— The last time NC State won a title, 39-year-old James Curle was 9 years old. His oldest son, Aidan, was born in 2004. He’s raised his kids to be every bit the NC State through-and-through that he is.

But sometimes, he questions it.

“I’ve wondered if I’ve done my kids a disservice by raising them a State fan," Curle said. "I’ve had those moments. Especially in those moments like the Clemson game with the missed field goal. I ask myself, 'why do I get so wrapped up in it and why do I do this to myself?' But I know that I’m not ever going to truly give up NC State."

Is it that cut-and-dry?

“But then I think about my kids and I’m like, ‘God, I’ve raised my kids to follow a team that has moments like this.’" he continued. "1987 was our last ACC title in either sport. … I was nine. So that would make my kids some negative double-digit number that’s obscene to think about. I’ve signed them up willingly, knowingly, to fandom of a team that has this track record.”

There aren’t many NC State fans who love their school and have more pride in it than Curle. For him to say that is pretty significant.

Duke or North Carolina fans don’t often have reason to give up their particular school’s athletic programs. But some of their fans might have a different football team they root for, for instance (certainly not all of them). Most NC State fans tend to be fans of both, through-and-through.

And you have to wonder: If NC State fans continually get kicked in the stomach by their team - proverbially speaking, of course, by concepts like NC State Stuff - then why do it? Why keep coming back?

“I don’t know if you can un-fan yourself," Curle said. "I think some people have claimed that they (say), 'That’s it, I’m done, I’m done with NC State football. I’m done with basketball.' Usually what they’re doing is venting and then also saying they’re done with this particular coach or whatever. ... I don’t know that I’ve met anyone who’s been a dyed-in-the-wool State fan who has then successfully been able to un-fan themselves."

Fandom Is Undying

To Curle, and others, there’s no denying NC State. It’s a part of who they are, as much as their eye color. You can put a colored contact lens over it to hide it, just like you can throw down the remote angrily after an NC State lost and loudly insist "THAT’S IT, I’M DONE WITH NC STATE BASKETBALL (or football)." But you take the lens out at night. And for State sports, you always come back.

“When you have a passion and you’ve had this thing running in your blood kind of like I do, it’s like, 'yes, you suffer the mentality,'” former NC State basketball manager Tor Ramsey said. “My dad is a big-time NC State fan. He says, ‘All right, I refuse to watch this game, I’m not going to watch this game’ but yet you’re drawn to it anyway because in the back of your mind, you’re just thinking somehow, someway, this thing has to turn around. So that passion is kind of driven into your soul.”

Part of the reason behind it is many came by way of NC State fandom honestly. Not that North Carolina or Duke fans don’t do the same thing, but there’s a reason Duke football struggles with attendance and North Carolina has at times, too. The same fans may care about both sports, but not to the same degree.

And often, an NC State fan is derided by outsiders for that passion instead of being rewarded for it.

“It’s a sense of frustration that you’re deeply emotionally tied to, something that people on the outside-looking-in wonder why you’re a fan of and sometimes openly mock you for being such,” Curle said.

Gameday Spirit

NC State football fans show up as much for the tailgate and the party as anything else, and that’s definitely something you don’t find up the road in Chapel Hill or Durham, mostly because of logistical hurdles. But nonetheless, Wolfpack fans do a pretty good job keeping Carter-Finley Stadium relatively packed, all things considered.

And that tailgating part of it - the fun part of the football games - is probably some of the reason NC State fans continue to soldier on. They love seeing their team win, and they love to have a good time. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll be able to do both.

BackingthePack.com’s Steven Muma knows better than to believe in NC State Stuff at all. But even he admits to not wanting to get his hopes up, ever. In spite of himself, though, he does.

“I think part of it is like assuming - for me, part of assuming the worst is just trying not to jinx things from a mental standpoint, as silly as that is. But at the base of it, we’re all optimistic homers. We’re just fans. So we’re still going to watch,” Muma said. “We know they can tear us in half, but we’re going to cross our fingers and hope we have a good time instead.”

Caulton Tudor, who has covered the ACC for over 40 years, knows NC State fan well. The reputation that they somehow enjoy their misery is unfair, he says. But they’re a unique bunch.

“I think they love the school. I think State fans are - there can’t be many schools in the country that have had more patience than State fans when it comes to sports,” Tudor said. “State fans are very faithful, even when they are their most pessimistic state, they are faithful. Some people might say that they’re gluttons for punishment. I certainly don’t believe that.

“I think they do expect the worst, but it’s sort of, ‘to hell with it, I’m going to march through this’ thing. I salute them for doing it.”

Are the Diehards Disappearing?

Ramsey and others, though, wonder if some of what has made the fanbase unique is in danger of disappearing.

