Postseason Drought

General NC State Administration NCS Basketball NCS Football Rankings & Lists Required Reading50

Seems like it wasn’t so long ago that State’s football team punched America’s sweetheart in the mouth in the Gator Bowl (thanks Sean Berton), or that men’s basketball beat UConn at the buzzer to make the Sweet 16 or that Kay Yow led the Wolfpack Women to the Final Four.

But much like Falls Lake, State’s postseason appearances dried up this school year. While baseball is still in progress (and should make the NCAA tournament), the other three revenue programs failed to make a bowl game or the NCAA Tournament. That puts State in a category as one of five BCS schools to have that distinction.

Of the 66 BCS schools (including Notre Dame) in 2007-08, eight schools participated in all three of the major post season events:

    • UConn
    • West Virginia
    • Purdue
    • Oklahoma
    • Texas
    • Texas A&M
    • Georgia
    • Tennessee

31 schools participated in 2 of the 3 post season events.

22 schools participated in 1 of the 3 post season events.

5 schools missed all 3 post season events:

    • NC State
    • Northwestern
    • Washington
    • Ole Miss
    • South Carolina

NC State is also one of six BCS schools that did not go to a bowl and also didn’t make the men’s tourney each of the last two seasons. Interestingly, there was one school in each conference.

    • NC State
    • Syracuse
    • Northwestern
    • Iowa St
    • Washington
    • Ole Miss

Hopefully sports will imitate life and TOB, Sid and Kay will bring some much needed rain back to their programs.

SFN Notes:
(1) Related recent link regarding ACC & National Championships

(2) It would ‘performance’ like this that paints NC State with total irrelevancy to the rest of the country and generates comments like Rocky Top Talk’s in this entry. You will see that when SFN was being named best ACC Blog on the internet, that one of the reasons we were considered to be so impressive was that we did such a great job covering such a poor performing program.

Competent team? Uh, no, and that’s what makes StateFans Nation’s consistent quality all the more laudable.

About WV Wolf

Graduated from NCSU in 1996 with a degree in statistics. Born and inbred in West "By God" Virginia and now live in Raleigh where I spend my time watching the Wolfpack, the Mountaineers and the Carolina Hurricanes as well as making bar graphs for SFN. I'm @wvncsu on the Twitter machine.

General NC State Administration NCS Basketball NCS Football Rankings & Lists Required Reading

50 Responses to Postseason Drought

  1. choppack1 05/04/2008 at 10:17 PM #

    I’m confident about the future football…

  2. RBCRowdy 05/04/2008 at 10:46 PM #

    football is going to keep us in business (It’ll keep Fowler his job)

    SFN: No way that TOB provides much support to the case for Fowler. The BOT, and everyone this side of the Blue Ridge Mountains are aware of Fowler’s (lack of role) in ALL of the events that brought us TOB.

    (1) Fowler didn’t want to fire Chuck. Effectively, Fowler didn’t fire Chuck. The BOT executed a series of quick maneuvers that ultimately resulted in forcing the firing of CTC.

    (2) Fowler had little to nothing do with the results of football coaching search because (a) we hired Chuck Neinas to execute the searcha and (b) Tom O’Brien came to us and publicly proclaimed his interest because of our FANS (because we are ‘that kind of place’) and the facilities those fans had financed. He didn’t say one thing about our excellent “leadership”. That’s about as easy of a decision as one can has despite the tremendous interest in the job.i>

    (3) Want more evidence? It isn’t often that you get a PUBLIC statement by the Chair of the Board of Trustees who basically cuts off the *#&$ of the AD like this one:

    “It was done professionally and it was done quietly,” said Wendell Murphy, chairman of the NCSU board of trustees. “The consultant did the work, Lee kept it quiet and no one was tracking my airplane on the Internet,” Murphy quipped

  3. GoldenChain 05/05/2008 at 7:39 AM #

    ^ What you guys are saying is how I felt about football last year and how I felt about basketball as well.
    I’ve reached the stage that I’ll believe it when I see it.

