.

    One thing to remember, NC State has done OK w/ an average overall ranking. The problem is that aside from X-Country - we have no high flyers. So yea, we’ve done OK in some things, but we haven’t done great in anything that would appear on the front page of the Sports section.

    Another thing to think about, this should essentially be viewed as a 9 team race. VaTech, BC and Miami haven’t had the advantage of all that ACC revenue until recently.

18. 18 redfred2
    Jul 18th, 2008 at 9:16 pm

    Sorry WV Wolf, I should have complimented you from the start, NICE WORK!!! Thanks for using graphs, and colors, even I could figure out what they meant without straining too much.

    Though I might have reversed the scales, or the numbers rather, on the “average finish” scales to put the #1 ranking at the top. But it was good to see unc’s little powder blue bar continually appearing so tiny there, so maybe you were right to do it that way afterall.

19. 19 ruffles31
    Jul 18th, 2008 at 10:10 pm

    Great job, WV Wolf! This isn’t as depressing as some of the other fine work you have crafted. Not that this is acceptable results either. However, the one thing these graphs don’t show us is this:

    What sports have really improved under the direction of our esteemed and fearless leader, Lee Fowler?

    Softball, yes.

    Uhhh, anything else? Bueller? Bueller?

20. 20 redfred2
    Jul 18th, 2008 at 10:41 pm

    Chop, I don’t know if I’d be too awful worried about VT, even without the long term benefit of the ACC’s money trough, they’re already ahead of NC State on just about half those graphs up there, and one up in the all-important “ACC Championships” graph.

    When you look at what sports NC State clings to in order to APPEAR even halfway respectable as a charter member of the ACC, it is a sad, sad reflection of the job that they’re really (not) doing up there.

    I can’t do graphs as well as WV, but here’s some math for you anyway…

    Oblinger+Fowler+Purcell(SUPPORT + BIG MONEY) = FB+BB < Cross Country

21. 21 Elrod
    Jul 19th, 2008 at 9:22 am

    I’d love to ask Jed one question: “If you were paid top dollar in the conference, would it make any difference in your job performance?”

22. 22 howlie
    Jul 19th, 2008 at 11:46 am

    You’ll find 100 posts on the other State boards who think it is unfair for Jed’s salary to be in any way connected with the performance of any or all of the programs of the athletic department.
    After all, they posit, he’s only there to ’shuffle papers’ and make sure our ’student-athletes’ get the first half of the hyphenated word right–to the total exclusion of the latter–and create a revenue stream where he and all the coaches can just “pick up their paychecks each month.” Genius.

    That this ‘paper-shuffler’ has a combined salary [likely, if fully reported] greater than that of the U.S. President doesn’t seem to matter to them.

23. 23 WV Wolf
    Jul 19th, 2008 at 2:08 pm

    I appreciate the compliments, thanks.

    choppack touched on a good point that I picked up on as well, we don’t have enough sports we’re really good in. Look at Dook, they may be bad at football but they make up for it in both M & W basketball, their track teams aren’t that great but they’re really good in golf and tennis. For State, cross country and wrestling balance out volleyball and soccer but other than softball we’re not really in the upper class of the ACC in anything else.

    Also found it interesting that you can see definite tiers of schools for most of the sports. Like baseball, FSU, GT, Clemson, UNC and Miami are in the upper tier, State, UVA and Wake are in the 2nd tier and then everybody else in the 3rd tier.

24. 24 Noah
    Jul 19th, 2008 at 4:08 pm

    You’ll find 100 posts on the other State boards who think it is unfair for Jed’s salary to be in any way connected with the performance of any or all of the programs of the athletic department.

    This just in — people are stupid.

    Actually, they aren’t stupid. They’re just blindly loyal…which is why we’re in this boat. “If it’s NC State, it must be GREAT!!!” That our athletic teams are frequently treated like its their first day in prison and they just dropped the soap is irrelevant.

25. 25 redfred2
    Jul 19th, 2008 at 4:30 pm

    Elrod, I like your question! It’s one of those “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” kind that doesn’t leave a weasel, any way to weasel out.

    I don’t like the job Fowler has done, but he does what he does in order to please certain people. He receives their approval for doing what he does, he has been receiving their for approval for years now, they pay and seek him out to publicly reward him for what he does, so I ask, who is really the problem here?

