MCLAMB: Nothing Ever Changes

Bored by the dullness of current events, Rob McLamb has decided to enter a time machine and move forward to report on NC State Athletics 38 years from now. Here is what he discovered.

¡The year 2059 will go down as one of the craziest in memory!

At least, away from the sports sector. 

As the human realm nears the seventh decade of the 21st century as its denotation point, it is hard not to reflect on recent developments within the global sphere.

Since winning the previous election as the Ciudad del Toros party leader, the United States economy is booming under President Roberto McLamb-Alvarez, the simple but noble son of a retired sports journalist and his beauty pageant wife from the Dominican Republic.

After becoming the first president elected from a political party that is not Republican or Democratic since Millard Fillmore over 200 years ago, McLamb-Alvarez brought a collective calmness and created a harmonious, unified country by rallying factions engaged in verbal cyber-warfare together to thwart the latest Martian attack two solar cycles earlier.

The Martians probably will not strike again soon, as the remaining noise sensors hovering in the Mesosphere that the Canadian Death Star did not destroy were certainly blown to bits by the sound emanating from Wolfpack Nation.  This was initiated after North Carolina State University won the American Football 7-on-7 National Championship Game this past weekend with a narrow, 70-68, victory over perennial power Hampden–Sydney College on a dry, frigid afternoon in New Miami, South Florida.

Fans screaming in their flexiglass body armor suits were heard as far away as Proxima Centauri. The high-pitched squeals of joy registered a 69.69 on the Mariah Carey Scale within the Aquila Rift as well.

It was the second-highest noise rating of the term, with the planet’s collective celebration following the announcement by McLamb-Alvarez that humanity was no longer subservient to its cockroach overlords following a cessation of hostilities in World War V being the only sound to register a greater volume.

There may have been some nervous moments involving the Wolfpack this season, but there was never really any doubt that NC State, blessed with the best fortune any school could possibly hope for, would win another national title. The latest success leaves folks who continuously wait for the Wolfpack’s demise to once again rue the divine fate of the prestigious Southern Ivy League school commonly known across the universe as “State.”

When Reggie Gallaspy IV caught a swing pass and carried the vegan-skin into the promised land to hand NC State a vital Graduate Day win over SEC rival North Carolina A&T on Wayne Day Field inside Carter-Finley-Doeren Stadium at the Randy Woodson Fairgrounds sponsored by Howling Cow Ice Cream, it was clear that the Pack was once again destined for eternal greatness.

However, certain predictability and hollowness come with having an athletic department as wildly successful as what NC State brings to the labor surface.

As loud as it was this past season at The Doeren, Avent Park, New Dorton Arena at Woodson Fairgrounds, Gwiazdowski Indoor Stadium, and Reynolds Coliseum, the amount of sound emitted from the cacophonic cries when the Wolfpack has one of its rare moments of failure easily exceeds the growingly monotonic cheers that celebrate the endless string of NC State triumphs.

Winning is a birthright. Conference and national titles are the norms. The NC State fan base is clearly spoiled.

While some records were lost during the Melting Ice Cap Floods of the 2030s, historians -- and NC State has many of them -- will point out that the Wolfpack once went 38 years without a national championship in cadre competition.

Yet if you were to travel back 38 years to 2021 through the latest time technology and view the developments firsthand (unless, of course, you would rather have a cranial upload of NC State video artifacts and then try to discern developments from the primitive organic light-emitting diodes of the era), things are the same now as they always were.

¿What could happen in 38 years?

Well, it was 38 years ago when the NC State baseball team was defying all realistic expectations at the 2021 College World Series. After the competition, the contingent branded Pack13 (thirteen was considered a lucky number early in the 21st century) returned home to North Carolina’s capital city of Brind’Amourville (then known as Raleigh) and received adoring crowds eager to cheer the national champions as they casually visited one of the university's ancient low-rent relics. 

Individual sports were a predictable pursuit in glory in 2021 for the Wolfpack as Elly Henes won a national title in the 5000 meters* (meter was a previous form of measurement replaced globally several cycles later). And the dominance is unlikely to end any time soon, as Henes is now the NC State women’s track and field head coach and guiding her own daughter, Laurielly, in her quest to become the first track and field athlete to win a fifth straight NCAA championship.

And now, back in present times, the sports teams at NC State continue to march on without regard for the inferiority complexes their constant first-place finishes have created amongst rivals.

In what Trea Turner has previously announced will be his final season as head coach, the Wolfpack baseball collective enters the spring seeking its ninth straight year with titles in both the ACC and NCAA Baseball Championships but will likely face strong competition from bitter conference foe Maryland. NC State's home installation, Avent Park -- a facility hastily built over three decades ago when a roaming group of pathogens destroyed the previous ballpark -- will host a fan base not content to settle for conference and national titles. ¿Could 2059 be the year that the Pack finally goes undefeated in baseball? 

The NC State men’s basketball cooperative, which took control of the Triangle region when local outfits North Carolina and Duke were put on vigorous probation by the FBI following the discovery that student-athletes had sold game tickets and athletic apparel, has their sights set on a lunar trip to return to the Final Four in April as memories of cutting the nets down in Atlantis last season are still fresh in everyone's minds.

Meanwhile, the Wolfpack women’s basketball unit is functioning at a feverish velocity inside the Yow-Moore Practice Facility and searching for another banner despite having passed UConn for the lead in national titles several solar cycles ago.

¿What will happen in the next 38 years?

It will probably be the same thing that always happens. In that regard, the year 2059 is no different from the others. NC State wins another national championship while other teams and their supporters wait for the inevitable logic-defying mistake or deceitful action that will once again deny them glory. Even in the toughest of moments, the Wolfpack and their vast bastion of benefactors never had an inkling of doubt that things would end up this exact way.

Nothing ever changes. Hopefully, everyone involved with NC State will at least not take the journey for granted.