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The State of State Athletics

Football - NCSU was left out of the AP top 25 at the end of the year as the only 9 win P5 team. However, let's take a quick look at how we fared overall the past couple years. We know, and it has been trumpeted repeatedly, that we have the second best 2 year record of any ACC school, in conference and overall, with only Clemson ahead of us. But did you know that only 12 total P5 schools (and ND) have won 9+ games in back to back years these past two years? Alabama, Clemson, Oklahoma, Georgia, Ohio State, Penn State, Notre Dame, Stanford, Washington, Washington State, LSU, and NCSU. That's good company.

Obviously, we're all still bitter about being left out of the NCAA Tournament because of week nonconference SOS, but an interesting point is that we were left out of the AP top 25 in football for pretty much the same reasons - we didn't play anybody, and anybody we did play beat us.

Another thing of interest is combined presence in the top-25.

Comparing football and basketball, and not looking at the preseason polls, the teams that both made the top-25 at some point in the year are as follows for the ACC - Syracuse, Duke, Clemson, and NCSU. FSU is in the football preseason poll, but never appears again so I excluded them. Duke, while dominant in basketball, made a one week debut in the football top-25 at 22 before being abruptly knocked out. Clemson is quite the opposite - dominant throughout the football season, makes a quick foray into the basketball top-25 (preseason poll at 22, rose the next 2 weeks to 19 and then 16 before tumbling out). Syracuse is similar, although a tad more sporadic - they debuted at 16 and rose to 15 in week 1 of basketball before falling out and then returning at 25 briefly in week 6, while in football, Syracuse debuted in week 9, and remained in the top-25 for the final 7 weeks of the poll.

NCSU, however, was the steadiest presence in the top-25 comparing football and basketball (not the highest, and not the overall longest, but has the longest run in both basketball and football - we spent a total of 5 weeks in the football top-25, and a grand total of 6 weeks in the basketball top-25. We are the only ACC team that has spent more than 5 weeks in either poll.

Add in the number one baseball team nationally (ranked all season so far), a women's basketball team that was in the rankings all season (and 11 weeks in the top-10), and some other teams that spent all season in the rankings (wrestling, swimming, gymnastics, and others I'm sure, you guys can educate me on them in the comments), The State of State Athletics seems pretty solid to me.