Football is Back! Meet the WCU Catamounts

It’s finally here! Wolfpack football is back as the Western Carolina Catamounts come to Raleigh Thursday night to kick off the much anticipated 2024 season. The expectations have never been higher and for me, they have never been more exciting. Let’s take a look at WCU and what they bring to town.

What is a Catamount anyway? The term originated in Western North Carolina, and it was a cross between a Mountain Lion and a Bobcat. The word means cat of the mountain. Just some useless information that I thought you would find fascinating. WCU is an FCS school, which means Football Championship Subdivision. I still think of it as NCAA division 1 AA. FCS teams decide a national champion by using a playoff system consisting of 24 teams which works a lot like the NCAA basketball tournament with automatic bids and at large bids. This is a good FCS team that is ranked 16th in the FCS preseason poll. They were 7-4 last season, and they were snubbed by the selection committee, some thought unjustly so.

Offensively, the Catamounts averaged 37.5 points a game. The head coach is Kerwin Bell, who was the SEC player of the year in 1984 as the QB for the Florida Gators. He also had a 13 year career in the NFL and the Canadian Football League. He is the former head coach at Jacksonville University and Valdosta State, where he won the NCAA division 2 championship with a 14-0 record. His offenses are always capable of scoring points, and they scored 77 points against Charleston Southern last season. They return preseason all-conference quarterback Cole Gonzales who threw for 2803 yards last year with 28 touchdown passes and only 8 interceptions. They also return a lot of experience on the offensive line. This should be a good early test for the Wolfpack defense.

Defensively, the Catamounts return 7 of their top 11 tacklers from a team that gave up 27.5 points a game. I think their defense is very vulnerable and I think they are going to struggle against NC State’s high powered offense, and I think Grayson McCall and company will be able to control the line of scrimmage and put up big numbers. I expect the offense to come out swinging and I think the outcome of this game will be clear by halftime. We will find out Thursday night at 7 pm. If you can't make it to Carter-Finley stadium, you can watch the game on the ACC network and ACC network extra, or you can listen on the Wolfpack sports Network or on the Varsity App. Lets go Pack!