Mythbusting the Wolfpack Sore-Loser Stereotype

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The past few days there has been a lot of talk on local sports-talk radio and elsewhere on the ‘interwebs’ about NC State’s irrational obsession with officiating particularly in the wake of a tough loss against UNC in the ACC tournament.  Granted, we all have our mini-meltdown moments after tough loses, and quite frankly the blog-o-sphere would be a lot duller without it.  That being said, a perception has been built regarding NC State fans along with a series of “urban myths”.  It’s time to set the record straight and to explain exactly why holding a discussion over officiating isn’t just rational, it’s necessary.

MYTHS

1) “NC State fans are blaming the ACC for not winning an ACC title in +20 years.”
Completely untrue.  NC State fans are blaming the ACC for offering sub-standard officiating and refusing to admit it.  Following the “all-clear” signal from the NCAA two decades ago, NC State handicapped themselves to the point that the basketball program couldn’t recover.  Yes, the ACC played a role in this (the phrase ‘didn’t violate the rules, but violated the spirit of the rules’ comes to mind), but NC State’s administration played their part as well.  The officiating in the ACC has been terrible whether NC State is winning or not.

The bottom line:NC State is just as responsible for their shortcomings and the ACC is for theirs.  If we are responsible for our lack of performance for the last 20 years, the ACC must be held accountable for their lack of quality in the zebra-colored shirts.

2) “NC State fans think that the reason they lost to Carolina three times this season is due to the officials.”
What?  Seriously?  I don’t know any NC State fans that will tell you, with a straight face, that we played a perfect game, void of mistakes and execution failures, where our loss was entirely caused by the officiating.  Did the officials play a part?  Of course; that’s what 90% of the complaints being voiced are all about.  However, to claim that just because NC State fans think the poor officiating “affects the game” equates fans blaming officials for a loss is quite a leap, even for lazy journalism.  That being said, even though officiating is “one of many factors” that go into a game, it’s the only one not controlled by the players on the court.  THAT is why it infuriates a fan base exponentially more than missing free throws.

The bottom line:   This is a great myth to bring up if you’re just whoring for ratings or Twitter followers, but there is very little truth to it.  Anger is directed at a “factor” of a game being outside the control of either competing team.  Nothing about that statement suggests that anyone thinks the officials were the sole cause of an NC State loss.

3) “NC State fans are just sore losers and are complaining about officiating because they can’t accept that they lost some big games.”
This has to be the dumbest of them all.  So some pundits are going to attempt to suggest that a fan base with little success to brag about over the last 20 years has a hard time losing?  If anything, we’re probably better at “dealing with a loss” then any of the other programs in the ACC (except for perhaps Wake Forest… poor little guys).  One loss completely sucks and may flare up emotions over the poor officiating, but it’s still there regardless of whether we win or lose.  Don’t believe me?  Keep reading in the “facts” section…

The bottom line: I’ll agree that we are obsessed with poor officiating “because we’re sore-losers” if the blues agree that their don’t give a s*** about officiating because the numbers imply their benefiting from it.  Fair?

FACTS

1) Win or lose, the officiating still sucks.
There is a great thread on our message boards, started by Owen Good, that highlights an article published on Grantland.com outlining a few examples of terrible officiating.  The problem with officiating goes beyond one or two contests against a couple teams; the problem with officiating is directly tied to documented examples of horrible no-calls and inconsistent judgements on the court.

2) You can’t call someone crazy if they have some proof of their theory.
If the police are trying to solve a crime that “appears” to be a suicide, but they spend weeks, maybe months, interviewing people and making sure it wasn’t a murder, you don’t call the investigators crazy for pursuing leads, do you?  Well, it may not be murder, but bad officiating certainly can kill the product on the court.  Here at StateFansNation we have documented multiple “leads” on the bad officiating from looking at foul statistics divided up among each ACC member institution to noting obvious acts of bias, un-professionalism, and just plain jackassery by the ACC officials to comparing officiating in the ACC to officiating in other conferences.  Feel free to disagree that officiating in the ACC is poor or that the officials regularly make mistakes, but you can’t for a second pretend like all of this is completely fabricated in the minds of a few “sore-losers”.  The numbers are real and the trends do exist.  Continue the discourse from there…

3) There is thought and logic that goes into the hypotheses that ACC officiating isn’t living up to ACC standards.
StateFansNation does a pretty good job of not just flamboyantly posting irrational accusations against the ACC (save the few knee-jerk reactions to post-game events that I already mentioned in this article).  After the UNC-NC State ACC tournament game, StateFans posted an article connecting all of the dots between various internal and external sources that paint a picture of sub-par officiating.  Liars and lunatics can’t always keep their stories straight (just look at UNC’s football program).  The fact that StateFansNation is able to consistently chronicle the poor officiating in the ACC across multiple writers, multiple contributors, and multiple external media outlets should be enough to suggest that there is something to this crazy idea that ACC officiating isn’t living up to what it should be.  As such, even if you do not agree that ACC officiating is as big of a deal as some make it out to be, you have to at least admit that “there is something to it”.

