North Carolina State University Athletics
Q&A With Athletics Director Lee Fowler
12/19/2000 12:00:00 AM | Pack Athletics
TH: What are your top priorities for the athletics department as we head into the New Year?
LF: "Promoting and selling tickets is always important. This season we've come close to selling out [the ESA for men's basketball] and we've come close to selling out for football. I'm restructuring the department, having people report to a couple different people and that sort of thing. We're just trying to get everybody on the same page and move forward. A lot of the things we'll be doing concern facility improvements. We've already started the process of getting a new football building and we're also in the beginning phases of trying to improve the baseball and tennis facilities.
When football moves out of the Weisiger-Brown building, that will allow us to have a lot of new space and help us take care of some of our gender situations with teams that don't have proper locker rooms and that sort of thing. I'm really excited about the opportunities here. The football building will open up a lot of opportunities to do it for a lot less money than we would have otherwise, and really get our programs up to ACC levels and national levels. I think in the next four or five years you're really going to see our facilities become top 20 facilities, which will help our coaches be in the top 20 of all sports."
TH: What's the updated timetable on the football facilities?
LF: "We met with some contractors and we think it's going to be a 12-14 month process after we get started. We'll probably start on the seats in the south end zone in March. We hope to have them available for next year; there will be about 2,000 chairback seats, which will be really exciting for our fans to have nice 21-inch seats in a great location. We'll start the process with the building once the drawings are finished. The Wolfpack Club is really interested in making sure we have a guaranteed price before we get started. Sometime around January of 2003, we'll begin the process of moving football and hopefully getting our other sports fixed up with other facilities."
TH: Technically, Damon Thornton will be eligible to play in Friday's home basketball game against UNC-Asheville. I know you and coach Sendek will meet this week to talk about Damon's status. What criteria will you use to make that decision?
LF: "Pretty much like we've done the whole time. We're very much concerned about Damon. We feel good about the things he's done. We're waiting to see what his grades were this first semester. Every aspect of his life from the time that happened to now will go into making that decision. We hope to make it on the 20th. Herb will have a press conference that day to announce what's going to happen. I met with Damon for about an hour and a half the other day. We did a lot of talking and he knows that if he comes back, he knows that he's not going to be well received by a lot of ACC fans and that sort of thing. I think we've done a good job of getting him prepared for all aspects of the thing if he does come back. If things don't work out, we want to make sure the young man has a chance to succeed. He's only one or two courses from graduation. We want to make sure he gets that degree like we do with all of our young men and women."
