NC State athletics uses Debbie Yow's formula to find her successor
Outgoing NC State director of athletics Debbie Yow has made a career of finding programs in the national top 25 that don't seemingly belong and hiring away their coaches. Her track record is full of unearthing hidden gems doing a lot with a little, breaking records and defying expectations, then giving them full support to continue doing so under her leadership.
It’s happened over and over again during her time at NC State. She discovered seventh-year wrestling coach Pat Popolizio at Binghamton, a program that wasn’t even fully funded but still claimed top-25 national finishes and conference championships. He’s won at an even higher rate in Raleigh, while claiming the program’s first and the ACC’s second NCAA team trophy.
Yow likewise elevated sixth-year head women’s basketball coach Wes Moore from head coach at UT Chattanooga, where he was for 15 years and won a total of 21 Southern Conference regular-season and tournament championships, to the big chair at NC State. His current team was the last Division I squad, men's or women's, to lose a game this season, jumping out to a school-record 21-0 start.
Women's tennis coach Simon Earnshaw built a powerhouse at Division II Armstrong State. In his fifth year, his Pack squad has wins over No. 11 Florida and No. 20 Texas Tech and is No. 23 nationally.
Perhaps her most successful hire has been one that went a little outside her norm — giving alum Braden Holloway, then the associate head coach at Virginia Tech, his first head coaching job and a chance to return home. All he’s done since is revitalize the Wolfpack swimming and diving program with seven individual and relay national championships, six ACC Coach of the Year laurels and three straight podium finishes for the men at the NCAA Championships in his first seven years.
NC State followed that same formula when looking for Yow's successor.
Boo Corrigan, the son of former ACC commissioner Gene, is clearly a familiar name in ACC country, but he more clearly overachieved at Army.
Like many of Yow’s hires, he outperformed schools with bigger budgets, more support and an easier path. Keep in mind this is a service academy we’re talking about … so its athletes are receiving a much different deal than the typical four-year scholarship offered by other programs.
According to the Wall Street Journal, in the fall of 2017 Army ranked 73rd nationally for its college football team’s value.
Yet, this season, in year five under Corrigan’s hand-picked hire, Jeff Monken — who previously led then-FCS program Georgia Southern — helped the Black Knights to its first-ever 11-win season and highest AP finish since 1958 (No. 19). The program had not boasted three straight winning seasons since 1988-90 but reached eight or more wins in the last three campaigns, including double digits in the last two.
More importantly, Monken’s team snapped a 14-game losing streak to Navy — the longest streak for either side in the series’ storied history — in 2016 and has won three in a row in its most important game of the year for the first time since winning five straight from 1992-96.
Corrigan couldn’t help but bring up beating Navy in a post-press conference scrum with the media, and leaves West Point with the program having claimed the Commander in Chief’s Trophy (for beating Navy AND Air Force) in 2017 for the first time since 1996 and then repeating this fall to give it back-to-back honors for the first time in school history.
(Keep in mind, the longest win streak in NC State’s rivalry with UNC this century was the Wolfpack’s five straight from 2007-11 under Naval Academy graduate Tom O’Brien, who went 5-1 against the Tar Heels … so there’s something to be said about service academy products and rivalries.)
CollegeFootballNews.com said Monken did the second-best coaching job in all of college football this season, behind only Kentucky’s Mark Stoops, to follow up his No. 1 finish in the same analysis last year.
“For the second year in a row, he did way more with way less than any coach in college football,” the outlet wrote.
Although football coach is an athletic director's most important hire, it’s far from Corrigan’s only success at West Point. In an era where schools are cutting sports, the Army AD added three varsity sports during his tenure.
That was only possible thanks to his team’s fundraising acumen, which led to a 30 percent increase in Army A Club membership during his tenure and upping its total money raised by more than 200 percent, going from $2.5 million annually to approximately $7.5 million. The department’s number of endowments also more than doubled, while it raised more than $35 million for new and renovated facilities, completing three major facility projects under Corrigan’s watch.
He also signed a new apparel agreement with Nike, a new pouring rights contract with Coca-Cola, enhanced ticket sales, and led a rebranding initiative that featured a new logo and word mark, among other successes.
Since taking the helm in March 2011, Corrigan’s department won 21 league regular-season or tournament championships, and 81 cadets earned a major conference award. His efforts culminated with the 2017 NACDA Athletic Director of the Year award.
Chancellor Randy Woodson said he had three criteria when selecting Yow’s successor, which Corrigan proved he met at his introductory press conference:
1. An AD “that understands this is about the students and their success in all aspects of life.”
When asked about his football team’s success, Corrigan quickly noted: “I think the credit goes to the cadets and the credit goes to the coaches.”
2. “Someone that this wasn’t their first rodeo — they know what Division I, Power Five athletics are about and all the issues that come along with it.”
The results speak for themselves, with West Point Superintendent Lt. Gen. Darryl A. Williams noting in a school statement that Corrigan “transformed Army athletics … and without a doubt will do the same at NC State.”
Though the challenges will be different, Corrigan likely faced a steeper uphill climb at Army than he will at NCSU.
3. “I wanted people that were visiting with me about this job to be sold on this university and this job before that first conversation occurred.”
Woodson concluded that statement by adding: “… And that box was checked for me in Boo early on. He knows this conference, he knows this part of the country and he knows the great history of NC State athletics.”
Yow has proven that finding an overachiever from a small school and fully supporting them in Raleigh has worked.
Now Woodson will find out if the same formula works to fill the biggest chair of them all.
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