The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1113082
32 ■ THE WOLFPACKER across them, then we quit doing that and went to 'NC State.' "We've had a number of fans who say we need to go back to State. I told them that we are not going to do that because the brand of NC State is growing, and we want it to be national and international. We need to have the words NC State, because there are 51 schools in the NCAA that are called State. That decision wasn't popular with everyone. "I'm going to try and focus on things that really matter — like selection to the basketball tournament and officiating." How have you evolved on using Twitter? "I have never said anything on Twitter that I couldn't repeat or stand by. Some- times fans from other schools become followers on a Twitter account, and that's probably not a wise thing for them to do. "If I tweet, 'We. Beat. Auburn.' I'm en- couraging our fans to remember we were a pretty good basketball team. We had some issues and weren't perfect, but we did fin- ish No. 33 in the NET and even better in the BPI, Sagarin and KenPom.com. "It's not about someone else, it's about us. If you are one of us, then you get it. If you are not, you automatically assume it's something else. The reason I didn't go under my title or my name was that it was kind of a covert operation. It was designed to watch our student-athletes in terms of what they were tweeting. "The reason that mattered to me was there was a time one of our athletes tweeted something about their health that was alarming to me. It was some version of, 'I might hurt myself.' "I thought, 'What can I do?' The only thing that I could think of was to go on Twitter, become a follower and then have access to what they are saying." What are your major concerns about col- lege athletics? "I'm really concerned about gambling becoming legal. I spoke at Harvard Law School in early April. The man who spoke before me was an expert on gaming, as they call gambling. I was sitting there listening to him, realizing how ill-prepared we are for what this is going to be. "When the Supreme Court ruled in fa- vor of gaming in college athletics, one of the caveats they had was that either Con- gress or the states could oversee gaming in college athletics. I assumed that Congress would want this because of the money in- volved. It's obscene amounts of money. "What I didn't factor in was what this man noted. The problem with Congress taking over and having one set of rules for 50 states — which sounds a lot better to me than 50 states creating their own rules and regulations — is its members are elected by the people of their state. If Congress oversees the gaming, it means they voted to take the money out of their own state. This would create a concern about their ability to be re-elected. "I never thought about it that way. I was thinking, 'Oh my goodness, does that mean we are going to have 50 states with 50 sets of regulations? What does that look like and how do we manage that?' "The question that keeps getting asked is — does making it legal mean there will be more gambling? Common sense will tell us that it does, because the activity was nor- malized. Once you normalize any activity there is going to be more of it, whether it is smoking weed, prostitution or gaming, be- cause you just put the seal of approval on it. "Amateurism is a big deal along with whether or not we ever pay players. But Among her many achievements at NC State, Yow — seen here at the groundbreaking with head coach Dave Doeren — oversaw the construction of the Close-King Indoor Practice Facility for football. PHOTO BY JACEY ZEMBAL