GoGamecocks.com
Morris: N.C. State, USC run in similar pack
USC head football coach Steve Spurrier answers questions during a press conference at Williams-Brice Stadium, Tuesday, September 1, 2009.
Gerry Melendez/gmelendez@thestate.com
Posted on 09.02.09
CommentsRelated Content
- [Video] Moe Brown and Eric Norwood comment on N.C. State
- Gamecocks play the numbers game
- Defense priority for Gilmore and Matthews
- Better chemistry excites players
- Geathers OK to return
- Morris: Spurrier success relies on run game
- Five questions with George Rogers
- Unproven Maddox steps into featured role
- Practice report: Spurrier addresses smack talk
survey:
RALEIGH
THE TWO PROGRAMS THAT will kick off the college season Thursday night at Carter-Finley Stadium are eerily similar, and their likeness goes beyond nearly identical records over more than a century each of football.
South Carolina and N.C. State each have had their moments, however brief, in the sun. USC claims a single ACC championship in 1969. N.C. State counts seven league titles, its last in 1979.
USC can boast of 1980 Heisman Trophy winner George Rogers and a couple of Outback Bowl victories against Ohio State. Jim Richter won the Outland Trophy for N.C. State in 1979, and the Wolfpack have won a dozen bowl games over the years.
For the most part, though, the two programs have been mired in mediocrity. Each has had an occasional foray into the big time but, in general, has operated on the fringes.
USC carries a 527-530-44 all-time record into Thursday’s game. N.C. State’s record is 529-520-44. So closely linked are the two programs over the years, their series record is 26-26-4.
Showing how USC and N.C. State are comparable is the easy part, all the way down to experiencing their glory years under the same head coach. USC went 8-4 and 9-3 under Lou Holtz in 2000 and 2001, finishing above .500 in the SEC both seasons. N.C. State won 33 games in four seasons under Holtz from 1972-75 and captured a couple of bowl wins.
Explaining why the programs are so much alike is another story. The best guess is both programs staked a claim to national fame because of men’s basketball and their association with the powerful ACC in that sport. At the same time, it has been a struggle for both schools to establish a reputation as a football power.
Les Robinson coached basketball at N.C. State and served as its athletics director in the 1980s. He has since watched South Carolina athletics closely, most recently as The Citadel’s athletics director.
Robinson has long held the belief that an imaginary line runs down the Appalachian Mountains through Tennessee south into northern Alabama. For the most part, and Robinson recognizes his theory as a generalization, those major college programs to the south and west of his line take a liking to football. Those to the east and north take a shine to basketball.
“It’s very difficult to change cultures,” Robinson says. “The SEC has had some great basketball teams, but the culture of that area is to love football. And the ACC has had some very, very good football teams, counting Florida State and Maryland with some national championships, but to change the culture of the last 50 years doesn’t happen overnight.”
N.C. State always has been a basketball school. Everett Case is credited with bringing big-time college basketball to the state of North Carolina when he left his Indiana roots for N.C. State in the 1940s. The Wolfpack won national championships in 1974 and 1983.
“You can’t make people in Kentucky like football more than basketball. Fans decide that,” Robinson says by way of example. “When you’ve got three and four generations of (basketball) fans, and your great-great grandfather was a basketball ticket-holder at N.C. State and went to the Dixie Classic, that just remains in people’s legacies.”
The same held true at USC where Frank McGuire established a national powerhouse in basketball while the program was a member of the ACC. Only when USC joined the SEC did it seriously begin to consider itself more of a football school than basketball.
“South Carolina is pretty Johnny-Come-Lately in the SEC compared to the Floridas, Tennessees, Alabamas and Auburns,” Robinson says.
To change a school’s athletic culture means to get the proper coach in place for football and for the program to make a commitment to the sport. That commitment, according to the athletics directors at both schools, comes first and foremost in significant upgrades in facilities.
“It’s been a real labor of love for these first nine years with facilities to try to get them on the level with that (elite)-type program, and I think we are there,” says Lee Fowler, who enters his 10th year as N.C. State’s athletics director.
“I also think we have the coaches to get us there now,” he says of third-year coach Tom O’Brien. “It’s not the easiest thing. Some of these top 25 programs in football have been doing it for 50 years. We have the coach and the program and the stadium to get it done now.”
N.C. State plays its games in a 57,000-seat stadium that features 955 club seats and 115 luxury suites. The Murphy Football Center in one end zone is a 100,000 square-foot operations center considered among the finest in the country.
Unfortunately for USC, it has been guilty of smearing lipstick on a pig when it comes to facilities. Only in the past two years has a capital fund-raising campaign begun to improve facilities for all sports, most notably football.
“We’re trying to get into the 21st century,” says Eric Hyman, USC’s athletics director, regarding facilities. “There are schools that addressed this issue many, many years ago.”
Hyman says all revenue generated from the recently instituted seat-licensing program and increased ticket prices for football have been plowed back into facilities improvements. Those already include a new training room at Williams-Brice Stadium, a new football lobby, the purchase of the Farmers Market property on Bluff Road and the soon to be completed academic enrichment center for athletics.
It represents the start of a culture change at both schools, one that takes time and money, of which both schools seem willing to pay.
“Vision is expensive,” Hyman says. “Lack of vision is even more expensive.”
Listen to Morris Tuesdays from 4-5 p.m. on ESPN Radio 93.1 FM.
Most Viewed Stories
- USC recruit could be removed from high school
- SEC basketball: Midseason report
- SEC releases baseball TV schedule
- Morris: USC's Nainima develops into star
- USC Taking Look At Florida Lineman
- Townsend Says Clemson Making Strong Push Right Now
- Break hurts Bradley's hand, USC's lineup
- Mauldin's Norton Grew Up A Gamecock Fan
- Bone named SEC freshman of the week again
- Recruiting: Compare and contrast never ends
@Nyx.CommentBody@