Every Friday, before a home football game, N.C. State and North Carolina do what they have done for years – head to hotels.
Today, N.C. State will move into the Sheraton in downtown Raleigh.
North Carolina will be in a hotel, too – spending the night at the Marriott in Research Triangle Park before heading to Carter-Finley Stadium for Saturday’s noon game with the Wolfpack.
But how much does this cost each school’s athletics department?
The answer: plenty.
To find out the costs, and compare how much each school spent, WRAL asked for copies of all hotel receipts for each school from the hotel stay before the first home.
N.C. State opened Sept. 1 at 6 p.m. against Central Florida.
Carolina opened Sept. 1 with a 6 p.m. game against James Madison.
The documents, provided by the schools, are a glimpse at how a big-time football program operates. They offer some interesting contrasts between the two schools.
Carolina spent $17,616.55 for the night. State spent $9,507.
Carolina coach Butch Davis had a two-room suite; State coach Tom O’Brien didn’t stay with his team. Carolina had 69 total rooms and housed 86 players. The Heels also brought coaches, graduate assistants, video assistants and even two police escorts and three bus drivers.
UNC paid for 115 snacks on Friday night at $27.10 each.
N.C. State paid for 70 snacks on Friday night at $20.95 each.
UNC had breakfast for 30 people on Saturday morning – the players were allowed to sleep in – at a cost of $13 per person.
Then the Heels had pre-game brunch for 115 people ($16.95 per person) and a pre-game meal for 115 people ($37.75 per person).
Carolina did get comped some of the trainers’ meal, which reduced those costs.
N.C. State, by comparison, had 65 people for a team brunch Saturday, at $23 per person, on Saturday.
Other collegiate sports teams rarely stay in hotels on campus the night before games, but it’s a widespread practice in football. UNC has stayed in the RTP Marriott for years.
College football coaches tend to be creatures of habit and want as much control as possible over their players. No late-night parties at the fraternity house, no quarterbacks sneaking in after curfew. The cost comes from the university's athletics department, not from taxpayers.
UNC athletics director Dick Baddour defended the practice Friday.
“Because there are fewer number of opportunities in football, the value of each game is maybe more dramatic than you’ll find in other sports that don’t play that few number of games,” Baddour said. “And I think there’s somewhat of an investment issue there. You only have 12 games, you have all this week of preparation, you’re going to have 60,000 people come in …
“Are you going to take the chance the external environment is not going to be conducive for that next day? It’s a heck of an investment.
“It’s five or six times a year. So why would we make ourselves that vulnerable with all the risk in hand here? Is there one risk that we can eliminate to make sure that we’re ready?”
Baddour said the issue has been debated by the NCAA through the years and comes up in campus discussions but has continued.
As for the cost, Baddour said the real expense s in housing the team, because schools would feed the athletes on Friday night and Saturdays anyway.
Dave Horning, the senior associate athletics director for N.C. State, said the Wolfpack did not stay in hotels the night before games when he played for the Wolfpack. Horning, who finished playing in 1980, said schools often had dormitories especially for athletes. N.C. State’s, at that time, was on Western Boulevard across from campus, and the football players stayed there.
But schools, pushed by the NCAA, got away from having special dorms for athletes, deciding it was better to have athletes dispersed throughout the student body.
“That required us to try to get your kids in a certain area in an organized fashion,” Horning said Thursday. “Even when they did have the athletic dorm, I can remember when at 2 in the morning opposing fans would drive around the parking lot and beep the horn and yell things.”
Horning said there are few complaints about the practice because it’s so widespread – and accepted – in the sport.
“Not really,” he said. “It’s hard to complain when its such a common thing. It’s not like we’ve created the wheel. It’s nationally known what people do.
“Coaches have their certain way they do things. There’s pretty much a template for that across the country.”