4) People outside of the NC State fan base agree regarding ACC officiating.
If the NC State fan base were just being a bunch of sore-losers, it’s difficult to imagine a scenario where so many external media outlets would agree with you.  In the article mentioned by StateFans, the following media outlets are mentioned as reporting on the UNC-NC State game’s poor officiating: Business Insider, News & Observer, Charlotte Observer, Yahoo! Sports, Grand Strand Sports Report, and from Owen Good, Grantland.  You can call us crazies, lunatics, and sore-losers, but I guess you’ll have to lump all of them in with us.

———-

I don’t suspect this will keep detractors from accusing NC State fans of being neurotic, sore-losers, but hopefully it at least ‘puts it on record’ that there are perfectly logical reasons to address the sorry state of ACC basketball officiating.  If you aren’t part of the solution, you are part of the problem.  You’ll be hard pressed to convince me that holding the ACC accountable is being part of the “problem”.

About NCStatePride

***ABOUT THE AUTHOR: NCStatePride has been writing for StateFansNation.com since 2010 and is a 2009 graduate of the College of Engineering.

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36 Responses to Mythbusting the Wolfpack Sore-Loser Stereotype

  1. state73 03/15/2012 at 9:37 AM #

    Agree with you 100%. The ACC has a serious problem with officiating and they choose to ignore it. The head of officials and the commish must GO! On a more positive note I am fixing to leave for Columbus OH. GO WOLFPACK!!!!

  2. AppPack14 03/15/2012 at 9:44 AM #

    Agreed. Thanks for taking the time to write it, though I doubt that this will reach our intended audience.

  3. BJD95 03/15/2012 at 9:47 AM #

    Very true. Also note that we call out bias in games that don’t impact us (see our analysis of screwjobs that enabled Duke to beat VPI and Clemson over the past few years (I’m too lazy to find the links). We don’t want to get cut in on the action like Coach K…we want justice for ALL. Any true sportsman (or woman) wants to win fair and square.

    Secondly, go back to our home game vs. Carolina. Even in REAL TIME – when rivalry emotions are the most raw – we showed good sportsmanship, and gave the Holes credit for being an excellent team, absorbing our best shot, and winning fair and square. Hell, we actively complimented the officiating, as the template for how a reffing crew should remain in the background and not become the story. Even though we lost to our hated rival by double digits.

    That is what SFN is all about – fans, yes. But fairminded people who certainly know how to take a tough loss.

  4. Rick 03/15/2012 at 9:50 AM #

    Ha this is similar to something I was composing in my mind. I am glad I do not have to it now.

  5. Rick 03/15/2012 at 9:52 AM #

    In fact I cannot remember any significant number of reffing complaints until the Duke game.
    The Duke and UNC games and the tossing of Googs and Corch are the only times I remember many complaints.

  6. newt 03/15/2012 at 9:53 AM #

    I think ESPN and CNNSI also noted poor officiating in the ACC tourney final in their early bracket analyses.

  7. NCStatePride 03/15/2012 at 9:56 AM #

    Oh, there has been a TON of attention on officiating… but with the length of the article and as much “ground” as there was to cover, I just kind of lost motivation to dig up more resources. I don’t feel like it needs to be “proven” too much that the national media noted the ACC’s poor officiating and it reflected poorly on our conference’s administration. That was actually the main thrust of my “letter” I wrote on this blog a few days ago: it’s not about one team, it’s about maintaining respect for the conference and members therein.

  8. Wufpacker 03/15/2012 at 10:08 AM #

    Don’t foul up a good argument with facts. Let the little guys have their illusions.

  9. Heart A Pack 03/15/2012 at 10:10 AM #

    Guy I work with, huge Hole fan, first thing Monday morning HE starts complaining that the refs cost UNX the game on Sunday! Shook my head and walked away.

  10. Alpha Wolf 03/15/2012 at 10:20 AM #

    Too many people who have no dog in the fight have started questioning the impartiality of ACC officiating for it to be “just something Hatefans Nation made up” — and as NCStatePride so capably noted in the main article, many of those people are national journalists.

    Did officiating cause NC State to lose? Probably not. The Wolfpack helped the Tar Heels in a lot of ways before or after the non-call. Missed free throws, missed shots, etc.

