Clemson sure has elite recruits and new elite facilities... Any way we can catch up to them in the next 5 years under Fedora?
Clemson Elite
- Thread starter allteamball
- Start date
Fedora has his work cut out for him, but he has taken the first step which is winning. That builds fan interest, which puts butts in seats and improves the atmosphere in Kenan. Those things all make the school more attractive to elite recruits. So do improved facilities, which is why I was excited to hear the announcement last fall that UNC is building an indoor practice facility.
The football program finally has an AD in place who understands its importance. Bubba confirmed as much during an interview when XM College Sports was on campus last week. IMO this program is in really, really good shape with him and Larry at the helm.
The football program finally has an AD in place who understands its importance. Bubba confirmed as much during an interview when XM College Sports was on campus last week. IMO this program is in really, really good shape with him and Larry at the helm.
Yes. Bubba is the perfect AD for us as Tar Heel football fans. Why? He is a Notre Dame grad. His degree and then years of working for ND give him cover. Bubba knows what we need and how important it is to the entire athletics department.
And I think Fedora is ideal for us. He is filled with energy, and he seems to relish the idea of accomplishing something new.
I agree. I love Fedora. Clemson has set the bar high and set a high standard of excellence at the national level, and I think we are on the right track to be an elite football program. We can have an elite football program, as well. I firmly believe it. UNC speaks for itself. We just need leadership to guide us to the next level. I think we have the foundation in place.
We do need to create an atmosphere similar to death valley at our home games. It will take some work but it can be done. I hate to say it but the wolfpack have upped their gameday experience exponentially
We do need to create an atmosphere similar to death valley at our home games. It will take some work but it can be done. I hate to say it but the wolfpack have upped their gameday experience exponentially
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Tuff to do..catch up in 3 years...
UNC could increase football attendance by 50% and still be less than Clemson's average attendance.
In the last class, Clemson had double the 5-4 stars that UNC did...Tar Heels would have to double recruiting production at the higher ratings.
It would likely be a half decade project...or more
UNC could increase football attendance by 50% and still be less than Clemson's average attendance.
In the last class, Clemson had double the 5-4 stars that UNC did...Tar Heels would have to double recruiting production at the higher ratings.
It would likely be a half decade project...or more
Yep. And now we just need to start taking home some wins in games against big boy opponents. That will help us a lot with recruiting if we can up our wins profile.
ncstatelol could up their game day experience to Green Bay Packer level and they would still step all over their own balls and ruin it.
they will always be moo , can't ever change that. 3rd fiddle.
UNC will be very good this year, as they were last.
The trick will be to line up a five-six year run of double digit wins...this year will be #6 for Clemson, #5 for FSU...#2 for the Heels.
Putting together strings of double digit years is an indication of a top level "program" rather than a good "team".
The trick will be to line up a five-six year run of double digit wins...this year will be #6 for Clemson, #5 for FSU...#2 for the Heels.
Putting together strings of double digit years is an indication of a top level "program" rather than a good "team".
I don't think there's any doubt about this. We're pretty far behind at this stage of our program's development. Clemson is a football power right now. And good for them. After UNC and Navy, they're my favorite football team. I'd love for us to become as good in football as the Tigers are.
As has been discussed here before, I think that we need to enhance our tailgating opportunities and that will take cooperation from the University. That is such a big part of the game day experience at many prominent football schools and it could be at UNC if we made a concerted effort to do so. Right now, we're just not very tailgate friendly and that's a darn shame.
I firmly believe that if you build it, they will come. IOW, sustained success over a half decade will greatly improve attendance. Last year was a good start, now we need to build on that and post another double digit win season to continue the momentum. An opening season win against a team which has traditionally been a SEC football power would certainly be a confidence builder for our burgeoning program.
I feel really good about us doing just that. Heels 38, Georgia 35.
if LFed has put together this team while dealing with scholarship restrictions and negative recruiting, do not underestimate the man...
he and Bubba have a plan...
if both are in Chapel Hill 10 years from now I fully expect us to have a national championship trophy in Kenan's foyer and I am well aware you need a certain amount of luck to pull this off in any given year...
I believe we have an AD who understands the value of hanging onto the right coach...
and this might come sooner than you think...
he and Bubba have a plan...
if both are in Chapel Hill 10 years from now I fully expect us to have a national championship trophy in Kenan's foyer and I am well aware you need a certain amount of luck to pull this off in any given year...
I believe we have an AD who understands the value of hanging onto the right coach...
and this might come sooner than you think...
First mention of it here, but it bears repeating. Fedora has done all this with one hand tied behind his back.