  4. BoKnowsNCS71 05/05/2008 at 8:04 AM #

    Agree with Chop. There will be some rain dances at CF in the coming years.

  5. old13 05/05/2008 at 8:12 AM #

    Because, in the long run, it all starts at the top, I have no hope that Wolfpack sports will ever challenge for championships in any sport under the current BOT/administration/AD regime. Football IMO has the best chance. But even TOB cannot bring in top players consistently without support from the top.

  6. StateFans 05/05/2008 at 8:19 AM #

    These are just incredible statistics. I know that WV Wolf has even more of them…but we need to wait until all of the major conferences finish their baseball tournaments to unveil some of his deepest analysis!

  7. choppack1 05/05/2008 at 8:23 AM #

    Lee Fowler – “I’m proud of turning NC State into the Iowa State of the ACC!”

  8. hoyawolf 05/05/2008 at 8:40 AM #

    i can no longer believe…sadly.

  9. RickJ 05/05/2008 at 8:45 AM #

    WV Wolf – Thanks for doing these entries. They are very interesting.

    “Of the 66 BCS schools (including Notre Dame) in 2007-08, eight schools participated in all three of the major post season events:”

    I believe NC State did this as recently as the 2005-06 year and it was hardly hailed as much of an achievement. Our biggest failure is in having signature successes in any sport of note. The best way to make this point is by looking at your earlier entry showing that NC State had won 14 ACC championships since Lee Fowler hiring. The most surprising stat to me in that entry was that Wake Forest had only won 6 ACC championships during the same period. The difference is that Wake won 1 football championship and 4 national championships (field hockey & men’s soccer). In the past 12 years, we have come within 1 game of winning 5 ACC championships in men’s basketball but we didn’t win any. Coming in second feels like being the first loser.

  10. Daily Update 05/05/2008 at 8:52 AM #

    Annual Contributions(BCS rank) / annual budget / capital funds raised from 2002-2006

    NC State $27,254,723(14th) / $44,170,000 / $125,625,000
    Northwestern $9,000,000(54th) / $35,000,000 / $15,000,000
    Washington $19,100,000 (30) / $56,000,000 / $80,000,000
    Iowa St. $19,600,000 (27th) / $33,600,000 / $0
    South Carolina $28,200,000(13th) / $52,659,000/ $14,000,000
    Ole Miss $13,200,000 (43rd) / $34,400,000 / $32,000,000
    Syracuse $10,300,000 (52nd) / ? / ?

    http://vcafo.org/support_bulletin/2007/2007-19.pdf

    So of these schools on the list we are 2nd in annual donations and 1st in capital funds raised by a wide margin. Of the schools on this list:

    *Washington fired their AD, Todd Turner, this past December after only 3.5 years on the job

    *South Carolina’s AD has been on the job for 3 years

    *Northwestern hired a new AD last about 3 weeks ago

    *Iowa State hired a new AD in September of 2005

    *Syracuse hired new AD in December of 2004

    *Ole Miss – hired new AD in May of 02 – was also Ole Miss AD from 95-98.

    Only two ADs on the list have tenures longer than 3.5 years.

  11. Daily Update 05/05/2008 at 8:57 AM #

    Annual budget numbers aren’t all that relevant without knowing how many sports each school competes in. No time to research that right now.

  12. Noah 05/05/2008 at 8:59 AM #

    I think we’ve got an outside shot at a bowl this year. I think this year’s team has a ceiling of six or seven wins and that would get us somewhere. Of course, one or two injuries at critical times and we’re a three-win team all over again.

    But next year, I think we’ll be stronger and I think we’ll continue to see steady progress. I think you’ll see recruiting classes consistent with the past one each year and as we weed out the last of Amato’s classes and replace them with quality pieces, the effort on the field will get stronger.

    In basketball…well, everyone knows how I feel about the future of our basketball team. I think we’ll hover around .500 and maybe once every three or four years, we’ll get into an NIT field.

