Six months after hiring a new men’s basketball coach, Athletics Director Lee Fowler is back at it again to find a new football coach. And while he wouldn’t comment on the search, Fowler has a lot of thoughts on athletics at N.C. State
Technician: How is coach Kay Yow doing with her cancer treatments?
Fowler: I have not talked to her since the night before her first treatment. I’ve talked with [Senior Associate Athletics Director] Nora Lynn Finch, who says the treatments are very strong. And [Yow] kind of gets knocked down each time she has them. She has the treatments three times a week. I have not talked with her since all the treatments started.
Technician: Do you expect Yow back this season?
Fowler: When she went in she said indefinitely. She didn’t really know how long it would take her to recover from the treatments, so she preferred to say from the start that it would say indefinitely. I heard this morning that her doctor said if the treatments go well, she could be back by the first of the year.
Technician: What was your step-by-step plan to improve N.C. State athletics when you first took over?
Fowler: Well, first, our vision is to win ACC Championships and be top-25 programs in all sports. When you look at what we had when we first came here, there was only the RBC Center, in terms of facilities, that compared to top-25 programs and programs in the ACC. It was a vision we had that over five to six years we could get these facilities to where they need to be. It’s taken a little bit longer because of budgets, but when we finish this track down here [the renovated Paul Derr Track], we feel like we’ve got facilities that compete with all top-25 programs and are competitive.
You know, it’s hard to ask coaches to be competitive when they don’t have the same facilities that everyone else has. You know, I didn’t get to see any facilities when I interviewed for the job here — I should have known (he smiles). I interviewed on a Sunday afternoon, got on a plane that afternoon. I saw the RBC Center on my way back to the airport, and they said, “That’s where you play basketball.”
[Improving facilities] has taken up a lot of our time.
Competitive salaries was another issue. I think N.C. State has, in the past, mostly hired assistants because they weren’t paying the same amount that most universities were. So, by raising revenue, we’ve been more competitive with our salaries.
The other thing coaches need is time to succeed because you don’t do it overnight. It’s not like a business where you win five games one year, six the next, seven the next and eight the next. Success in athletics doesn’t always go in a straight line up. We have to know what’s going on behind the scenes with our coaches.
And we’ve challenged our coaches. We’ve said that they have to be competitive once they’ve gotten the facilities. You know, I haven’t gotten rid of any coaches that I didn’t feel like they had facilities to compete.
Technician: Is that how you explain the situation of someone like women’s soccer coach Laura Kerrigan? A coach who hasn’t had success on the field, but then again, hasn’t had the facilities?
Fowler: Exactly. We will hold her responsible. She’s got a lot of good young kids, but Laura knows we need to be going to the NCAA Tournament first and competing for ACC Championships next. But we haven’t had the facilities for her or [men’s coach George Tarantini]. You know, we can’t play at night on campus. We can’t get high-school kids to come see our games because they are in high school when we play. I think they are both good coaches, but there is only so much you can do without facilities.
Technician: Along these lines of new facilities and coaches salaries, are college athletics becoming too big of businesses?
Fowler: Well, they’ve been multimillion-dollar business for quite some time. I’ve seen research that says over the last 10 years, the budgets of athletics isn’t increasing more than the overall budget of the universities throughout the country. I don’t think it’s out of control, but I think there might be too much keeping up with the Joneses and salaries at the major schools. But, we’re in a market system where it’s driven by what other guys are making, and guys want to be paid competitively.
Technician: Do coaches make too much money?
Fowler: Coaches are well-paid at the major sports — basketball and football. The rest of our coaches are paid pretty much what assistant professors or professors make. Out of 23 sports, I would say that most of the coaches are at the norm for what most people make in society.
Technician: You’ve hired two African-American coaches in a row, which suggests you’re committed to diversity. Why is that?
Fowler: I’m committed for the best person for the job. Now, I always think you should have a pool — a competitive pool — but those two coaches were the best people for the jobs. At Middle Tennessee State, I hired an African-American — well, actually, he was Dutch — but he was a black gentleman and he was the first black coach hired there. But I hired him because I thought he was the best person for the job.
I don’t see color. I see talent.
Technician: People say the last coaching search got out of hand, but if you look at it, it might be better to say the situation with Memphis coach John Calipari got out of hand. Rumors are that when you flew out there, you were pretty confident you had him. What happened?
Fowler: We actually didn’t go out there to get him. We went out there to make sure he knew what the academics of this school were. I went out there with the Chancellor, Donn Ward and my wife to basically visit with him and let him know what we expected if he came to N.C. State. Then he came back and looked at facilities because he’d never been here before.
We didn’t want him, if he came here, to be shocked. We wanted him to know what we expected from him. Most of the conversation at his house was about academics at N.C. State. It had nothing to do with selling him on coming here.
Technician: What is the biggest issue facing N.C. State athletics?
Fowler: Well, today the biggest issue facing us is getting a new football coach, and I’m working like crazy to get somebody. Everyone wants us to have the guy yesterday, but I want us to have the guy two days ago. But we’ve got to get the right guy. Academics will be very much involved in what we do with this search. Any coach I hire will have to realize we won’t realize we won’t lower our standards, and we won’t do things to jeopardize guys’ graduating.
But other than that, the biggest challenge? It’s probably the message boards on the Internet. There is so much negative stuff coming off the boards, and I think that drives the newspapers. Then the papers are constantly chasing stuff that’s being talked about on the Internet. But I think that’s the biggest challenge facing all ADs.
There are so many people on the Internet, and you never know who they are. You don’t know if they are affiliated with N.C. State in any way. It’s like an anonymous letter, and when I get an anonymous letter, I throw it in the trash. So, you write things that are just hateful to a lot of a people without any knowledge of what’s really going on.
Technician: You’ve won Pigskin Picks two years in a row. Why are you so good?
Fowler: It’s all gut feeling. As soon as I see the e-mails come in, I fill it out and send it right back. Now, I wonder if Mary Beth [Hamrick] — she had so many like me — I wonder if you weren’t showing her my picks beforehand.
But now, due to two winning years in a row, I think I need to take a year off [from Pigskin Picks] and let Chip Alexander be an expert in that poll.
Technician: Yea, Chip wanted to win really badly.
Fowler: (Laughing) Oh, I know. And of course you know how much I wanted to beat him. But I just took my gut feeling with all those games.