Howard Baum has been the statistician for multiple NC State sports for over half a century. You won\u2019t hear his voice on the radio, but he\u2019s a fixture on the sidelines for Wolfpack football and basketball games, providing in-game stats for broadcasters. When Baum, 89, is not traveling, he\u2019s helping out at family-owned B&B Bowling Lanes in Fayetteville, N.C<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How did you get involved with tracking game stats for NC State athletics?<\/strong> \u00a0Through bowling. In the 1960s, the Bowling Proprietors Association wanted to see if we could get more publicity. The general manager of Western Lanes in Raleigh brought NC State play-by-play announcer Bill Jackson to the association\u2019s summer convention, and we got to know each other. In 1967, Bill told me, \u201cHoward, I need a spotter in football. I\u2019ll pay you 10 bucks, give you a free parking pass, and a free meal in the press box if you do it.\u201d That sounded like a good deal, so I thought about it for 10 seconds and that was that. . . . I started working a few games with TV when they needed a local guy to do stats in basketball. After the 1982 basketball season, I just did radio. I take one game off every year for our anniversary cruise with my wife, but otherwise, I\u2019ve been at every game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019ve had a front-row seat at so many athletics championships. What\u2019s that been like to witness?<\/strong> It\u2019s fun. I\u2019ve seen some great, great basketball, especially, and a lot of good football. You get to know the players, and they\u2019re all good kids. I’ve outlasted all the coaches. They were all good. They\u2019ve been good to me. It\u2019s just been a good ride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This year\u2019s ACC and NCAA tournaments generated so much excitement and media attention. Why do you think that is? <\/strong>It was a once-in-a-lifetime season, because never before in the history of the ACC Basketball Tournament did you have to win five games to even qualify for the NCAA. We got back to Pittsburgh and said, \u201cWhy not us? Why not? Why can\u2019t we do it?\u201d It was the thrill of a lifetime.\u00a0 Howard Baum has been the statistician for multiple NC State sports for over half a century. You won\u2019t hear his voice on the radio, but he\u2019s a fixture on the sidelines for Wolfpack football and basketball games, providing in-game stats for broadcasters. When Baum, 89, is not traveling, he\u2019s helping out at family-owned B&B Bowling Lanes in Fayetteville, N.C<\/p>\n\n\n\n How did you get involved with tracking game stats for NC State athletics?<\/strong> \u00a0Through bowling. In the 1960s, the Bowling Proprietors Association wanted to see if we could get more publicity. The general manager of Western Lanes in Raleigh brought NC State play-by-play announcer Bill Jackson to the association\u2019s summer convention, and we got to know each other. In 1967, Bill told me, \u201cHoward, I need a spotter in football. I\u2019ll pay you 10 bucks, give you a free parking pass, and a free meal in the press box if you do it.\u201d That sounded like a good deal, so I thought about it for 10 seconds and that was that. . . . I started working a few games with TV when they needed a local guy to do stats in basketball. After the 1982 basketball season, I just did radio. I take one game off every year for our anniversary cruise with my wife, but otherwise, I\u2019ve been at every game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019ve had a front-row seat at so many athletics championships. What\u2019s that been like to witness?<\/strong> It\u2019s fun. I\u2019ve seen some great, great basketball, especially, and a lot of good football. You get to know the players, and they\u2019re all good kids. I've outlasted all the coaches. They were all good. They\u2019ve been good to me. It\u2019s just been a good ride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This year\u2019s ACC and NCAA tournaments generated so much excitement and media attention. Why do you think that is? <\/strong>It was a once-in-a-lifetime season, because never before in the history of the ACC Basketball Tournament did you have to win five games to even qualify for the NCAA. We got back to Pittsburgh and said, \u201cWhy not us? Why not? Why can\u2019t we do it?\u201d It was the thrill of a lifetime.\u00a0 Statistician for NC State basketball<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5896,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"source":"","ncst_custom_author":"","ncst_show_custom_author":false,"ncst_dynamicHeaderBlockName":"ncst\/default-post-header","ncst_dynamicHeaderData":"{\"displayCategoryID\":8,\"showAuthor\":true,\"showDate\":true,\"showFeaturedVideo\":false,\"subtitle\":\"Statistician for NC State basketball\"}","ncst_content_audit_freq":"","ncst_content_audit_date":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[1330,109,1681,1536,1538,1537,1535,1534,1432,1252],"_ncst_magazine_issue":[],"class_list":["post-5895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newswire","category-stories","tag-acc-tournament","tag-athletics","tag-autumn-2024-profile","tag-bb-bowling-lanes","tag-bill-jackson","tag-bowling-proprietors-association","tag-howard-baum","tag-mens-basketball","tag-rachel-young","tag-western-lanes"],"displayCategory":{"term_id":8,"name":"Newswire","slug":"newswire","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":8,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":70,"filter":"raw"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5895"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5895"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6001,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5895\/revisions\/6001"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5895"},{"taxonomy":"_ncst_magazine_issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_ncst_magazine_issue?post=5895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/p>\n","protected":false,"raw":"\n\n\n\n\nBy Rachel Young<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n"},"excerpt":{"rendered":"