He said in the XM interview last week that he's finally seeing the culture he wants at UNC, but the biggest challenge is still depth. He went on to say he meant quality depth, i.e. not being so reliant on freshmen in the 2-deep.
I was watching a practice with Chizk where he was mic'd up and he was telling another coach just how much better the players were running the drills this year as compared to last year at this time. That guy makes me want to lace 'em up and hit somebody.
Listening to that man fire up the troops last year made me want to wreck someone. I'm afraid if I hear him do it again I'll end up next door punching my neighbor in the face.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GO TAR HEELS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The first thing is to get rid of the either or mentality between basketball fans and football fans. Of course there will always be a love affair for the sport which brought the university the most glory. With UF going back to back in basketball and then in football, UNC is more than capable of achieving that type of success and sustaining that type of success. Again, winning cures everything.
It's always going to be hard for them to get ahead as long as Swofford and the UNC Illuminati are trying to hold them down.
Per @tarheel0910, my game is tight in this thread.
***Bringing a little OOTB humor to the Blitz. Is that allowed?***
***Bringing a little OOTB humor to the Blitz. Is that allowed?***
You should talk to @UNC71-00 about this. He knows a guy.
Dude is a moo fan too. Of course, given that his issues are with mowing grass, y'all probably knew this.
This neighbor is a gator fan who all of a sudden now loves UGA for the next couple of weeks. I get the ACC vs sec but you can't be a gator and pull for UGA, you just can't. Seriously, if UF was playing moo I wouldn't pull for moo. Hell I might even go punch him anyway.
This is a good thread with discussion. Clemson is certainly the bench mark program we need to have our sights on right now (although FSU is right there too). I'll hit on a couple things here:
But yeah, the only way to fix this is to post 10-win seasons for multiple years in a row (something we've basically never done by the way). That will attract more sidewalk fans, which we desperately need to fill the seats in Kenan. Notice how you see Alabama fans and stickers on cars everywhere now? That can happen to UNC too if we win for a prolonged period of time. Unfortunately, we don't have the fanbase like NC State has, where they'll pack the house regardless of record (Yeah, I said it. Mooers are stupid and crazy, but they're often better at supporting their program with butts in football), so we have to improve fan attendance by:
1). Winning for a prolonged period of time
2). Making tailgating a thing and making people want to take part in it.
Absolutely true. It's way, way beyond time for the University to facilitate tailgating. The town of Chapel Hill has shown its ass way too many times and has proven it won't allow adequate tailgating off-campus near Franklin. Therefore, open up the campus. There are PLENTY of ways to do it on campus and protect the sacred trees and bushes (the underlined said with tongue firmly planted in cheek) and prevent the campus from looking like that infamously circulated UGA campus pic from 9-10 years back of their trashed law library quad. Look to schools like Alabama.....they have a fantastic, incredible tailgating set-up, facilitated by the University, that would blow your damn mind. As for the trash? Plenty of folks in and around Chapel Hill need jobs....that's a damn fact. There ya go, hire them to clean up trash afterwards and get the environmentally-conscious clubs at UNC to oversee the cleanup and grab out recyclable material. Win-win-win.
It is an unfortunate truth yet a truth all the same that UNC's fan support (in terms of attendance) is balanced on the edge of a knife. If we lose to UGA....Kenan will be at no more than 45,000 people for our first home game against James Madison (even if we beat Illinois). If we beat UGA and lose to Illinois....same thing. If we beat both, we MAY get to 55,000 because of the opponent. Carolina's fanbase is what it is. We don't pack the house unless our team is ranked and the other team is reputable.
But yeah, the only way to fix this is to post 10-win seasons for multiple years in a row (something we've basically never done by the way). That will attract more sidewalk fans, which we desperately need to fill the seats in Kenan. Notice how you see Alabama fans and stickers on cars everywhere now? That can happen to UNC too if we win for a prolonged period of time. Unfortunately, we don't have the fanbase like NC State has, where they'll pack the house regardless of record (Yeah, I said it. Mooers are stupid and crazy, but they're often better at supporting their program with butts in football), so we have to improve fan attendance by:
1). Winning for a prolonged period of time
2). Making tailgating a thing and making people want to take part in it.
That's messed up. My mom's side of the family and my ex's family are all Gators, and they wouldn't be caught dead rooting for Georgia. Just show your neighbor this clip from 2007 as a refresher:
I just wanted to quote this out of context so you will be pelted with beer cans and rotten fruit.
And yes, '92, your neighbor is a weirdo. He must've not gone to UF. Pulling for the SEC to win just because they're SEC is what the small-minded SCar fans do since their team usually sucks and because they have no SEC rivals because it's not their original conference.
