The Facts:

N.C. State football completed its fourth consecutive losing season Saturday. The Wolfpack’s final record, 5-7, wasn’t enough to preclude the making of celebratory T-shirts after a UNC-CH victory.

Our Opinion:

Wolfpack Athletics has devolved to the point where fans only care about the Carolina game, almost as a means of coping with the team’s poor performances. The Carolina game is not the only one of the year and doesn’t validate otherwise poor results.

Twenty years ago, under the stewardship of Dick Sheridan, Wolfpack nation would have been discussing bowl selections this time of year. Nowadays, the only thing it can savor is a victory against the Tar Heels. Since the football team’s victory Saturday most of N.C. State fans seem to have been swept into some sort of “beat Carolina” frenzy.

As a matter of fact, the football team’s ability to win the Carolina game the past three years has pulled the wool over many fans eyes and seems to have created a culture of losing acceptance.

Tom O’Brien has led the Wolfpack to three straight losing seasons — its fourth in a row overall, dating back to Chuck Amato’s final season in Raleigh. The merits of the team’s performance compared to its projected finish falls into the realm of Bill Simmons and statisticians, but the losing culture is not wholly to blame on Athletics. The fans who support Wolfpack Athletics are just as much to blame.

The football game against UNC-CH Saturday was, in many fans’ eyes, the highlight of the season. Despite posting a 5-7 final record, a victory against the University’s archrival cleansed the team of mediocrity and caused Tom O’Brien to say that the game had done “tremendous” amounts for the program’s future.

The sentiment was echoed by the GoPack store, which had shirts available Monday celebrating the victory.

Beating Carolina is an accomplishment to be sure, and nothing should be taken away from the hard work of the student athletes on the field, their coaches and the fans who cheered them on, but one victory does not absolve a long streak of losing football seasons.

Celebratory T-shirts make the fan base look as though it only cares about one game. The Tar Heels may have lost to the Wolfpack for the third straight year, but their fans can boast a team gearing up for a bowl game.

Beating Carolina should be a goal of all of the University’s athletics teams, from volleyball and football to basketball and baseball, but it shouldn’t be the only goal.

If fans had been celebrating a 9-3 season, capped off with a win against Chapel Hill, perhaps T-shirts would be justified. But there really isn’t much merit to reveling in a single victory during a disappointing season.