Does culture matter anymore?

[CVAPP]

We used to have a cultural identity. In the aftermath of NIL it seems to have been sucked down the drain.

We fired the most loyal person our program has ever known and replaced him with a guy who has never seen, let alone played in a game versus one of our rivals.

I sincerely wish DL success. I am certain he wants it so he can move up the chain. RIP SC!

[AppUSMC]

NIL killed App State football. I really hope I’m wrong, but we simply don’t have the money to keep up.

[appstate24]

NIL killed App State football. I really hope I’m wrong, but we simply don’t have the money to keep up.

I just don’t like this as an excuse to not be competitive in the Sun Belt. The gap between us and P4’s, yes. But we should compete year in and year out in the Sun Belt.

GO APPS!!

[BambooRdApp]

NIL killed App State football. I really hope I’m wrong, but we simply don’t have the money to keep up.

I just don’t like this as an excuse to not be competitive in the Sun Belt. The gap between us and P4’s, yes. But we should compete year in and year out in the Sun Belt.

GO APPS!!

I agree. We are 4 games into a new coaching regime where we have many holes to fill. Let's see how we improve over course of the season
and how recruiting and portal works out into spring practice.

Comparing to JMU from a couple of years ago. Although Chesney lost some players in the coaching change at JMU. He came into a program that was good and had good players still at program even with transfers to Indiana.

[ArmantiWaterSafety]

To your point about rivals, I think they will be the next logical loss in this NIL era for all but the top 20 or so. Maybe by title only, just to ramp up the ratings, but if you have 50 new players every year, so they really know and/or care about who is across from them?

Culture matters to a certain extent, but the culture will always change with new leadership. Will we hang on to a coach long enough to build a culture is the biggest question. We either have someone who does great who gets poached within a year or two, we have someone who does terrible who gets fired in a year or two, or someone who does mediocre and keeps their job long enough for fans to begin questioning what is acceptable.

[MrCraig]

I'd argue that culture is more important than ever. Team/school culture is the kind of intangible thing that can keep players at a school despite less money, TV exposure, etc.
If anything, I think the transfer portal era can help to build a culture like what has existed at App State because a coach can go poach the second and third stringers from bigger schools who have a chip on their shoulder and something to prove.
Something else lost in the NIL Armageddon conversation is that the majority of college football players aren't making that much money. There are a few huge name players at P4 schools making hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, but the vast majority are basically making minimum wage.
Everything that used to matter about building a team still matters.

[AZAppGrad]

A wise man once told me “ culture eats process for breakfast “….in my experience that has proven true in corporate teams. Maybe it applies to sports as well.

[BambooRdApp]

Time will tell if there will be 50 new players each year at App. New coaching staff, players migrating. I can see it happening in this off-season as the new coaching staff has had a full season to evaluate what we got. By 3rd year, one would hope that it is not 50 every year.
With that said, each year, pre nil and no penalty to transfer, we brought in 15 to 20 new recruited freshman and maybe a few transfers. As such, we were probably bringing in 20 to 25 players overall previously

If another coaching change... Then all commentary above is null and void.

[APPdiesel]

We used to have a cultural identity. In the aftermath of NIL it seems to have been sucked down the drain.

We fired the most loyal person our program has ever known and replaced him with a guy who has never seen, let alone played in a game versus one of our rivals.

I sincerely wish DL success. I am certain he wants it so he can move up the chain. RIP SC!

What exactly are you basing this claim on and what exactly do you want out of a coach?

I liked Shawn as a coach, a lot. I wanted nothing more than to find another in-house guy who’d stick around for 20 years, stack titles and go out on top, but that’s not realistic. Google the list of elite head coaches who were eventually fired at their institutions. The list is long and distinguished. Shawn wasn’t an elite HC.

So, would you rather have a loyal guy that goes 7-5 or roll the dice every couple of years? JMU keeps finding really good ones. They’ve hit on a few in a row just like we did but theirs were all outside hires. Ours were mostly internal except for Eli and now Dowell.