    Lee Fowler may not be capable of doing the job at NC State, but that isn’t even a factor when the people above him are less competent than he is.

26. 26 thekind
    Jul 19th, 2008 at 9:52 pm

    Old Fearless Lee is a politician, and that is how he has kept his job so long.
    When I went to the Wolfpack Club meeting at Atlantic Beach, he talked about spending the night with Bob Mattocks (BOT). I thought I’d throw up.
    Lee Fowler needs to go. We are a bush league program with consistently bush league athletics.

27. 27 waxhaw
    Jul 20th, 2008 at 8:12 am

    FSU and GT fared a lot better overall than I thought they would.

    SFN: FSU is a very interesting test case. Go back and look at the improvement of their entire department over the last 25 years and you will be shocked.

28. 28 statemech
    Jul 20th, 2008 at 12:34 pm

    redfred, the way I’ve heard it, and some others here will know more about this than I do, is that when it comes to the athletic department there is no real structure and so nobody is really on top. This of course allows mistakes to go on without worries of accountability.

29. 29 blpack
    Jul 20th, 2008 at 7:53 pm

    We basically have the 2 CC programs, wrestling and it appears our new softball program is on solid footing. Hopefully baseball will continue to grow, but this year may be the exception rather than the rule. Outside of those we have not won much of anything and too often stuggle to be mid-tier. We have put up with mediocrity for too long.

30. 30 WolftownVA81
    Jul 20th, 2008 at 11:07 pm

    I’d like to know what Lee’s boss (Chancellor/BOT} thinks success in atheletics means. Since NCSU is a public institution, shouldn’t the performance measurements of its top leaders be public information? As RF has stated many times in the past, if Lee is accomplishing what his boss wants him to do, why would be change? We need some higher authority to give him new direction - like, fire coaches that consistantly lose and hire those that consistantly win.

31. 31 RAWFS
    Jul 21st, 2008 at 9:52 am

    “I’d like to know what Lee’s boss (Chancellor/BOT} thinks success in atheletics means.”

    Money. And no NCAA trouble. Everything else, winning included, is secondary.

32. 32 WolftownVA81
    Jul 21st, 2008 at 11:21 am

    ^Agree that’s their priority. But both kinds of success are not mutually exclusive. In fact, you’d think they would have figure out by now that winning = more support ($$$).

33. 33 Rick
    Jul 21st, 2008 at 12:42 pm

    “^Agree that’s their priority. But both kinds of success are not mutually exclusive. In fact, you’d think they would have figure out by now that winning = more support ($$$).”

    A couple of points
    1) While they are not exclusive, it takes very different leadership and drive to do one over the other. It takes evem more leadership to do both
    2) winning does not necesarily translate into more $$$. If the costs of improving are more than the increase in $$$ then it is actually losing money.

34. 34 ruffles31
    Jul 21st, 2008 at 3:22 pm

    Where is the women’s wrestling bar chart?

35. 35 redfred2
    Jul 21st, 2008 at 8:39 pm

    The guys in Raleigh do not need, as a matter of fact, nor do they even want to hear, a word about doing a single thing differently. They’ve got it set up, humming along on auto-pilot exactly where they want it to be, and there is not a reason in the world for them to change A SINGLE THING. I’m telling you, there is a delicate balance involved here, they know it, and they have it all effectively functioning in their favor to the max.

    The status quo in Raleigh is sooo good, that I believe their biggest fear up there is that if they actually pushed for real success in athletics, and then got it, that they would finally be exposed as the ineffective leadership that they truly are. There is already so much guaranteed revenue coming in, RIGHT NOW, that they know their own abilities to stick around could survive a worsening overall outlook in athletics much better than their skillsets could survive the rigors of an improving one.

    That all may, or may not be true, but it’s either that, or they are so collectively stupid as a group, that they don’t even give a crap either way.

36. 36 FedUp
    Jul 30th, 2008 at 4:41 pm

    A group has been created and is raising funding to demand appropriate consideration for the average wolfpack supporter. I heard about ot on last Saturday. It intends to advance public criticisms and educational activities about the pitiful state of NCSU. One of the principal movers is an NCSU grad state senator and he is leading an effort with the other state alums in the legislature. The is supposed to be some big publicity even around the first home football weekend. Thes are not a disjointed group of student types with no bucks. We’ll see.

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