More on 'bannergate" at Final Four

DETROIT - Earlier this week, News & Observer columnist Caulton Tudor and I reported on the banners honoring NCAA champions in the lobby of the giant Renaissance Center complex that includes a Marriott and General Motors headquarters.

From our vantage point, we saw banners correctly displaying the years of Duke's three NCAA titles and North Carolina's four NCAA championships. N.C. State's banner listed only 1974, omitting 1983. A day later, a walk around to the opposite site of the banners revealed something else.

The opposite side of N.C. State's listed 1983 and not 1974.

But the opposite sides of the Duke (1991, 1992 and 2001) and North Carolina (1957, 1982, 1993 and 2005) again listed all of their championships.

Throughout the lobby, there was inconsistency in the banners. Kentucky's, for example, listed three of its titles on one side and four more on the other. Why this occurred is a mystery.

I set out to find the NCAA's chief of banner enforcement Saturday morning but wound up abandoning the investigation so I could run on the treadmill and eat a Subway sandwich instead.

So we'll just note that N.C. State got the short end of this deal because from either vantage point, you'd think the Wolfpack has only one NCAA title when in fact it has two.

But take heart, N.C. State fans. Football season is just five months away, and you've got two good quarterbacks in Russell Wilson and Mike Glennon. Just like the banner situation, you will only have one of them on the field at any time. But that will be one more quality passer than a lot of teams in the ACC possess. - Ken Tysiac