The older generation of NC State fans get their passion, arguably, from their vivid memories of what success looked and felt like. For the younger NC State fans, those times are either extremely unclear memories or just things they read about.

“You’ve got these new kids coming out of school, the millennial generation is coming out and sooner or later, these people are just going to look back at ‘83 kind of the way I look back at the 1940s and 1950s," Ramsey said. "It’s like, 'wow, that was a fun time back then,' but it’s like, 'what have you done?' And that’s the thing - it’s dying. It is going away.

“So there is a certain impatience to figure out some way to turn this thing around before we - before it’s too late," he added. "Because we always think it’s not too late. It’s not too late. Again, it’s Lucy and Charlie Brown with the football.”

In a sense, that’s what NC State fans are becoming known for - their passionate and ardent love for their team and their school, in spite of having their hearts ripped out and shown to them as a result of that love.

The fanbase’s identity is almost becoming tied to those heartbreaking losses (and even, sometimes, the upset wins).

Curle isn’t proud of that part, obviously. But that part of NC State fan that soldiers on through the bad stuff with a ready quip and a wry smile in spite of it all is charming, in its way. Still, Curle would drop it in a heartbeat for the alternative.

“In a weird way, like if you’re the lovable losers, when adversity does hit, you’re like, ‘Well, this is just how things are. We can handle this. This is what it is.’" he explained. "Then if suddenly you’re expecting national titles every year and then went through a down stretch, I think it would feel worse. Being kind of the downtrodden, loveable loser is its own identity, but I think it’s one that would be easily sacrificed in the name of actually putting some W’s on the board.”

The Nation Takes Notice

When NC State was conducting its search for its next head basketball coach after dismissing Mark Gottfried towards the end of the season, the national media immediately went with the easy narrative about NC State fans. 'What do they expect? Who do they think they are?'

Former UNC-Wilmington coach Kevin Keatts is the new man in Raleigh, and he said all the right things at his introductory press conference on Sunday. He even noted that the fanbase’s passion was an asset, not a liability. Better that than apathy, of course.

Yet somehow, NC State finishing in the ACC’s cellar with one of its most talented roster in years was NC State fans demanding too much.

There’s a notion that NC State fans want to get back to the days of winning championships right away, and they won’t stand for anything less. Sure, eventually, they’d like that. But they know they’ve got a ways to go. And they’re aching for anything to feel good about.

“Look at the reaction that the students had to one victory this year, the Duke victory. Look at how many thousands of fans were out there, just over a regular-season game," Ramsey said. "When we go to the Sweet 16 - the Sweet 16, for goodness sakes. Look at how many thousands of people met the people at the athletic center, the people out there closing down Hillsborough Street. You’ve just got to give NC State just a little bit of something like that. Those are not even championships.

“Look at the reaction the team had when they just simply got back in the NCAA Tournament after a five-year drought, Mark Gottfried’s first year. The passion is not dead," he added. "It’s nowhere close to dead. The spirit is absolutely nowhere close to dead. Now, would we want more if we started really getting better? Would we clamor for more if we started regularly making the Sweet 16? Would we now say, well, you know what, it’s time for a Final Four? I don’t doubt that that might actually happen. But one ACC Championship would hold people over for a pretty good while."

A while? It's been a while.

"Valvano didn’t make the NCAA Tournament the year after we won the Championship. Norm Sloan did not make the NCAA Tournament for another 5-6 years, 1980, after having one of the greatest teams in the history of college basketball," Ramsey said. "We were able to live on those things. It’s a shame right now that all we have to live on right now are those same championships, ironically enough.”

Secured Identity

So would the NC State fanbase lose its identity? Sure. But they’d be completely okay with that.

Why do they persist in their fandom? They don’t have a choice. Curle was just five when NC State won its last national title, but he still looks longingly at pictures of Hillsborough Street, cars overturned and half the brickyard ablaze. He wants to know what that feels like.

NC State fans understandably look at North Carolina and Duke fans as snobbish, thinking they’re better than everyone else and - as Curle said - “lording” their titles over everyone else. NC State fans take some pride in NOT being like them. They’re the blue-collar, down-to-earth fans in the Triangle that don’t act like jerks and aren’t riding any kind of bandwagon.

Curle would give up any form of the moral high ground of fandom, if such a thing exists, for the alternative, though.

“When I wistfully look at it, I’m like, would we be viewed as jerks for having a decade solid of maybe three titles or so, maybe a run like the (San Antonio) Spurs had? Maybe not like a straight dynasty, but like several titles in a five-year (period)? Would suddenly everybody be like, ‘Oh God, NC State fans are so oppressive with how good they are.’ I don’t know,” Curle said.

“I don’t think fondly of people who lord over their titles on other fanbases, but it’s a good problem to have. I wouldn’t mind being in those shoes for once to see what it feels like.”