-
Andrea Adelson, ESPN Senior Writer
NC STATE QUARTERBACK Grayson McCall grew up in North Carolina, and, like any sports fan in the state, he knows a little something about the pained history of NC State athletics.
Call it whatever you’d like. A jinx. A curse. Whatever it was, “bad stuff” seemed to hold back the Wolfpack teams year after year. But when McCall arrived on campus in January, he found himself in the middle of an NC State renaissance.
He saw it at basketball games. At a baseball regional. Fans clad in red with looks of disbelief on their faces after every win. Suddenly, everything was coming up NC State. The men’s basketball team surprisingly won the ACC tournament championship and then made it to the Final Four for the first time since 1983.
The women’s team made it to the Final Four, too. When the baseball team made the College World Series, NC State became just the third school in history to advance to both Final Fours and the MCWS in the same year.
“Football is next,” McCall says. “It’s the year of the Wolfpack.”
Sitting next to him at ACC Kickoff in Charlotte, veteran defensive tackle Davin Vann nodded his head.
“Oh yeah it is, for sure, 100 percent,” Vann said.
Running back Jordan Waters chimed in: “I’m going to have to put that on a shirt.”
Confidence is high in Raleigh, perhaps higher than at any other time under coach Dave Doeren, who, entering his 12th season, is one of the longest-tenured coaches in the country. Off a 9-4 season, with the Wolfpack’s best portal class and the momentum generated across the athletic department, Doeren says: “We expect the expectations now.”
“Winning can be a habit,” NC State athletic director Boo Corrigan told ESPN. “Finding a way to win and letting go of the past, right? Instead of waiting for the other shoe to drop, how about waiting for something great to happen? That’s a different mindset than we’ve had here before, and I think that’s really important.”
WHEN ASKED ABOUT the athletics success, Doeren points to the steady leadership Corrigan has provided the athletic department since arriving in 2019. Indeed, NC State has posted four straight top-25 finishes in the Learfield Directors Cup, which awards points to each sport based on its finish in NCAA championships. But those accomplishments are known mostly only to those who follow sports in North Carolina.
Although Corrigan has been a collegiate athletics lifer — his dad, Gene, was a longtime athletics director before serving as ACC commissioner 1987-96 — the general public got to meet Corrigan for the first time in 2022, as College Football Playoff selection committee chair.
Every week, Corrigan would explain why the committee ranked teams the way it did, and although there had been a few tough questions to answer during his run as chair, nothing prepared him for what would unfold on Dec. 3, 2023.
Corrigan had to explain why the 13-member committee dropped undefeated ACC champion Florida State out of the four-team playoff. It was the first time in CFP history an undefeated Power 5 champion had been left out.
The blowback was intense. Corrigan received death threats, and he had police outside his home for weeks after the announcement. Florida State fans bombarded his inbox with menacing emails. The committee decision cost the ACC millions of CFP dollars. Corrigan kept a low public profile for months afterward, but his coaches saw what he was going through daily.
“The whole department just tried to be there for him,” Doeren said. “I understand because if I was in Florida State’s shoes, I would have felt terrible as well. There are 13 people in there voting on that thing, and he’s just one of them. But he’s the one that gets to deliver the news.
“It was tough. Having a police escort. I’ve been through that. It’s not easy on your family. It’s hard to explain what that feels like. I felt for him. People that are out there that are [sending death threats to] players, ADs, coaches, they need to check themselves. That’s not right.”
Corrigan described his family and co-workers as incredibly supportive but declined to discuss the fallout further. He just showed up for work, day after day. So imagine those difficult months as a backdrop to what happened next.
“March became a hell of a lot of fun,” Corrigan said.
As men’s basketball coach Kevin Keatts cut down the net after a triumphant 84-76 win over North Carolina to win the school’s first ACC tournament championship since 1987, Corrigan wept.
“The emotion comes from seeing how much it means to everyone,” Corrigan said. “It’s just about the people that are there. It’s moments of pure joy.”
Doeren will tell you those moments of pure joy don’t happen without Corrigan, whose patience has given coaches like Keatts and Doeren time to find their way. Keatts faced repeated questions about his long-term future over the past several years, most loudly midway through the 2023 season. Doeren faced those questions, too, especially after a 4-8 season in 2019.
“Over the course of all these seasons, you saw flashes of, ‘Hey, we’re really good,” Corrigan said. “So you go back to that and make sure that they have confidence in what they’re doing. It’s unwavering positivity in what they’re doing, making sure that we’re providing the resources they need, and then let the chips fall where they may.”
There is a common thread among all his teams, and Corrigan, too. Things looked bleak at times for the men’s basketball team and the women’s basketball team and the baseball team. They looked bleak for Corrigan, too. Yet they each dug down and found a way to push through and come out on the other side.
The end result? One of the best seasons in school history.
Perhaps the curse has lifted.
“For our fans, instead of feeling jinxed, they’re not feeling jinxed, or whatever that curse is that they’ve talked about for years. It seems to be gone, and I am thankful for that,” Doeren said. “Because I’ve had to endure some, like, ‘Are you s—ting me?'”
