NC State fired the best coach it ever had, and it's going to miss him

NC State fired the best football coach it has ever had on Saturday, and I think the school is going to spend the next few years finding that out the slow way. Dave Doeren wasn't what held the Wolfpack back. He was the high-water mark, and you don't usually raise the water by pulling the plug.

Start with the record, because it's the whole argument. Doeren took over in 2013 and leaves with 98 wins, the most in program history. ESPN had him as the fourth-longest-tenured coach in the FBS. CBS Sports counted 11 bowl games in the last 12 seasons and four nine-win years. And the number you'll hear used against him, that he never won more than nine, cuts the other way once you look it up. NC State has won 10 games exactly once, in 2002, with Chuck Amato coaching and Philip Rivers at quarterback. That's once in the history of the program.

I know the case for the firing, and it isn't a dumb one. Fourteen years is a long time to never reach the ACC championship game. This was supposed to be the year that changed, too. The school paid to keep CJ Bailey after an 8-5 season, and ESPN reported the Wolfpack were expected to contend. Instead they got blown out by Virginia in the opener, lost to Vanderbilt when Bailey fumbled in the end zone on the last play, and then lost 31-28 on Friday night to a Stanford team the AP noted was picked to finish last in the league. Davis Warren threw four touchdown passes on them. Outside the Louisville upset, CBS has them 0-4 against Power Four opponents. If I ran that athletic department and somebody slid that sheet across my desk, I'd be in a foul mood too.

But a foul mood isn't a plan. Stagnation is a fair reason to make a change once the season's over. It's a lousy reason to make one less than a day after a road loss, halfway through the schedule, with the coach owed $10.3 million, per ESPN. (Pete Thamel noted that figure is subject to offset and mitigation, which is the polite way of saying the lawyers will be busy.) Athletic director Boo Corrigan made it effective immediately and handed the team to Todd Goebbel, the running backs coach and special teams coordinator, who's been on staff since 2019. I wish him well. This wasn't about him.

It's NC State's first coaching search since 2012, which means a lot of the people running it have never had to do one there. So here's the question I'd ask, and I've asked rougher ones of editors who wanted my column moved to page nine: who's the coach who wins 10 at a place that's done it one time? Name him. Then tell me why he picks Raleigh over every other job that opens up in the same few weeks. I've covered a lot of schools that fired the steady guy because steady got boring, and an awful lot of them spent the next decade trying to get back to steady.

Maybe I'm wrong about this one. Maybe the next coach wins 11 and makes me look like an old man yelling at a press box window, and I'll happily eat that column with a cold hot dog. But if he wins nine a few times and takes them to a bunch of bowl games, somebody in that building owes Dave Doeren an apology, and I'd like to see it in writing.

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