Congratulations, Ray Tanner
If any university has more of a “Charlie Brown kicking the football” complex than NC State, it’s South Carolina. The chickens went winless in bowls for longer than Moses’ sojourn in the desert, until an aged Lou Holtz led them to a few respectable victories. Gamecock basketball has been most notable for NIT Hall of Fame legend Dave Odom, who padded his resume with several meaningless March wins. A national champion? Forget about it.
That is, until last night – when NC State alumnus Ray Tanner brought home the school’s first College World Series title. SFN sends its heartiest congratulations to a fine alum, and thanks the Gamecock baseball team for giving the rest of us Charlie Browns a little ray of hope.
26 Responses to “Congratulations, Ray Tanner”
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Congrats to Ray. God I cannot forgive Todd Turner for letting him leave!
Maybe one day Ray will come back home.
Hopefully Yow has him on her shortlist.
Even though baseball is “only” one of the two top-tier non-revenue sports, this is a meaningful accomplishment both for Coach Tanner but also for the Gamecock baseball program.
Congratulations are well due, as they’ve had a solid program for a long while and this title was only a matter of time.
Congrats to Ray Tanner. A very, very bittersweet day for Wolfpack nation – and well, doesn’t it say something pretty profound about our current coach?
I’m going to have to duck when I say this, but wasn’t one of the reasons that Coach Tanner left State was because Doak was a substandard facility and we never could seem to find the money to upgrade it back then?
Well, we did it, and now it is reasonable to expect that the results on the field match the upgrade. It is unacceptable for NC State to have a lesser program in any sport compared to ECU, and ECU baseball seem to be ahead of our team…at least that’s the perception I get.
Agree Alpha.
I thought Doak is already again obsolete
Congrats Tanner
Speaking of baseball…
Russell Wilson has played in four games and is batting .267 (4 for 15, all singles)
Andrew Brackman just got promoted to the Yankees AA team in Trenton. He started terribly this year but it is starting to lower the ERA slowly. He lost his first game with Trenton ( pitched 5 innings, gave up 3 runs , two earned)
Choppack: Not necessarily. It might actually say a lot about South Carolina’s baseball program. They have invested a lot more money in their program.
Wilson is going to need a lot of reps to get his bat working. It’s a different world even in the Rookie League.
And DU is right about investing money into the baseball program. If you want to be a big boy you have to have the facilities and the people in place to do it.
I’ll slightly disagree with the fucility issue. Ray was doing it at SC before the baseball facility upgrade. The roof of his office was virtually caving in a couple of years ago, but they were still making it on a regular basis to Omaha.
He’s got a really first class place now though and his demeanor during the whole CWS was exemplary! It would not surprise me to see the new stadium named after him very soon!
Did any of you see the clip last night about the death of the Chicken Curse??
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/columns/story?columnist=schlabach_mark&id=5341950
In regards to Tanner leaving State for South Carolina, I beleive he approached Todd Turner in 1996 about the prospects of getting lights for Doak, and if the rumor was correct, had a booster on line to donate the funds to make it happen. Turner nixed the idea, SC came calling later that year and the rest is history. Congrats to Coach Tanner on a job well done.
Congrats Ray. Ray Tanner is a class act and sorely missed. He deserves this championship.
In Yow’s interview with D Glen, she mentioned that the budget (per sport) was small (‘the smallest I’ve seen’ and ‘too small’ were her words. She mentioned this just after graduation rates as things that stood out to her that needed improvement. I’d certainly like to see us shed the image (reality?) of being cheap.
Congrats to the Cocks and Coach Tanner. I sure do miss him. I don’t know all the reasons he left here. But I’m sure one of them was that we didn’t have the facilities to host a regional. I think it was size and probably lights. We have that now, but barely. Our baseball facilities need to be completely redone – somewhere else. Blasphemy, you say? Whatever. We need a more modern facility. But that is no excuse for our mediocre performance since Tanner left. It all boils down to coaching, players, and execution.