    Sidney Lowe is never going to be fired. In 15 years, we’ll be playing our games at a half-filled Dorton Arena and Lee Fowler (who will also still be here) will be wondering why the three fans with season tickets are complaining. Afterall, we almost won a game that time against Campbell’s JV girl’s intramural squad. We fielded a team…what more do you idiots want?

  13. Trip 05/05/2008 at 10:37 AM #

    If Lowe doesn’t have results by year 3/4 then he should be fired. Any less than that and there will just be too many pissed off fans for Fowler to ever try to keep him. Push Fowler enough and he will fire people, it seems.

  14. WV Wolf 05/05/2008 at 11:06 AM #

    I appreciate the compliments, I was a stat major at State so I enjoy this kind of stuff.

    “I believe NC State did this as recently as the 2005-06 year and it was hardly hailed as much of an achievement.”

    Exactly. It shouldn’t be that big a deal for at least one of those three teams to make the post season (92.4% of BCS schools did so this year) and we couldn’t even pull that off.

  15. ruffles31 05/05/2008 at 11:31 AM #

    Interesting find here. That’s a depressing list of 6 teams. What are the chances though that one team is from each conference in the listing of the drought infested universities? It would be one thing if our AD was new and he/she was cleaning house. It is another thing to be on this list when our AD has been in place for 8 years.

    So, can we say that this data shows that due to AD tenure, we have worst revenue program in the BCS conferences for the past two seasons? I think so.

  16. roandaddy 05/05/2008 at 11:47 AM #

    South Carolina and NC State are long lost twins seperated at birth. Its why I think this year’s football game will be fun to watch.. or scary (sad) to watch.. can’t decide.

    NC State has history on its side.. but both programs in recent years seem to fail to meet expectations. Heck, look at the basketball game this year.. SC was picked LAST in the SEC and State beat them by 1. Corso predicts SC to win the SEC East.. wow.. so I wouldn’t be surprised by a 3 point field goal to win it.

  17. roandaddy 05/05/2008 at 11:57 AM #

    Some random SC facts to back up my “seperated at birth” claim:

    SC hired a former Fl State assist as football coach (Brad Scott), SC hired an assist from a major program from another conference (Eddie Fogler), SC hired a football coach that coached for a team in the SAME DIVISION (Steve Spurrier), SC has not had a fball or bball head coach leave for “a better opportunity” in decades..

    just some random thoughts…

  18. SMD 05/05/2008 at 12:58 PM #

    I’ve got a question –

    As wonderful of all these stats showing our athletic shortcomings are, are the efforts at all turning up the heat on Fowler? Surely there are some posters who are plugged into the WPC and administration that can shed some light on this for us.

    I can tell you that the WPC isn’t very happy with this blog, as they think all that it does is focus on the negative. (SFN – don’t shoot the messenger – we all know the difference between facts and “negative” – I was just relaying what I know.)

    SFN: Don’t you love the WPC’s focus? Instead of working to make improvements and changes…and instead of taking any kind of accountability for the sad reality that is our department…they worry about supposedly insiginificant internet blogs and tell their constituencies how ‘bad’ we are. Unfortunately for them…’we’ ARE them. I’m willing to bet a majority of our readers are WPC members. You do the connecting of the dots.

  19. 66pack 05/05/2008 at 1:01 PM #

    TRIP who has Lee fired—maybe one coach.

  20. choppack1 05/05/2008 at 1:20 PM #

    SMD – when you say the “Wolfpack Club” do you mean the leadership of the WPC or do you mean that vast majority of the members? There’s a huge difference.

    SFN: He means the people who work at the WPC. They are told that we are bad…and, they therefore have to believe. It certainly isn’t the majority of WPC members who ‘dislike’ the blog. WE ARE the average WPC members!

  21. Noah 05/05/2008 at 1:40 PM #

    If I was trying to raise money for the WPC, I wouldn’t like this site either. Basically, this site says that funds raised for the NC State athletics are currently being wasted.

    Hard to argue otherwise.

