Unlike most bowl teams, NC State’s playing for a prize worth winning (it’s not the trophy)
It’s easy to laugh at a bowl trophy that has slots for toaster pastries, slightly more difficult to wonder what might have been for N.C. State if it hadn’t gotten off to such a miserable start to the season.
Those two disparate threads come together Thursday, when the Wolfpack gets a second chance at doing something for a second time that many of these same players were cruelly denied once already. It’s that rarest of things, a second-rate bowl game with first-tier stakes, for one team at least. N.C. State has a chance to make a little bit of history in a game that’s otherwise destined for forgettability.
All of which means the Pop-Tarts Bowl actually means something, even without Payton Wilson, even if Kansas State is missing 18 players to the transfer portal or draft prep.
Only one N.C. State football team in history has won 10 games, the 2002 squad that beat Notre Dame in the Gator Bowl to finish 11-3. One other Wolfpack team briefly claimed that mark, two years ago, when UCLA withdrew from the Holiday Bowl at the last minute, citing a wave of COVID that decimated the Bruins’ defensive line.
N.C. State claimed a forfeit and took the trophy home, but the game was officially a no-contest in the eyes of the NCAA and the ACC because the officials had not yet arrived at the stadium. It made for an entertaining news cycle, with N.C. State coach Dave Doeren famously blasting the NCAA – “No clue at all” – to the delight of angry Wolfpack fans, and debate over whether the coaching staff would be paid bonuses for winning 10 games.
Later, the Wolfpack quietly accepted that it finished that season 9-3 with an asterisk after “its opponent backed out on game day,” some epic shade by media-guide standards. The bad feelings over what N.C. State believed to be some deception on UCLA’s part – with a little warning, the Wolfpack and bowl officials might have been able to wrangle a substitute opponent – lingered a little longer, even after many UCLA players said they wanted to play.
At any rate, hitting double digits in wins is something you actually want to do on the field, with a win over an actual opponent, not on paper.
Now N.C. State has that chance.
Nothing that happens against Kansas State can right that wrong for the players who would have been playing in their final game against UCLA, or the many others who came back a year ago for one last kick at that can. But a full half of N.C. State’s 60-player depth chart for Thursday’s bowl was on that 2021 team, even if many were redshirting or would not otherwise have played. Their memories of that disappointing week in San Diego will not have faded.
A lot of time has passed since then. UCLA is headed for the Big Ten. The ACC is about to get bigger. N.C. State’s on its fifth quarterback since then. The Wolfpack recovered from hitting bottom against Duke to win five straight. And 10 wins still means something, especially for a program that’s only done it once.
We don’t always get to dictate to history when it’s ready to be made. Under ideal circumstances, N.C. State would be gunning for its tenth win in the ACC championship or some game like that with those intrinsic stakes instead of one with an edible mascot. But this is the time, and the opportunity is there.
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This story was originally published December 28, 2023 at 6:00 AM.
