Your guess is as good as mine
Maybe better! Here's my flash prediction of NC State football wins and losses in the 2025 season. Just a guess!
Onward Wolfpack with coach Dave Doeren leading NC State in 2025 to the same results as in 2024? A question? A comment? You decide!
Poetry aside? It may be applicable
Okay, enough of my grandma’s poetry, at least for a short while or maybe until the end of today’s post. With about 14 weeks until the season opener, it’s time to offer my off-the-cuff prediction of wins and losses for the NC State Wolfpack football team in the 2025 season.
While in this area of North Carolina and probably across the United States and around the world, most of the college football attention and gossip-passing thus far this year has been about the $50 million dollar man in Chapel Hill, 73-year old Bill Belichick and his 24-year old girl friend (and maybe fiancé) Jordon Hudson. Of course, North Carolina football is also in the spotlight, so bright that the Tar Heels’ season opener at home against TCU has been moved to Monday night, September 1. ESPN is thinking mega ratings.
The football programs at NC State and Duke, in one way, must appreciate the glare being directed on UNC, adding pressure to that program. In another way that’s not so good, there has been little written or discussed about the two other Research-Triangle-area-of-North-Carolina-Atlantic-Coast-Conference-programs, and free publicity is usually good, even if bad, just ask the UNC athletics director. There’s been very little discussion of the Wolfpack and Blue Devils as both operate in the shadow of Belichick. Pressure is off.
That UNC athletics director reports UNC football season ticket sales are booming. Demand for the season opener are at an all-time high. Enthusiasm for UNC football is out of sight. Study the Tar Heels’ schedule and think of an undefeated season, done the professional way. This makes the UNC-Chapel Hill chancellor, a Dookie through and through, just plain giddy.
Belichick, the former professional football coach, says he has always wanted to try his hand at coaching college football. He took the chance joining North Carolina to the tune of some $50 million dollars over five years, or something like that. Good gig if you can get it. He did, loudly placing UNC football above the holy grail, UNC basketball. For Bill, it’s just another coaching job at the professional level.
On the other hand, since Belichick’s hiring, the Wolfpack and Blue Devils have quietly been moving along, doing what’s needed to be successful in 2025. Or at least try to achieve a goal of more wins than losses.
A few days ago, on the drive home from a round of golf at Forest Oaks Country Club just south of Greensboro, the conversation went from discussing our scores on the North Carolina Golf Panel’s 50th ranked course in North Carolina to college football.
I was asked for my prediction for the Wolfpack’s 12-game regular season. It was a quick draw request with the guy riding shotgun naming the opponent game-after-game. All I had to do was say “win” or “loss.” No explanation required though I could.
So, here goes with my off-the-cuff Wolfpack football prediction which, by the way, I reserve the right to change at any time.
2025 Wolfpack football prediction
Thursday, August 28, home against East Carolina: WIN (1-0)
Saturday, September 6, home against Virginia (non-ACC game): WIN (2-0)
Thursday, September 11, at Wake Forest: LOSS (2-1; 0-1 ACC)
Saturday, September 20, at Duke: LOSS (2-2; 0-2)
Saturday, September 27, home against Virginia Tech: WIN (3-2; 1-2)
Saturday, October 4, home against Campbell: WIN (4-2; 1-2)
Saturday, October 11, at Notre Dame: LOSS (4-3; 1-2)
Saturday, October 25, at Pittsburgh: LOSS (4-4; 1-3)
Saturday, November 1, home against Georgia Tech: WIN (5-4; 2-3)
Saturday, November 15, at Miami: LOSS (5-5; 2-4)
Friday, November 21, at Florida State: LOSS (5-6; 2-5)
Saturday, November 29, home against North Carolina: WIN (6-6; 3-5 ACC)
NOTE: The Wolfpack’s non-conference schedule of East Carolina, Virginia, Campbell, and Notre Dame may be one of the toughest in the nation. The UNC non-league list includes Texas Christian (TCU), Charlotte, Richmond, and Central Florida.
The prediction of 6-6 overall regular season record for the Wolfpack is a repeat of the 2024 season as is the 3-5 ACC mark a repeat of the 2024 conference record. Beating North Carolina in the final game of the season would be a repeat of last fall.
Reminds me of the joke:
Pete and Repeat were sitting on a fence, Pete fell off. Who was left?
Repeat.
Pete and Repeat were sitting on a fence, Pete fell off. Who was left?
Repeat.
With the six wins, the Wolfpack will qualify for a bowl game, for what it’s worth. Last year, the bowl game loss was to East Carolina in the Military Bowl in Annapolis MD. Revenge for the Pack comes August 28 in Raleigh.
In 12 seasons under head coach Dave Doeren, the Wolfpack has qualified for 10 bowl games, winning three, losing six, and claiming a win in one bowl when the opponent failed to show up.
All that said and done, Doeren and the Wolfpack will win the one game that means the most, it seems: the finale against North Carolina, a game that’s referred to far and wide as Doeren’s job-saving game. He is 8-4 against UNC including winning the last four. A win against North Carolina is worth more than six losses to others.
That season ending game didn’t figure in to the fate of Mack Brown last year; he was fired a few days before the Tar Heels lost to the Wolfpack in Chapel Hill. Belichick doesn’t need to beat the Wolfpack to keep his position, though, when NC State wins that game, there will be grumbling among the wishy-washy UNC fans.
So, take it for what it’s worth. For the Wolfpack, a 6-6 overall record, a 3-5 ACC mark, and a loss in the to-be-named later bowl game. Am I optimistic or pessimistic about the coming Wolfpack football season? Maybe both. Or, better yet, middle of the road. Maybe wishy-washy! Hah!
Yes, there’s a poem or two for this
So, here’s a poem by my grandma. I think it’s applicable to the coming football season, especially to Wolfpack fans who have come to hope for the best but live with the results of NC State football, taking it for what it’s worth and while wanting more wins and an ACC title:
To The Unexpected Guest
In the midst of such confusion
There is nothing of illusion
To be shattered in some future time or place.
So, if you take us as you find us,
And you really do not mind us,
No future disappointment will you face.
—Susie Brooks Overton
Now, my own original poem especially for Wolfpack football:
There’s a football team in Raleigh
Whose fans are adept at saying “By Golly!”
We want titles, we say, not just bowl games
And to play teams other than no-names.
And winning the conference title would be jolly.
—Grandson Jim, 2025