Lail: Welcome Back to Earth

General NCS Football13

I give Pack Pride a lot of grief sometimes for the lack of originality, creativity, and significant dearth of opinion and analysis.

Even though today’s piece from Matt Lail is quite tame, it is still nice to have something a little unique to read and doesn’t focus on a 14 year old potential water boy prospect for Yadkin County.

Anyone who is an NC State fan should know to expect things like this. It’s right there in the NC State Fan’s Manual – General State Statue 3.07.87: “State Fan(s) shall show restraint and rein in positive feelings following a Wolfpack victory, no matter how historic the implications. Such actions may irritate the Creator and result in short-lived gratification.”

In other words, don’t get too excited after a big win. It’s the Pack, after all; a humbling defeat is probably right around the corner.

Lail goes on to rank the ACC Football teams as follows:

1. Miami
2. Virginia Tech
3. Florida State
4. Georgia Tech
5. Clemson
6. Boston College
7. Virginia
8. Maryland
9. North Carolina
10. NC State
11. Wake Forest
12. Duke

I want you to think about something — In ranking NC State #10 in the ACC, Lail actually WAS GENEROUS to the Pack!!! Think about how bad that is. We are in LAST PLACE of the Atlantic Division and LOST to Wake Forest…yet Lail does his best to slide the Wolfpack in AHEAD of the Deacons that beat us.

The point here is NOT that Lail being a homer (we ALL are Wolfpack homers…we just don’t all have to be nice in order to keep Pack Pride’s press passes). The point here is to point out how BAD our program really is! Can it get much worse than having to “stretch” to say that we are 10th out 12 ahead of the Wake and Duke?

General NCS Football

13 Responses to Lail: Welcome Back to Earth

  1. Jeff 11/15/2005 at 11:45 AM #

    NC State is THE WORST football program at a public institution in the ACC.

  2. Class of '74 11/15/2005 at 12:48 PM #

    Jeff is right. And inspite of this I hear Wolfpackers saying we need to back our coach. How can we be so negative towards Amato? And on and on….
    Three years of underacheivement should wake up our fans to the obvious, and that is Amato for all his positives is NOT the calibre of coach this school deserves! He is a good DC and recruiter but he’s in over his head as far as this fan is concerned.

  3. bl 11/15/2005 at 2:29 PM #

    I’m just glad we don’t play Duke this year.

  4. BJD95 11/15/2005 at 7:12 PM #

    stretching it to be #10 in a 12-team league. LOVELY!

  5. Alpha Wolf 11/16/2005 at 8:17 AM #

    It’s almost like 1984 sometimes. State fans are Winston Smith, and when they say, “wait a minute, that’s some really dumb coaching” they get put into the re-education of our “place in the world,” our “failed history,” etc. etc.

    According to the AD, just say “I love Big Brother” and move along.

  6. Jeff 11/16/2005 at 10:57 AM #

    To be fair…Fowler has been awfully quiet on the football front since his comments after the Clemson game.

  7. Alpha Wolf 11/16/2005 at 12:58 PM #

    Jeff — true and Fowler may have learned his lesson there.

    But, as they say, “just wait until basketball!!!” As soon as the inevitable swoon happens, watch out, there will be sticky notes, petitions, molten message boards and more angst than a Marilyn Manson concert.

    That’s when the “you’ll never beat Duke and UNC” sunshine contingent starts its homily, as if NC State never, ever stood toe to toe with those two.

    Thank God I am old enough to remember and know better.

  8. Class of '74 11/16/2005 at 1:10 PM #

    Maybe he’s quiet because he might have to reverse course?

  9. Sadie 11/16/2005 at 10:20 PM #

    Can you imagine the uproar if Herb had back to back losing seasons?

  10. Jeff 11/17/2005 at 8:35 AM #

    (1) You don’t see the uproar going on right now in football?

    (2) You mean like Herb’s 7-9 record in the ACC last year? To be fair, there is quite a large amount of difference from football’s 11 games and from basketball’s 28 game season that includes 12 OOC games (for which Sendek has an embarassing track record of scheduling). No coach in NC State Basketball should ever be afforded the luxury of a SINGLE losing basketball season unless it is a season that is mired by a significant amount of extraordinary situations AND includes a grossly ambitious OOC schedule.

  11. Trout 11/17/2005 at 9:46 AM #

    “You mean like Herb’s 7-9 record in the ACC last year”

    But Jeff, ‘you are carving away everything OTHER than ACC finish to make your point.’ (sorry, couldnt resist)

  12. Sadie 11/17/2005 at 12:43 PM #

    I see the uproar but I suspect it would be worse if Herb had back to back overall losing records. IMHO, we should NEVER have a losing overall record in basketball or football considering the resources we put into those programs.

  13. BJD95 11/17/2005 at 2:19 PM #

    I dunno. I’m not aware of Sendek ever getting booed lustily when his picture came on the jumbotron. I think Amato (by nature of his brash mannerisms) engenders stronger reactions, both positive and negative.

    The whole notion of “we’d never treat Amato like we treat Sendek b/c we ‘like’ him” has been blown out of the water this year. Which is good (and what I expected), since I don’t like double standards.

    I see Jeff’s point about scheduling making it REALLY hard to have a losing season, but most years you have to go 2-6 in ACC football or 4-12 in ACC basketball to have a losing season overall (hell, starting next year you can go 2-6 in football and STILL finish .500), and those are equivalent records. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of an ACC finishing .500 while going 3-13 in conference play, although it is technically possible.

    But that just demonstrates why I hate overall record as a barometer. If we finish 5-6 against our schedule and UNC goes 5-6 against theirs, it will be obvious to anyone with half a brain who played better this season.

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