Can't say I'm surprised ... the writing has been on the wall for a while now.

According to an announcement Saturday evening by NC State University, the school has fired head football coach Dave Doeren.

Todd Goebbel, the running backs coach and special teams coordinator for NC State, will be taking over as the interim head coach for the rest of the regular season.

Doeren completes a 14-year run for the Wolfpack with a 121-78 record, which includes a 5-6 mark in bowl games.

Doeren has been on the hot seat ever since the offseason, so none of this is really surprising, and that's what I was about to write about.

But while working on this piece, we had some breaking news roll in:

The idea of Philip Rivers, a Wolfpack legend and future NFL Hall of Famer, coming back to Raleigh to take over his alma mater is one hell of a headline—there's no doubt about that.

Add in the dynamic of his son, and yeah, you have something potentially epic here.

But here's the thing: To compete at the absolute highest level in this era—to actually sniff a national championship—you have to play the game, and playing the game takes an elite, open-checkbook war chest.

You need heavy-hitting NIL backing, a massive collective and a university administration willing to spend actual national championship money.

NC State doesn't have any of that.

Philip Rivers becoming the Wolfpack head coach is a fascinating concept. But unless Raleigh is ready to open the vault and prove they're willing to spend like the big boys, you have to wonder if he would look at the ledger and decide the juice just isn't worth the squeeze.