North Carolina State University Athletics
Pack's Eagerly Anticipated Season Finally Arrives
8/29/2003 12:00:00 AM | Football
Aug. 29, 2003
By Tony Haynes
Raleigh, N.C.-It's really never been quite like this. It wasn't even this way when a peculiar little bespectacled man named Lou Holtz was producing magic tricks on and off the field in the mid-70s. The fact is that NC State football is on fire. Local and national media coverage of the Wolfpack has been unprecedented at a school known more for its periodical success on the basketball court. Want to purchase a ticket for Saturday night's opener against Western Carolina? Forget it. Want to buy a ticket to any Wolfpack home game this season? Sorry.
Season tickets, all 32,000 of them, were gone by late May. Not long after that, every single seat inside Carter-Finley Stadium had been claimed.
Coming off an 11-3 season that's been called the best in school history, NC State, ranked 13th in this week's coaches poll, wants a little more. Dangling out there like a fat carrot is the ACC title, a championship the Wolfpack hasn't won in 24 years. Win the ACC title and who knows?
"The first step is winning the conference," said senior quarterback Philip Rivers, who is on the verge of shattering almost all of the ACC's career passing records. "You can't get there if you don't win the conference. You win the conference and it puts you in a BCS Bowl. Then everything else takes care of itself."
Rivers and the Pack seemed destined to reach their dreams a year ago before a late-season three-game slide interrupted the storybook ending. After starting 9-0, NC State settled for an appearance in the Gator Bowl, which resulted in a resounding victory over Notre Dame on News Years Day.
There were some harsh lessons learned during those three agonizingly close losses to Georgia Tech, Maryland and Virginia late in the 2002 campaign. NC State's players now understand how one turnover here or one penalty there can change the complexion of an entire season.
"Those games made us learn," Rivers said. "It's going to help us protect against all those blitzes and do the little things that make a difference. You hope you don't have to learn from it; you hope you win them all. But when those kind of things happen you learn from them."
Entering this weekend's opener against Western Carolina, Rivers is surrounded by an array of weapons that might be unmatched in the annals of NC State football. Returning is a 1,000-yard rusher in T.A. McLendon and a 1,000-yard receiver in Jerricho Cotchery. Throw in lightning-quick youngsters like Richard Washington and Tramain Hall and you have the makings of an offense that should be able to generate quick-strike scores from anywhere on the field.
But not all is perfect in the world of Wolfpack football. Depth could be an issue on the offensive line. Already this preseason, senior Chris Colmer, a first-team All-ACC tackle last year, has been slowed by a perplexing nerve injury in one of his arms.
On the other side of the ball, a young defensive line continues to take a crash course in Chuck Amato football 101, a course that's designed to start paying dividends two or three years down the road. This season, however, a number of young players who have never started a college football game will be thrown into the fire and asked to produce right away. How quickly they learn and mature will have a lot to say about what kind of year NC State will have.
"We're not worried about it," shrugged rookie defensive end Mario Williams when asked if we was tired of people suggesting that the Pack's defensive line will be a weak link. "We just block that out. A lot of people say it, but we just blow it off."
Amato, the head coach, still isn't sure about what he has on the defensive front. After watching NC State lead the ACC in sacks last year, he wonders if this new rebuilt unit will be good enough to pressure opposing quarterbacks on a consistent basis.
"Before the season's out, we could very easily have two true freshmen and a redshirt freshman starting on the defensive line," Amato said. "I've coached enough games to know that that's not the way you lead the nation in total defense."
In Saturday's opener, getting pressure on the quarterback will be vital, especially since Western Carolina used a spread offense to lead the Southern Conference in passing last season.
For what it's worth, NC State has outscored the Catamounts 181-37 in the previous four games that have been played between to two schools. This will be the first meeting since the Wolfpack's 38-13 triumph in 1994.
"When you play any team from the state where you come from there's going to be excitement and a lot of people screaming and yelling for each team," Amato said. "You can just imagine what goes on in the locker rooms before the games. They expect to have a good team this year. We're looking forward to them coming down here."
NC State's all-time record in season openers is 79-27-4 (.736). In home openers, the Pack is 61-10-3 (.844).