THE TRUE TEST might come this football season. Although Doeren points to the second-half run his team made last year to finish 9-4, it’s worth noting that he has won nine games four times with the Wolfpack. Getting to 10 — and a conference championship game? That has remained frustratingly elusive.
In 118 years of football, NC State has one 11-win season, which came in 2002. Those “Are you s—ting me?” moments Doeren is referring to have happened at a frequent clip.
Like in 2016, when NC State missed a field goal that would have upset No. 3 Clemson at the end of regulation, only to lose in overtime. Like in 2017, when NC State was driving to tie No. 4 Clemson late, only to have an illegal formation penalty wipe out a first-and-goal. An interception and a loss followed. Like in 2021, when NC State lost a shot at playing for an ACC championship with a 45-42 loss to Wake Forest on a disputed onside kick.
Like in 2022, when NC State was ranked No. 13 in the preseason, only to lose starting quarterback Devin Leary after six games. Even last season, NC State lost to Duke 24-3 and dropped to 4-3, changed quarterbacks to MJ Morris, and reversed its fortunes. But Morris walked away after four games because he didn’t want to burn his redshirt. He has since transferred to Maryland.
That is a small sample size, but it’s one that represents how agonizingly close NC State has been to a breakthrough — further supporting the idea among fans that NC State is simply not allowed to have nice things.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” Doeren said. “You’ve got to walk over hot coals until they’re not hot anymore, and then you have the scars to prove it. When you do that, you create karma. I’ve always been the type of person that just kept working, knowing that I’m close. It’s like the picture you see of the guy with the pickax, and there’s diamonds behind the wall, and he’s turned around, walking the other way.
“I’ve never walked the other way. This team, and this university, really embodies that never-quit mentality. It doesn’t say how long you have to keep fighting to get to what you want. You’ve just got to keep fighting.”
There was a time early on at NC State when Doeren was not sure whether he wanted to keep fighting there. Several years into his tenure, under then-AD Debbie Yow, Doeren fielded calls gauging his interest in open head-coaching jobs before opting to return. “I didn’t know if the AD wanted me to be here, and so when you don’t feel like you’re wanted, what are you going to do?” Doeren said. “You’re going to look, and so yeah, there was a time where I was looking, until I felt like that wasn’t the case.”
Now, Doeren says, NC State is home, and he and his wife, Sara, have grown fond of the community. In 2023, they donated $1.25 million to begin a program at NC State to help students with special needs, after seeing how similar programs benefited their oldest son, Jacob, who is on the autism spectrum.
“When I left Northern Illinois, my goal was to find a place that I could help the program become something they weren’t and leave it in better shape than when I got there and win a championship, and hopefully raise my sons there and find the place where I could be me,” Doeren said. “North Carolina State has been a perfect fit for us.”
Doeren is tied with Mark Stoops at Kentucky as the sixth-longest-tenured coach in college football. He ranks second behind Clemson coach Dabo Swinney in the ACC. What he has done at NC State stands on its own — he is now the winningest coach in school history. As great as eight- and nine-win seasons have been in recent years, those now serve as a launching point for more. After a big win over rival North Carolina to close out the 2023 regular season, Doeren implored his fans to donate more to their collective.
He had an eye on something bigger — using the transfer portal to help transform his roster into one that could compete at a higher level. McCall recalled his conversation with Doeren after entering the transfer portal from Coastal Carolina.
“They needed a guy to come in and take charge and get them over the hump,” McCall said. “My identity matches with Coach Doeren’s identity and the football program’s identity to a tee, being tough and a blue-collared school that plays with a chip on their shoulder.”
Not only did NC State add McCall through the portal, it also brought in Ohio State receiver Noah Rogers, Duke running back Waters, UConn tight end Justin Joly, Notre Dame center Zeke Correll and several others to pair with veterans returning, such as receiver KC Concepcion, Vann, linebacker Sean Brown and cornerback Aydan White. “I think just the depth and the experience that we bring this year helps,” Vann said. “We’ve adapted the mindset that hard work isn’t a punishment. It’s our solution.”
The hard, tough, together mantra and chip-on-the-shoulder mentality have been tested at various points over the past decade. NC State has traditionally been a program that plays better as an underdog. Handling higher expectations, that is newer territory. In 2022, after losing Leary for the season, NC State finished 8-5. But even with a healthy Leary, NC State played erratically, nearly losing the season opener to East Carolina.
Another preseason ranking could be in the cards this season. But Doeren and his players believe they are ready to handle the expectations this time around. An expanded 12-team playoff has further emboldened the players, who have said since spring practice that they believe the Wolfpack could be a playoff team.
“We have talked about it. Because it’s real,” McCall said. “It’s a real possibility. We know that if we take care of our business on our schedule, that we have a great opportunity at the end of the year.”
That schedule features two huge games in September that could determine just how far NC State goes: Week 2 against Tennessee in Charlotte and then at Clemson on Sept. 21.
“There’s still a chip on our shoulder to be a champion, and to show that we can win 10 or more games, and so there’s a lot to prove for us,” Doeren said. “We have respect. That’s great, but we want to be champions, and so there is another step that keeps us on edge. I don’t think anybody’s satisfied in our building, and that’s a good thing.”