Mat…welcome to Low Bid World.
but the NC General Assembly passed
a bill to allow non-competitive bids.
(is it a bid if you can’t lose?)
the Mary Easley Construction Company
will fulfill your facilities upgrade
regardless of the budget limitations.
grades? graduation? good luck with that.
Remember that Tanner had already turned down the much more prestigious job at the U in Miami. So he gave Toddy & State every opportunity to respond .
It made me sick to see one of our own in Omaha when it could easily have been State had we kept Tanner. And yes with Tanner at the helm visits to Omaha would be entirely be likely.
It would take a lot of moulah to get him back & improve Doak but IF State could do that (& a big IF), does anyone think that Yow would be so bold as to can Avent ? One has to think that Tanner would want to come back home if the numbers were right & Doak fixed.
He is a great coach. What a shame we lost him.
Way to go Ray and it is well deserved. I kept thinking the lights of Rosenblatt were shining on Ray and Carolina when it was the lack of lights at Doak that got him there. We miss you coach.
We do have a nice baseball stadium. It is comparable to the one at HPU or UNCG. An SEC-level field should be the absolute minimum.
I need to take my lumps at this post. Congratulations, Ray Tanner. You’re a National Champion coach. I had said on the forum that liked Tanner but was skeptical about him winning the title. He of course decided to take a rolled-up sock and stuff it down my throat. Congrats again, I’ll try to keep my mouth shut for the foreseeable future!!
Maybe John of Sparta can talk with Bob Black of Piney Creek about the Ray Tanner/Todd Turner discussion.
Bob was with Turner when the call came in.
McCallum
Unfortunately, Tanner would now cost more than we’re willing to spend on a baseball coach. The only way lowest-tier BCS schools like us get that level of coaching is to get and keep the national championship caliber coaches BEFORE they win a national championship somewhere else.
Very few schools can afford to spend that kind of money on a non-revenue sport and we certainly aren’t one of them. Let’s hope Yow can return us to the highest tier of college athletics.
Tanner has a very handsome retirement package at USC, so he’d be very tough to lure back. The annuity pays Tanner $240,000 in tax-deferred income should he stay with the program through June 2012. He’s king of the castle in Columbia, so why leave when he’s set for life in 2 years?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/49123796@N02/4751860007/
Screw You, Todd Turner!
“but wasn’t one of the reasons that Coach Tanner left State was because Doak was a substandard facility and we never could seem to find the money to upgrade it back then?”
That was part of it. But the biggest part was that Turner, on multiple occasions, made promises to Tanner, only to renege on them later.
Tanner wanted to stay at State, turning down ‘better’ jobs and more money on more than one occasion… He gave Turner multiple chances to make things right. But when your boss consistently lies to you, it’s probably a good time to start looking for a new job.
Turner is one of the few AD’s worse than Fowler. And lucky us, we had them both.
I know that there are some, especially on the other boards, who think we give too much credit to coaches, but South Carolina (on paper) was “undermanned” the last 9 games. I did not expect them to get through the Coastal Carolina super regional much less go through Oklahoma, Ariz State, Clemson (twice), and UCLA (twice).
The fact that they won (twice) with a left-handed specialist as the starter who had not pitched more than 4 innings this year…wow. Yeah they had some good breaks and the some kids stepped up, but got believe Tanner is a big part of that as well.
Tanner is a hell of a coach and absolutely proved it this week. Congrats and we miss you sir.
I’m thinking of having Todd Turner t-shirts printed up.
Of course I’d pass them out under the slogan “all praise anonymous accounting guy”.
What a wretched state of things that crowd of yahoos in west Raleigh has created. Do not think for a second that most of you could not do a bit better than you have seen…………….just do not believe the stuff about “hard job”, “tough” conditions and all that crap.
One day in the tobacco field would correct some people quickly.
McCallum