On Thursday, April 30, NC State director of athletics Boo Corrigan celebrated his one-year anniversary on the job.

There were no gatherings to honor the occasion however. Instead, Corrigan and ADs across the country are being tested like never before thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Corrigan talked over the phone with The Wolfpacker Wednesday, with much of the conversation centered around trying to administer a department while campus is shut down and without clear answers of what the future holds thanks to the coronavirus.

Part I of highlights from our interview deal with that subject.

Let’s start with Coronavirus. What is your message to Wolfpack fans right now?

“We’re all in this together. This is a global pandemic. Something where we need to follow the guidance we are being given.

"That being said, we really, really look forward to being back together. Whether it’s in Reynolds or Carter-Finley or Dail Baseball, or anywhere else to celebrate, we’re going to do that.

"Right now, we’re all in this together. We have to find a way to stay connected, to stay engaged and to stay strong.”

What are the biggest challenges for you right now?

“I’m a guy that really doesn’t like the word challenge and tries to shape it always into an opportunity. I keep trying to find the opportunity in this.

"We’re connected to a great community, we really are. We’re having town halls with all of our athletes every two weeks. We’re meeting with our staff every two weeks. We’re connecting with our head coaches once a week, the executive staff on a weekly basis. … I think the key opportunity we’re trying to hold onto right now is the ability to stay connected.

“Whether that’s … reaching out to Wolfpack nation regarding football season tickets or the Wolfpack Club calling up and seeing how people are doing. It’s really an opportunity to bring pause and see how people are doing, check in and try to make sure you’re doing the right thing all the time.”

What response have you heard when reaching out to the Wolfpack Club members and NC State fans?

“I think they want a sense of normalcy. They want to talk about their lives and how they’re doing. They want to find out how our students are doing, how our coaches are doing, how recruiting is going. Some of the things never change, in the context of what it is.

“Sports always provides a great way of bringing people together to celebrate. I think that’s what they want to talk about: how’s the team doing, how are the young men and young women doing? What does it look like, whether we’re going to play or not.

"You just start having that conversation, maybe to take their mind off of everything else that’s going on and allow them to focus on something different.”

Have you had a chance to forecast the impact of COVID-19 on the financial budget for the current fiscal year about to end and the year ahead?

“Current year, we’re still looking at some things. Obviously, we’ve saved some by not playing games. There’s money not spent on travel and money not spent on hosting games, and those sorts of things. On the other side of it, there were some contractual deals we had that, as a result of the pandemic, have been asked for relief in their contracts and those sorts of things. So we’re not quite sure.

“Looking at next year, we’re looking at everything and different possibilities. I do know that the world has changed an awful lot for us in the past six, seven weeks. I think trying to project too much and make too many assumptions on something that’s not going to occur for at least three or four months, you can work yourself into a frenzy with thinking 15 different scenarios.

"We may not need 15 different scenarios. It could be we’re going to play all games, [or] we’re going to play all games without fans, [or] we’re going to play all games with a limited number of fans.

"Another thing that is tough for us in these times is trying to be really patient, trying to be really steady and study on what’s going on and let that drive your decisions instead of pure emotion.”

How hard is it to maintain the balance of short-term and long-term thinking right now?

“It can be. There’s probably a lot of wasted nights … just laying there thinking back and forth what could be and that problem. There’s no great value in feeling sorry for yourself or looking at things in a certain light. Like I’ve said before, you’ve got to figure out who you are right now. We’re always going to worry about people first.

“We’re in exam week right now. We need to make sure the student-athletes have all the support they need. … That’s really the immediate target that we’re looking at. From there, I want our coaches to worry about what they control, and I’ll worry about the things that they don’t control and making sure that we’re in good shape.

"I do believe we have a really great culture in the athletic department of people wanting to help and people wanting to do the most right thing.”

When you look ahead to the fall sports, where do these decisions come from?

“There’s a federal component of it, there’s a state component of it, there’s a system component of it, there’s an institutional component of it. We’re looking at all those things.

"The NCAA is a membership association, so while they can inform the membership on what they think and how that works, I don’t know that they’re going to make hard and fast rules for what’s going on. Their job is to inform the membership.

"Whether that’s a committee that’s going to be in charge of this, they can inform them and then that committee will be the one that makes the recommendations to the council. Then they make the recommendations to the board of governors that actually produces the decision.

“So, in the shortest term, we have to wait for the state, the system, then the institution.”

Is there a checklist of things that likely need to be checked off for fall sports to go, such as students being able to return to campus?

“Sure, there is. Again, that’s going to be informed by the system. That’s going to be informed by the institution.

"Then from there, we need to look at social distancing in our buildings, social distancing in the weight room, in the training rooms. What we’re doing with equipment issue-wise for different things — whether that’s shoulder pads and helmets from the football standpoint or uniforms or locker rooms.

“If we do have fans, what would concession stands look like? How many hand sanitizers do we have? What do we do in restrooms? What do we do across the board? We absolutely have all of that kind of written down.

"Then, there’s an implementation strategy. There’s the hand sanitizer as an example. We need to order all of that to make sure we have it. It’s not like if we play our first home football game on Sept. 12, we can order that on the ninth of September. What’s the timeline? What’s the supply chain look like, and how do we go about that? All of those things are in the works and all of those things are being discussed.

“From our standpoint, nothing is going to be implemented until we have our marching orders from the system and from Chancellor [Randy] Woodson.”

Does it have to be unanimous across the country to return to football in the fall?

“I think a lot of that is going to come down to recommendations from the coaches and how they feel about it, and the American Football Coaches Association, the AFCA. Todd Berry is the head of that.

"I think there’s input from there. I think there’s input from all kinds of different groups before that decision can be made.”

Is there any possibility some sports could go ahead and start in the fall and others wouldn’t?

“I think a lot of our target right now and a lot of our discussion certainly is centered around football. Football is the key, if you will. If that goes, others will go as well. Trying to figure that out is really important.”

Some have said if you can’t have fans, you can’t have games. Is that your thinking or at this point do you think we should not be putting a line in the sand?

“I think it’s a really hard thing to say that you’re definitely not going to do something. I don’t know that a guarantee of not having fans now, but having fans in October, November, December is a guarantee.

"I think it’s all kind of making the best decision you can make with the information you have at the right time, and then moving forward from there”.

Is there a timeline where you start having to make real, hard decisions?

“There is, but that’s an institutional decision. I don’t see us coming back if we don’t have students on campus. I think it’s really hard to just have one group, and that one group being athletes, to come back. I think it’s a much broader decision than just that. Again, that’s going to be campus by campus, institution by institution, making the decision.

“The one thing I do know, and there isn’t a whole lot I do know, everyone really wants to be back in the fall. We’ve made the conscious decision to … not have summer school on campus, to not have summer camps, to make sure that our real focus and our collective focus is on the fall, and that we’re not doing anything that would deviate from that decision.”

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