North Carolina State University Athletics
Football Preseason Diary, Entry 21
8/30/2001 12:00:00 AM | Football
Aug. 30, 2001
I had every intention of writing last night, but we didn't leave Carter-Finley until after 10:30, so I decided to wait until this morning. Things have gotten into that frenzied mode around here - there just aren't enough hours in the day to get everything done.
Last night we held our "dress rehearsal" out at the stadium. Everything was done like a game situation. The guys went in the lockerroom, did their whole pregame warmup routine. The coaches used the sideline phones up to the coaches box - we even had crowd noise piped in. The moon wasn't full, but it was close - I almost expected to start hearing wolves howl!
Before the scrimmage started, our marketing folks, Ann Marie Sales and Monica Sawyer, gave us a preview of the pregame intro. for the video boards. I'm not going to breath a word about it, but let's just say I think it will get our fans pretty excited before kickoff!
We started about 7:30 and finished after 10:30. By the end of the scrimmage, Coach Amato was telling the starters to get out of the game. They were pretty excited until they realized they were going to have to run in the endzones while the backups continued scrimmaging!
At one point during the rehearsal, I looked way over in the corner of the stadium and there was our head coach. I guess he likes to see his team from different vantage points.
Before the workout, Coach Amato announced the team captains for the season. The coaches vote on the temporary captains and then after the regular season, the team votes on the permanent captains - the ones who will go down in the record books. This year's captains will be Ray Robinson and Willie Wright on offense, Levar Fisher and Corey Smith on defense and Brian Williams for special teams. The officials will only let four guys go out to midfield for the coin toss and somebody told Levar he had to be the one to stand back last night. Needless to say, he argued that call!
Today, we have our first football press conference of the season. We usually have them right here on campus, but to get the season off to a good start, we're going to Tony's Bourbon Street Oyster Bar in Cary. For some reason, the players have been a little more excited about attending a press conference when there is food involved!
The first ESPN crew will come in on Monday to tape some stuff (wait - you didn't think we would take Labor Day off around here, did you?) and then the trucks will pull in on Tuesday afternoon.