  22. ruffles31 05/05/2008 at 1:50 PM #

    It’s funny how the WPC thinks this blog is too negative, if I understand you correctly. Well, let’s take a look (and this is a VERY small sample and nothing statistically significant can be garnered from this so-called analysis). Just looking at the entries on the front page we have the following (assuming I am the Wolfpack Club):

    NCSU in a Positive Light:

    -Sunday Focus: Philip Rivers & Matt Ryan
    -Writing on the wall for JJ; Look to Big Ced for example
    -Pack Nine Providing Hope For a Title (FINALLY!)
    -DaJuan Morgan joins Tank Tyler in Kansas City; D Pressley to New Orleans
    -Elliot Avent Interview
    -Chip Alexander Q&A with TOB
    -40,000 in 2017
    -Spring Game Doesn’t Provide Much to Discuss

    NCSU in a Negative Light:

    -Postseason Drought
    -Get Your Nevada Memorabilia at GoPack.com
    -NCAA & ACC Championships since 2000
    -NCAA honors 712 teams, 192 schools (NC State not one of them)
    -Fowler Makes His Performance a Public Issue; Sidney Lowe Q&A with Chip Alexander
    -ACC Championship Weekend yields no titles for Pack

    Not really emphasizing NCSU:

    -Refreshing Involvement (UM)
    -ACC Eyes Expanding BBall Schedule; Guess who is interviewed? (ACC)
    -Barbrady mentality (UNC)
    -ACC’s NFL draft success continues to be unappreciated (ACC)
    -Are You on Facebook?
    -Mark Phelps Hired at Drake (ex-NCSU coach)

    So, let’s look at the totals:

    Positive: 8
    Negative: 6
    Other: 6

    Yeah, this blog is REALLY negative. The only two entries I had to think about where to place them were the Mark Phelps hiring and the 40,000 students by 2017. I decided that Phelps was gone long enough to make it neutral and well, the more students, the better.

    It is interesting though if you look at the entries. The positive entries tend to be about individuals and not athletic teams (baseball excluded). The negative entries tend to be about the performances of our athletic teams and the overall athletic program. Then there are other entries that have relevance on this board.

    So, from a WPC perspective, and I am merely putting that hat on here, as long as this blog discusses individuals and not teams, we approve of this blog.

  23. SMD 05/05/2008 at 2:31 PM #

    To hone the point down a little farther – my personal impression is that the “WPC” actually means the leadership, director and BoD. The staff is in a real catch-22 and I feel sorry for them. Their job is to represent our school, so of course they can’t say “Fowler sucks” or what have you. They have to be positive in public.

    So when I say that “the WPC” thinks this blog is negative, it means the proverbial “powers that be” rather than the WPC as a whole.

    I would be that most SFN readers are WPC members. Hopefully, discussing our pitiful athletics record without letting up will one day bring about the change we wish to see.

  24. Daily Update 05/05/2008 at 2:37 PM #

    The baseball team is having a fantastic season and has been featured several times here. With the exam break and some less interesting games against High Point and Campbell, there just wasn’t that much to talk about in the past week or so.

    It picks back up this week though with games against Wilmington and Maryland.

    Other than baseball, what exactly would people in the WPC want NC State blogs to cover? The football program has hit a 20 year lowpoint the last four years and the basketball program had one of the most disappointing seasons in the last several decades compared to expectations.

    In terms of fundraising and building facilities, the WPC has done a phenomenal job as has been highlighted with how we rank in terms of BCS schools in annual donations and capital funds raised.

    How many people are there that really have an impact in terms of the decisions that are made at NC State? You have the AD, the Chancellor, the top people at the WPC(maybe they aren’t involved at all?), the BOT, and maybe several other very large donors. Can there really be more than 20-30 people involved with the decisions in regards NC? I am sure these folks don’t appreciate this blog.

  25. BoKnowsNCS71 05/05/2008 at 2:44 PM #

    This blog has been negative for a while but I think it reflects the funk NCSU fans are in about the athletics program. It seems for the past 20 years we have been like like that Greek person who would push the rock up the mountain only to have it roll all the way back down. So far 4th place in ACC football is the closest we have gotten. And basketball I cannot even venture a guess.

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