For CJ Bailey, the trip back to South Florida isn’t about proving a point. It isn’t about settling a score with Miami, the school that offered him late, or about showing up the dozens of former teammates and friends he grew up competing with.
For NC State’s sophomore quarterback, returning home is about something much simpler: keeping everything exactly the same.
“Every game means a lot to me,” Bailey said this week. “A lot of people ask me how much this one means, but I’m playing the same way, practicing the same way as a normal game. When we had Georgia Tech, I prepared the same way as every week, even though they were a top-ranked team. It’s going to be the same thing. As long as I do that, we’re going to have a good game.”
If there’s a narrative about revenge or validation, Bailey isn’t buying it. Miami offered him late in the process, and many outside the locker room have framed this matchup as a chance for him to send a message back home.
But Bailey wants no part of that storyline.
“I don’t have anything against Miami or anything to prove to them,” he said. “I’ve been playing good, but that’s not enough to prove to them. Just winning overall would put a good stamp on the game. It’s not going to do anything, I feel like, to me and them personally.”
It doesn’t mean the week is free of emotion. When Bailey looks across at Miami’s sideline, he’ll see a long list of familiar faces — and a long list of guys he absolutely does not want to hear from if NC State doesn’t take care of business.
“There’s about 15, 20 players on that team that I can’t hear from,” he said with a grin. “JoJo Trader, Chance Robinson, Keelan Marion, Mark Fletcher, Malachi Toney — all of them. All those guys I know that I don’t want to hear them talking to me after the game. So we’ve got to live it up.”
His relationship with Trader, who he threw a lot of touchdowns to in high school, runs deep.
“That’s my brother,” Bailey said. “We talk a lot, especially throughout the season. We check on each other mentally. I call him a lot, check on him. We’ve got a good relationship. It’s always like that with my guys, my old teammates, my friends, my brothers. We talk a lot. That’s how we are.”
The challenge for Bailey won’t just be the crowd or the speed of Miami’s defense — it’ll also be managing everything happening off the field. Going home means family, friends, former teammates, local coaches, and just about anyone else who wants to see him before kickoff.
“It’s just about saying no,” Bailey said. “I know when I get there, a lot of people are going to try to see me before the game or call me. Sometimes you’ve got to say no. Put my phone on DND. After the game, that’s when I’ll talk to everybody. That’s how you limit the distractions.”
And he admits that’s not exactly his nature.
“Yeah, I’m not that type of guy,” he said. “But I’ve got to do it.”
Even with the boundaries set, Bailey expects a large turnout.
“For the game, I’m thinking at least 15 or 20 tickets,” he said. “A lot of them are going to come. A lot of my family members are going to be there.”
What does it feel like knowing he will be playing in front of family and friends in his hometown?
“It’s great,” he said. “It kind of motivates me to know they’re going to be there watching me. It’s pretty hard to not think about it while you’re warming up. But when it’s time to go, it’s time to go. I’m good at blocking out the noise. For some reason, when I get out there, everything just goes quiet for me. I can’t hear anything when fans are screaming. I’m so focused.”
If NC State is going to reverse its struggles on the road — the Pack enter the game just 1-3 away from Carter-Finley and riding a three-game road skid — Bailey believes the mindset used at home has to travel.
“We’ve got to attack it the same way as we do at home,” he said. “We’ve got to find that energy, find that juice on our sideline. The way they’re going to have their momentum, we’ve got to try to take that from them. Getting stops, scoring points, having our juice squad juice us up, everybody having positive energy — that’s how we’re going to change the game on the road.”
Part of that renewed confidence comes from the huge win over Georgia Tech, a game where Bailey looked like the quarterback who was excelling each week earlier in the season.
“It was pretty helpful,” he said. “I feel like we got our groove back. Even in practice, the energy was way higher. We felt like we could do anything. We just came out beating a top-ranked team. Going into this game, we were up. We turned up ready to play.”
And if that win validated anything?
“It helped,” Bailey said. “It built the confidence back. Once we started losing a little bit, even though we still had energy at practice, it wasn’t the same as when we just won that game. It validated a lot for us going into this one.”