    But did it change the dynamic of a tight game at a critical juncture, and possibly affect the outcome? Without a doubt. Had that call been made in the Wolfpack’s favor, suddenly NC State has the ball, a short clock and is playing for the win or overtime. Sure, UNC may have turned them over, but still, you would be looking at an entirely different scenario.

    Thing is, even the non-call against Marshall is missing the point. Actually points: first that within the game itself there were some glaring inconsistencies in what constituted a charge/block whistle or a non-call. Secondly, that is wasn’t the first time that two certain teams have been the recipients of positive outcomes of these inconsistencies, and one has to wonder why that statistics support that perception.

    Too often that has happened, not just for NC State, but many other schools in the conference as well. It warrants careful and objective analysis, but let’s be honest: that’s not the point of sports radio. They care less about that than they do ratings, and the best way to get ratings is to feed red meat to the masses. State’s fans are easy pickings for just that, because we take the bait every time.

    As for the ad hominem attacks on this site, well, hmmm. Oddly, the same people who attacked it used it for a resource during coaching searches and athletic director changes, and quite frankly, it was one of the best resources during the recent NCAA “inquiry” into our rival school to the west. But hey, suddenly it is full of raving lunatics responding to drooling authors who haven’t got a clue.

    Sure it does.

  11. Hungwolf 03/15/2012 at 10:25 AM #

    I think the people that stereotype state fans are the same ones that still think UNC-Cheat is innocent, the NCAA is wrong, Butch Davis did nothing wrong, and the UNC System BOG should be an award for those hard hitting questions like “How’s recruiting going.” directed to UNC coach Davis, Baddour, and Thorpe.

  12. Paramarine 03/15/2012 at 10:28 AM #

    T.A. was in.

  13. JeremyH 03/15/2012 at 10:34 AM #

    Len Elmore (calling the game) and an analyst reviewing the game on ESPN also agrees that the Carolina game officially was poor. So add ESPN to that list.

  14. NCStatePride 03/15/2012 at 10:34 AM #

    “I think the people that stereotype state fans are the same ones that still think UNC-Cheat is innocent”

    Unfortunately, a lot of people who are stereotyping NC State fans are other NC State fans that have started to become more concerned with what the media/other fans think of them then actually arguing a valid point.

  15. ncsu1987 03/15/2012 at 10:55 AM #

    The overall message from SFN and rational State fans in general has been crystal clear from the outset, for anyone industrious enough to actually read, listen and interpret. The issue is frequently inconsistent and occasionally startlingly incompetent officiating. Yes, we have conspiracy theorists (as does any fanbase), but the dialogue by and large has been scaled back from that particular precipice.

    It’s really pretty simple. Anyone painting a different picture of our fan base in general is either too lazy to find the details, too stupid to understand, or has a different agenda.

    Great summary and reference. Thanks for the good work.

  16. howlie 03/15/2012 at 11:18 AM #

    The real urban legend is ‘responsible journalism.’
    The print media devolved and withered because it became so irresponsible, trying not to lose readers to grocery story tabloids.
    Then they all became one.

    We simply need to buy our own radio network, & start our own TV network. That’s the only way to get responsible coverage.

    Then, someday, we’ll appoint our commissioner and s/he will hire the refs.

  17. tractor57 03/15/2012 at 11:26 AM #

    Nice work!

    Are there some who are obsessed by the issue? There is no doubt. Are there many who want better officiating? I suspect many times more than the former. The issue has gained traction nationally so as mentioned earlier there is some fire to go with the smoke. Do I blame officiating for losses? No I don’t. I do blame egomaniacs who are less than competent (based on their on court actions) for disrupting what were otherwise fine basketball games.

    In the ACC semis the Pack made enough errors to create the loss however when it came down to the one play that defined the game there was an epic fail by the officials. Granted the usual tendency in that situation is for the official to swallow his whistle and as such I don’t take umbrage at Marshall’s comments after the game. My point is the contact was not incidental, was critical to the play at hand. In that situation it was either a charge or a block. My opinion is it was a charge, other may feel a block should have been called. Either way the contact was not incidental so the official failed in his duty.

  18. vtpackfan 03/15/2012 at 11:37 AM #

    Ask someone like Mark Packer about State, the Alums and fans, its traditional pride, and you will get a completely different slant regarding theses issues. Ask sports incompetent heads like DG (only interested in subjective judiciary and Swedish Bikinis), AG (Mets fan-you want to talk loser mentality), and Ovies (could not have ever grasped the meaning of sport w/o the creation of Tecmo Bowl and the internet) and you get something alongside a great line from Billy Madison:

    “At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone (listening to this broadcast) is now dumber for having listening to it”

  19. logarithm 03/15/2012 at 11:47 AM #

    Good write-up. Officiating always sucks to some degree no matter the sport. Administration always sucks to some degree no matter the institution. The degree to which you’ll stomach the suck is subjective and typically tied to how well you’re doing in that sport or institution. We were doing bad, so we wouldn’t stomach much suck. We’re at a point now where the suck can be the difference between our results being good and occasionally great, because the suck has a lot of weight to it and because we’re doing well.

