NC State football head coach Dave Doeren spoke to the media Wednesday via the ACC coaches’ teleconference about the decision to cancel Saturday’s scheduled game against West Virginia due to Hurricane Florence.
On the decision: “Obviously with Hurricane Florence, our prayers go out to everybody in the path of the storm. I know decisions were made to not play the game, which we all support with what could happen here. Priority shifted from West Virginia to the safety of our team and staff. We’ve done that. Now we’re just kind of waiting to see what happens.”
On making longer schedules for college football in the future: “I hadn’t thought about it. First time in my career that weather has changed a game this way. It’s not something that is regular enough to say that it’s an every-year issue for me just because I’ve never seen it as a coach. I know it affects the schools in the state of Florida probably more than anybody else. Last year in Texas, obviously. There’s two sides to that. The longer you make the season, everyone talks player safety, then now you’re making them play longer, have longer practice seasons, longer competitive seasons. There’s an impact there on the team, as well.
“I do hope that we can get a 12th game. I’m not sure where that’s going yet. I haven’t heard kind of what the different options are at this point just because our attention has been turned to our players getting to safe places, what we’re going to do that way. It’s obviously something now that I’ve been a part of it. I’m sure I’ll sit down with our administration and do some research with other schools. I’m not sure you’re going to have a lot of people to extend our season one way or the other just because of how long it is already.”
On possibly playing a game during the team’s scheduled bye week Oct. 13: “That would then make us play nine straight without a bye there. That’s not great for your team either. But I think we have to look at all the options at this point because you do want to have 12 regular-season games. I’m not sure what they are yet. We haven’t gotten to that point. I spent all day yesterday from 1 p.m. on just trying to make sure our players and staff were safe, that we had a good plan.
“As things now get to where we have everybody in the right places, I can probably spend some time on that, get with [director of athletics Debbie Yow] and Michael and see with their heads are on it. I know we all want to have that 12th opportunity. What are the options? Probably other teams affected. I know there were three games canceled but there may be others as this continues. There may be teams looking for a game. We’ll have to see who has the same dates as us, if anybody does, if not, what are the options after our last regular-season game if we’re not in the championship game. There’s a lot of moving parts.”
On if playing Notre Dame during Hurricane Matthew in 2016 impacted the decision: “Well, we actually talked, because we have to, we have to assume we’re playing until they tell us we’re not. We said, ‘Look, we’ve been through this, half of our roster was still here when we played that game.’”
“You guys know if we take care of the football like we did in that game, because we practiced with wet balls all week preparing for it, we scored 10 points in that day, none of them were on offense. We kicked a field goal, blocked a punt for a touchdown, never turned the ball over. We kind of had that to lean on from this game to talk to our players about the importance of those things, field position, special teams play, not turning it over in a game like that. We were very well prepared if it would have been a deal where they had us play the football game.”
