As students prepare to return to campus, the N.C. State football team has been working hard in Raleigh for most of the summer determined to improve on last year’s 7-6 mark, and first-year head coach Dave Doeren will look to bring the success he had at Northern Illinois to Carter-Finley Stadium.
After last season’s loss to Vanderbilt in the Music City Bowl, few Wolfpack fans were ecstatic about 2013. Quarterback Mike Glennon is now with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and several other contributors, including David Amerson, Earl Wolff, Sterling Lucas and Tobais Palmer, also moved on. As in many years past, many fans of the red and white predicted a rough 2013.
But the writers gathered at the ACC Football Kickoff in Greensboro last week, thought the Wolfpack faithful were being a little too hard on their team. They collectively picked State to finish third in the Atlantic Division behind Clemson and Florida State. With the ACC expanding to 14 teams for 2013 and beyond, that’s the top half of the division—not too shabby for a team with a new coach and a yet-to-be-resolved quarterback competition in a BCS conference.
As we learned last season, preseason predictions don’t mean much.
A positive for the Pack is its schedule. Eight of its 12 games will be played within the friendly confines of Carter-Finley, with a short bus trip to Duke and a slightly longer one to Wake Forest also on the docket. The only two regular season games for which State will leave North Carolina are trips to Boston College and Florida State. Pack fans have always traveled well to in-state road games, which should help us at least partially negate any home-field advantage our opponents might otherwise enjoy.
Additionally, the Wolfpack’s nonconference schedule is on the soft side. The Wolfpack will open on Aug. 31 against Louisiana Tech, a team that finished 9-3 last season but did not play in a bowl game. The Bulldogs lost their 2012 starting quarterback to graduation and their coach, Sonny Dykes, to the University of California, so they figure to be in flux as well. The Pack then faces FCS opponent Richmond the next week before hosting Clemson, the overwhelming favorite to win the ACC, in an ESPN Thursday night game on Sept. 19. State’s other two nonconference games are against Central Michigan and East Carolina.
I’m not normally a fan of scheduling soft. I feel that BCS programs that schedule other power conference teams will always be better off in the long run. My dad always used to tell me that the best way to get better is to play those who are better than you.
But in State’s case, with a new coaching staff, a new offense and a new quarterback, it might not be such a bad thing. There is no substitute for winning. There will be growing pains, but better they happen in the first couple games than when UNC-Chapel Hill comes to town.
The conference schedule is, as usual, a mixed bag. The Wolfpack caught a bit of a break with expansion as new Atlantic member Syracuse, a mediocre football school, replaces preseason Coastal Division favorite Miami on the schedule. In addition to the entire Atlantic Division, the Pack will host the rival Tar Heels, picked third, and travel to Duke, picked seventh, from the Coastal.
As cliché as it sounds, every game is winnable. With the schedule State has, there’s no reason why they can’t go to a better bowl game than last season or prove the writers wrong and exceed their preseason prediction. ACC football is always a Forrest Gump-esque box of chocolates–you never know what you’re going to get–and this season should be no different.