Again I’d hoped we’d hit on another one with Shawn and it looked that way in year 1 but he couldn’t sustain it. I’m torn up about him passing away but it doesn’t color the lenses and change how his teams performed during his tenure.

[Capt. Ed]

From my post after the Lindenwood game:

I know it's early but I'm starting to worry about Coach. The players seem more interested in seeking the limelight then they are in playing good fundamental football. Way too many personal foul's, not protecting the ball, and trying to thread the football where it doesn't belong. They're playing for themselves, not the team.

We no longer have the App football traditions we're used to, neither the Coach or the players.

[Bigdaddyg1]

What exactly is/was our “culture”? I don’t ask this to be argumentative but I see words batted around like brand and I really don’t know exactly what is meant by that. You never hear a school mentioned as a culture of losing even if they generally don’t win much. I can’t see many more examples of the kid who grew up loving a certain school then actually signing and playing with that school. Has that love for a school and hate for a rival really mattered to a majority of college players for years? I heard some talk on this subject recently on the radio specifically about the ACC. Even the Duke/UNC basketball rivalry has so many one and done guys do they really care? Does that I give my all plaque carry any meaning anymore?

[AppWyo]

NIL killed App State football. I really hope I’m wrong, but we simply don’t have the money to keep up.

Everyone wants to blame NIL, but the transfer portal is what the real difference is now. Besides whom NIL and the transfer portal has hurt the most has been the top programs, because they cannot hoard talent like they once did.

Besides, UNC-Ch has the best of everything and they cannot buy a win.

Appalachian will be just fine. Everyone has caught up to us not the other way around where we have fallen to their level. Appalachian makes everyone around them better, because they believe if they can do it, we can do it too.

[yosef69]

NIL killed App State football. I really hope I’m wrong, but we simply don’t have the money to keep up.

Everyone wants to blame NIL, but the transfer portal is what the real difference is now. Besides whom NIL and the transfer portal has hurt the most has been the top programs, because they cannot hoard talent like they once did.

Besides, UNC-Ch has the best of everything and they cannot buy a win.

Appalachian will be just fine. Everyone has caught up to us not the other way around where we have fallen to their level. Appalachian makes everyone around them better, because they believe if they can do it, we can do it too.

That second paragraph is coping. 2019 app state beats 2025 app state by 30.

[AppWyo]

Culture like Process have become buzz words like synergy. Just because they the current buzz words does not mean that they are not valid.

Appalachian is a different kind of place with different kinds of people. Appalachian graduates are real people. Some of the people on this board were big ACC school fans their entire life and for whatever reason did not go to their dream school and ended up at Appalachian and it worked out well for them. Appalachian is not for everyone. I imagine some of the people who transferred from Appalachian found that it was just not for them, I imagine some that transferred from App wish that they were still at App.

[AppWyo]

NIL killed App State football. I really hope I’m wrong, but we simply don’t have the money to keep up.

Everyone wants to blame NIL, but the transfer portal is what the real difference is now. Besides whom NIL and the transfer portal has hurt the most has been the top programs, because they cannot hoard talent like they once did.

Besides, UNC-Ch has the best of everything and they cannot buy a win.

Appalachian will be just fine. Everyone has caught up to us not the other way around where we have fallen to their level. Appalachian makes everyone around them better, because they believe if they can do it, we can do it too.

That second paragraph is coping. 2019 app state beats 2025 app state by 30.

People cope however they can. 2019 App State as well as 2007 App State both lost to Georgia Southern at home.

[ASUFan4863]

I look around the past few years and see we are in the middle of a bad football conference. The sun belt has a good team every year but 90% of the conference is an average team.

We were not average before and those programs have not all caught up to us. We have certainly dropped several levels. Unfortunately, it takes time to get back up through recruiting.

[AppGrad20]

Apologies in advance. I am about to send an incredibly lengthy message that I have been thinking about for years now. Figured this was the perfect time and place to drop it.