No true Florida fan would ever pull for UGA
Yeah, it'll be really interesting to see attendance vs Pitt if we beat UGA. Pitt will be our second home game of the yr, but the first is James Madison - so I don't expect much for that. Pitt might not have a great record since they have Penn State and OKie state prior to us, but it should be a decent gauge of how interested/excited the fanbase is.
With all due respect, why shouldn't the James Madison game be sold out? (I know it won't be, so I'm not bashing you, I'm just asking a question). We only get a precious few 7 or 6 home games a season. Why on earth does any of our fanbase treat any of those 6/7 games as a throwaway game? The JMU game will be badly attended, but....why? We are coming off, arguably, the best football season in our entire history and should be good again this season. It's very frustrating that these two facts aren't enough and we won't be able to sell a game out.
By the way.......it ain't like our stadium is big. Hell, our stadium is smaller than Virginia's. It makes it even more pathetic and embarrassing that we don't sell games out.
If the JMU game is sold out, then we obviously don't have to wait for the Pitt game to determine if we're now a rabid fanbase
If JMU was a nite game AND we beat uga, then JMU would be a decent measuring stick too. (and we'd be extra sad if it wasn't packed, eh? I can already smell the slight frustration if the crowd is weak... maybe more tweets from Bug)
oh, and to answer your semi-rhetorical, like Archer2 says, crappy tailgating and a few lengthy mediocre streaks might be the key, but there is some third component missing and it explains the same reason why bb fans show up late, leave early and are sometimes not so rabid.
Yeah, our fanbase is lousy and front-runners. That's not a secret
think this could change with or without the tail-gate factor?
It's tough to say how linked the two are, but I will give two examples of things:
1). I know for a fact that non-NC State fans go tailgate at Carter-Finley on game days just because it's become such an event. Stands to reason, a few of these folks will end up getting swept up in the pre-game fervor and will scalp a ticket and go in to the game.
2). Halloween is an "event" in downtown Chapel Hill. People drive from all over the state to be here for Halloween.
Those are two examples of how you can make something an event and draw people in who ordinarily wouldn't be there. So, maybe better tailgating won't lead to 10,000 more people every Saturday, but even if it leads to 2,500 more people every Saturday, it's worth it. Plus, it's a way to reward the fans......and rewarding fans is a nice touch in 2016 when everything schools and conferences do is a slap in the face of fans (bigger conferences that kill rivalries, neutral-site games that are 3x as expensive, game times not announced until 12 days before, etc.)
Your point about rewarding the fans can't be overstated IMO. Costs associated with attending games keep going up and the University treats fans like they're a nuisance. There are lots of things the University could do to improve the tailgating experience, some of which were mentioned above. Relaxing parking restrictions on game day is another big one.
And while I've no doubt it would significantly improve attendance, it would show appreciation for the fans, something taken for granted and long overdue, IMO.
These new-fangled "neutral site games" that lots of schools, including Carolina, are doing to start off their season (examples this year are Wiscy-LSU at Lambeau, USC-Alabama in Texas, and the yearly CFA game) are a BITCH for fans to attend, from a cost standpoint.
I paid more for four tickets to the game against UGA, than I did for two entire season tickets for UNC Football this season. Let that sink in. Everything I've read says that schools will continue to do these neutral site games because they make a ton of money for them, more than a regular home game (this is true). However, this screws the fans in two main ways:
1). Opportunity cost of getting a good home-and-home OOC scheduled. Elite OOC home-and-homes are quickly disappearing in college football. Schools are opting for these one-off neutral site match-ups. That's bad for fans.
2). Price gouge which leads to lesser attendance at home games for schools like UNC that don't have a huge fanbase (talking about fanbase that will actually realistically pay to attend a game). Schools with huge fanbases like Alabama can do these neutral-site kickoff games for forever if they want. UNC's fanbase is too fickle. They wont buy those tickets and buy regular home game tickets, a lot of the time.
You say neutral-site games are bad for fans. It's important to clarify, they're only bad for fans of the teams playing. It's great for everybody else since they get to see quality early-season match ups.
You guys are forgetting the reason that these schools don't care that much about attendance, which is it doesn't bring in the big money. TV contracts are where the money comes in. In some ways it actually helps that more people are watching on TV instead of showing up at the game. An additional 5k fans watching on TV makes more money than those 5k watching in Kenan. Unless you can get these athletic departments to believe it's financially beneficial for them to put more effort into getting people in the stadium, they have little incentive to do so.
Incorrect. Schools still care a lot about home game attendance...thus all the hand-wringing over 8 vs. 9 games on the conference schedule. It's all jockeying to try to get 7 home games.
