Dave from Carter-Finley

NC State football legend Dennis Byrd passed away this week. He was the first two-time All-American in NC State football history, the only Wolfpack defensive player with his jersey retired, the leader of NC State’s famed “White Shoes Defense” of the late 1960′s, an ACC Champion (1965), and a soon-to-be inductee into the National Football Foundation and College Football Hall of Fame (December 2010). To read the GoPack article that includes all his awards and accolades go here.

I’m a big history/tradition guy and since NC State football doesn’t have much of it I make sure that I don’t forget what little we do have. The first thing I always do when I enter Carter-Finley and get to my seat in section 18 is look up and acknowledge all the retired jerseys. While I’m not old enough to have watched Byrd play for the Wolfpack, I am aware of his importance in the history of our program so I’ll be giving a longer pause for #77 this season in reverence. It’s definitely a sad day for Wolfpack Nation. My thoughts and prayers go out to the Byrd family.

So it’s been quiet around here for a over a week (the longest I’ve gone between posts since starting this whole blogging thing), but I took Mrs. DFCF on a nice Caribbean romantic getaway to celebrate our 5 year anniversary. (Insert your ‘awwwws’ here.) I did have limited internet access, but like I said, it was a romantic getaway so I didn’t want to be spending precious time blogging.  Now Mrs. DFCF on the other hand spent 1.5 hours one night in an online message board chat for one of her doctoral classes.  WTH, right?  I only kid.

Anyway, today I picked up my copy of the new EA Sports NCAA Football 11 game.  I’m still at work so I haven’t fired it up yet, but all the reviews are good.  That really doesn’t matter because I’m programmed to buy the new game every year anyway.  It’s part of the 12 step program I follow in order to keep my sanity through the summer before the season starts up in the fall.  I should probably write an article about that, but I’m not sure it would help anybody else.  Mrs. DFCF says I’m the only one that has this problem.  I don’t know what she’s talking about.  Anyway, I might not have blogged in over a week, but NC State football has not left my mind.  If Mrs. DFCF can attend an online class while on vacation out of the country I can think about the upcoming NC State football season.  So while chilling on the beach drinking massive amounts of fruity tropical alcoholic drinks I read up on all our opponents (in the Phil Steele magazine of course) and planned out some cool things for the website.

I’ve started to get the ball rolling on a few of the things for the website so stay tuned as I start to unveil them in the coming weeks.  Some will be weekly features, another will be a season long series, and I’m not even sure how to classify the rest.  Hopefully they’ll all be fun and entertaining.  If you don’t follow me on Twitter (what the heck are you waiting on?) you missed me breaking the story of Coach Archer’s wreck a full week before this article came out.  Looking at that picture of the car I sure am glad Coach and his wife are okay.  Now that my summer vacation has come and passed I’m getting very antsy for the NC State football season to start.  After killing another couple hours here at work I’ll rush home and fire up NCAA Football 11 for a quickie before some family comes over to watch the Midsummer Classic (aka MLB All-Star Game).  Toodles!

My favorite things about the 4th of July are:  fireworks, hot dogs, beer, parades, baseball, no work … and of course it means football season is getting closer and closer.  Happy 4th of July everybody!  Have fun and be safe!

Word I’m hearing is Russell only got a one year deal with a $250k signing bonus.  The Rockies will either renegotiate with Russell around Aug. 1 when he will be returning to Raleigh or wait until after the NC State football season is over.  There are some very stringent clauses about injuries however which could affect the NC State football season.  Basically the Rockies will make all the medical decisions regarding Russell.  What that means is in the event of any injury (minor or serious) he’ll be seeing Rockies doctors, not NC State doctors, and the Rockies doctors will be the ones deciding when he’s cleared to resume activities.  All this sounds very interesting to me.  Doesn’t sound like Russell did a very good job of using his leverage, but I’m just an internet blogger so what the hell do I know.  Of course all this could be wrong, but I have heard it from multiple sources so I figured I’d throw it out there.

Russell began playing for the Tri-City Dust Devils back on June 25th.  If you want to follow along during the summer and see how he’s doing go here.