    The bottom line we all know is that you should aim to be good enough that you can beat the other team AND the suck. Play well enough that you don’t need a last-second shot to win and then it won’t matter that the officials miss a call on the last possession like against UVA. Play well enough so that the opposition can’t take the lead in the last 10 seconds and it won’t matter that they miss a charge call like against UNC-CH. That’s the team’s job. Our job is to support the team at their job AND be outraged at the suck.

  20. TruthBKnown Returns 03/15/2012 at 11:54 AM #

    Some say the ACC has poor officiating (that much we know for sure). Some say it is a conspiracy. I think the officiating problem goes beyond poor officiating. If it was simply poor officiating, then all things being equal, wouldn’t one expect every team to be hurt (or helped) by it on an equal level?

    I watch for bad calls, and sometimes I do say, “we got away with one there!” But it is a rare day that I have ever come away from a State win thinking the refs caused us to win. And I do watch for that because I try to be as impartial as I can with this stuff. I try to keep an open mind. But I’m just not seeing it.

    Carolina never loses a game due to bad calls (except maybe to Duke). But they sure do seem to win more than their fair share of them. In that ACC semifinal game, the refs established what they were calling a charge. We saw several examples against State. Then when Carolina did the exact same thing (lowered shoulder into the chest of the defender, bowling him over), they called nothing. That was not a no-call of a play. It was either a charge or a block. But calling nothing left Marshall wide open for an uncontested 5-footer to essentially win the game.

    I’ve also seen the refs kick out a pair of NC State legends for simply cheering on their team. That might be unprecedented in all of college basketball. It shows the degree of disdain that ref had for NC State.

    There is also the “shut your F%$#%ing mouth” comment that was was (allegedly) made to our coach when he simply complained about a no-call that pretty much cost us the game. Any coach in the nation would complain about that, probably enough to get himself kicked out of the game. If this is true, and a couple of sports writers say it is, then it further illustrates the high level of disdain refs have for NC State.

    This is more than poor officiating. We’ve seen this stuff for years, and oddly enough, it always seems to go AGAINST us.

  21. MattN 03/15/2012 at 12:03 PM #

    For me, the entire “poor officiating” thing in the end results in a contest as to who can go the deepest on the bench before the talent begins to erode. That is NOT the point of the game. So, those that are saying “yeah, so, it was horrible both ways” are missing that point. The point of the game of basketball is not to see how many burgerboys you have stacked on the bench….

  22. tjfoose1 03/15/2012 at 2:12 PM #

    “Ask sports incompetent heads like DG (only interested in subjective judiciary and Swedish Bikinis), AG (Mets fan-you want to talk loser mentality), and Ovies (could not have ever grasped the meaning of sport w/o the creation of Tecmo Bowl and the internet)…”

    Excellent work there.

  23. CPT_Pack 03/15/2012 at 2:55 PM #

    After our loss to UNC in the ACC tournament, I was walking through Walmart wearing my NC State sweatshirt. This guy who was working in electronics yells at me from across the store, “Hey, you an NC State fan?” So I walk over there and he shakes my hand and says, “I just wanted to let you know that y’all got cheated out of that game. Me? I’m a Duke fan, and we lost fair and square, but UNC and the refs know that y’all were cheated. I’ll tell you what, though. They’ll lose tomorrow; you watch and see.”
    It’s not just us.

  24. 70wolf 03/15/2012 at 3:31 PM #

    Some have asked “doesn’t NCSU have some blame” to which I say yes we do. The idiots at State and the other institutions who voted for Swofford to be ACC Commish, thinking he would not lean towards anything Carolina were assholes and are the real reason we are where we are.

    Any of us could fix these issues in a week if we were in his job (making $1MM / yr) but there is no reason on his part to do so till the national heat gets so hot that he cannot take it any more. We need to turn up the heat till he screams uncle and leaves. The students need to use the social media and turn up the heat !

    For future reference – no ACC alumni for ACC commish – GOT IT !

  25. ganymebe 03/15/2012 at 4:15 PM #

    Yeah, there are a lot of reasons, including the officiating that we have lost. However, look back at State Fans Nation over the past week or so and see how many posts are about the officiating. It has been analyzed every which way but lose. Even as a State fan and an avid statefansnation.com reader, I am getting tired of hearing about it. It is starting to move from a valid complaint to endless whining.

    Let’s focus on winning the next six games!

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