clt was on campus this week, and 49er gear was everywhere. lots of green.
proud of the students.
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If we can get a sport that people care about winning the support is going to be mind blowing. I think from a spirit perspective we have a ton of students that need something to rally behind, they want to. Just have to give them something to be proud of.
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D.O.B.A.
Regardless of what you think about App…they have a very loud and proud passionate fan base because they have something to be passionate about. Even if it is just for one sport…it’s something that’s culturally deemed as important…and they are good at it and their fans rally hard around that.
Imagine. We have far more students, alum and are located in one of the largest cities in the country…can you imagine what kind of passionate support we would garner if we gave them something to be proud of and rally around as well??
If we could replicate our CUSA 1.0 success in either bball or football today…with the larger enrollment, fanbase, city, etc in the age of social media??? We have the potential to EXPLODE with support. People (like me) are dying to be proud of something to passionately support.
We just gotta get there somehow.
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Look around North Carolina right now. If you say this football program could not be the best in this state, given the right leader and a little time, you are being disingenuous. There is no immovable object like in Ohio, for example, with OSU. They will be consistently great with no internal threats (other than themselves-ha).
I think that right now, Appalachian State is hands down the best program in NC. Especially when considering consistency, year in and year out. Good as they are, and they are good, and I take my hat off to their program and their fan base, they are not an immovable object. In fact, in my view, nothing would be better for all the power to completely shift west, with the result that the most anticipated college football game each season becomes Charlotte vs Appalachian. This could happen.
I agree with most of this, but no way is App the best football program in the state. They are not better than NC state and historically they don’t compare to ECU or Unc-CH either …even though I despise the Holes. Even though those 2 acc schools prefer bball, their football teams would still have beaten App 90% of the time over their history.
App has three national championships, albeit at FCS level, and no other school in this state has won a football natty at any level. Moreover, I base my determination on consistency. The so called “Big 4” in North Carolina, plus ECU, are up and down with 2 or 3 good seasons here and there followed by 5 bad to mediocre ones.
Compare the last 20-25 years, App vs the other schools, and see who’s won the most games in that span.
You cant think fcs titles actually mean those teams were BETTER than most fbs teams. If those teams had played every season do you honestly think they would have beaten the holes and Wolfpack many times? I can tell you unequivocally they would not have, and trust me I despise the holes… and ncsu only slightly less. Most of those “mediocre” teams would have wiped the field with App. You need to look beyond the last few years if you’re going to make this comparison. When you do, there is none. App has done some nice things in football, but it is all relative. App has only been fbs for what 5 years? so the “win totals” mean nothing… since 95% of Apps wins during the prior 20 years were against fcs teams.
App has won 3-straight FBS bowl games. This school went to State College PA and should have come away with a win. They are the best team in the state right now and have won more consistently than any other school here over the last quarter of a century. All of the above is a fact.
Not only would App have beaten those other teams, their fans would have taken up 90% of the seats in the other guy’s stadium. 
You might have an argument if you only go back 3 years, but you didn’t say that. You started talking about fcs titles and going back 20 years. Going back beyond 3-4 years, you have zero argument. Again, fcs "wins"mean zilch if you’re trying to compare to teams playing fbs schedules.
Now that is funny.
No…my assertion was that RIGHT NOW…App State is the best program in NC. Beyond this, I also stated that they have won more consistently than any other school, in NC, within the last 25 years.
As a current student I think I can say that we have two extremes when it comes to school spirit. There’s a small group of us who are very passionate and can see the potential in football, and there’s a much larger group who just doesn’t care about the school at all.
The problem is that we don’t really have an in between crowd. If we had more kids who were genuinely proud to be on campus, excited to be Forty Niners, but weren’t too excited about athletics yet it would be easy to win them over to support football (and other sports) with a big win or two.
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It’s a culture problem, and I expect the next Chancellor to fix it.
You “younger” guys have no idea how much more school spirit there is now than there was 20-25 years ago. It certainly still needs to improve more, but it is headed in the right direction.
In 2005 our average attendance at a Men’s Basketball game was 7577. The formula here is simple–when we win spirit soars, and when we don’t we still average more than much of our conference. Even during the Major and Price years, we had most of what we needed to be a force. All we had to was give people a reason to come out and unleash it, but we missed that, and it is the key.
Winning doesn’t fix everything, but it sure as hell fixes 90% of our issues. I’d think Mike Hill and company can fix that other 10% if we can win.
clt says we r trending in the right direction in support, despite the on field performance
Maybe, but I’m still very embarrassed/jealous when I go crash with friends at other schools.
Everyone is embarrassed by our on the field/court performance but other than that, I see no reason to be jealous.