[Bigdaddyg1]

One of those buzz word/phrases that some want to use is the weather. If we have late season games in crappy cold weather some on here wanted to believe we had an advantage. I never bought into that. We used to recruit half our team from Georgia and Florida. There was probably a time when players enjoyed that kind of bad weather but I can’t imagine young guys from warmer climates enjoy being in that at all. We saw what didn’t help with Ga Southern a few years ago.

[AppGrad20]

As a fairly recent graduate who was in school before & during COVID and with siblings & friends who graduated even more recently, I’ve seen a huge shift in our culture. COVID, NIL, the transfer portal, and social media have essentially killed what made App State football special. “Today I Give My All for Appalachian State” used to mean giving your all not just for the team, but for the whole school, Boone, and the community.

To me, the turning point wasn’t NIL. It was COVID. Before COVID, there weren’t any online classes. The football players were true student athletes. In my gen-ed classes and in Peacock, most of them sat up front, stayed engaged, asked questions. They were my fellow classmates. We would have group projects together, play pickup basketball, or just catch up on life. They were real people, and felt more like friends than anything else. In my experience outside of one guy, none of them walked around and acted like they were better than anyone. Now? The majority of them have at least a few online classes, which makes sense with their schedules. However with that, you miss out on the connections and simple interactions with your fellow students. You miss out on your classmates and professors congratulating you after a win. You essentially lose the student in student-athlete.

To me, Boone was the perfect college town with half being locals and half being students. App almost felt like a big high school where everyone knew each other, in a good way. I couldn’t imagine App without Boone, vice versa. Now, the student population is booming and with online classes, it’s easier for students (and players) to go unnoticed. That didn’t happen a few years ago. Back then, players were noticed. They were loved and appreciated. And with that, they brought energy on their own on the field. You didn’t have to try and teach that. It didn’t matter if you were a third-string OL man jumping up and down on the metal benches while waving a towel or the star WR who just scored a TD that ran down the sideline high-fiving students—you were all in. You loved Appalachian State, loved Boone, your classmates, your teachers, the fans. You wanted to give your all for them.

Social media. Social media consumes more of our time now than ever before. With NIL, players are practically forced to be on social media for brand deal opportunities. A perfect example of this happening is at Clemson. From 2015 to 2020, Clemson football players did not go social media during the entire season. They all bought in. Eliminated the distractions and the noise. During that time every single year, they went to the playoffs. Won the National Championship twice during that time. Now, they cannot do that with the importance of NIL and players’ own personal brands. Dabo harps on the media more than ever and the negative impacts of social media. The media and folks like to make fun of him for it but the results speak for themselves.

There are other small factors at play too. Ultimately, we’re at a crossroads of either accepting the new reality or fighting to keep the culture alive. You can go and try to hire the best of the best and disregard culture or you can try to build a staff full of App guys who know and live the culture. However, that’s what Shawn did and unfortunately fans didn’t love the results. Clemson is obviously trying to do the same thing. They hire Clemson guys and stick with their own to preserve identity. Sure, some of those coaches lack lengthy coaching experience, but they were former players who believe in the culture. However, the results aren’t there right now and Clemson fans and the media are hitting them with nepotism talk. At the end of the day, online classes, NIL, social media, and the transfer portal aren’t going away. So as a collective. we have to decide do we chase potential short-term highs and deal with ever changing staffs and rosters that come with being a G5 school or when the next staff change comes, do we double down on identity—even if it means some mediocrity along the way? Does culture matter more than always chasing wins?

[AppStFan1]

NIL killed App State football. I really hope I’m wrong, but we simply don’t have the money to keep up.

I just don’t like this as an excuse to not be competitive in the Sun Belt. The gap between us and P4’s, yes. But we should compete year in and year out in the Sun Belt.

GO APPS!!

1000%! I can accept if a ranked SEC or ACC team beats us by 40 but we can be competitive in the Sun Belt. It is not like we are bottom 5 in budget, facilities, etc. There is no excuse to not compete in the Sun Belt.