© Tim Peeler, 2025
After being dormant for 37 years, NC State and Virginia renewed their college football rivalry on Sept. 30, 1944, in a showcase game in the middle of World War II in the nation’s biggest Navy town.
So of course it was raining harder than an Atlantic squall on the deck of an aircraft carrier. The turf at Norfolk’s Foreman Field was sloppier than pig racing at the State Fair.
The Wolfpack won 13-0 despite having a half-blind halfback, a war-reduced travel roster of just 28 players and a kicker whose German surname literally meant “goat foot.”
Also, the Wolfpack didn’t make a first down in the entire game, the only time in NCAA history a winning team failed to make 10 yards on a possession.
It’d be nice to say the game was a war-time anomaly, but scoring wasn’t too common for the Pack and Feathers’ version of the wing-T offense. It didn’t help that the team’s pre-game walk-through the day before in Newport News, Virginia, was cancelled because of rain. The Wolfpack didn’t cross midfield in the first half and did so only once in the second.
On gameday, neither the Wolfpack nor the Cavaliers could move the ball effectively. Virginia was better on the ground, putting up more passing and rushing yards and gaining 14 first downs, but they fumbled the ball eight times in the water-logged game.
The Wolfpack, under first-year coach Beattie “Big Chief” Feathers, didn’t really even try to move the ball, punting it away on first or second down on every possession of the first half. At the height of the rain, Virginia also took to punting on third down just to get rid of the soggy and slippery pigskin.
There were a couple of extenuating circumstances that caused such limitations.
First, the game was played fewer than 15 weeks after D-Day, the Allied invasion to retake the European continent. As there were more important global matters at the time, every team in the country had limited access to qualified players, except for some of the pre-flight programs that actively recruited top-notch athletes to train as bomber and fighter pilots.
At State, most of the regular students had 4-F status, which meant they were unfit for military service for health, mental or moral reasons. State star running back Howard “Touchdown” Turner, a three-sport standout in football, basketball and baseball, was denied U.S. Army service because of poor eyesight three times during his NC State career.
There were more than 4,000 perfectly fit trainees on campus during that time, but the Army did not allow its officer trainees to compete in college athletics, unlike the U.S. Navy trainee programs at UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke.
Both State and Virginia had reduced rosters. State traveled with just 28 players, which was more than dressed out for the season-opening 27-7 victory the week before against Milligan, in Feathers’ first game. Feathers, however, went into the game planning just to use one platoon (no substitutes) on offense and defense.
Secondly, that afternoon, Norfolk’s Foreman Field was practically under water as nearly two inches of rain fell during the course of the game, which was the first meeting between the neighboring schools since 1908. Even State’s practice the day before in Newport News was canceled because of rain.
For three quarters, neither team could move the ball. In fact, State didn’t even try in the wet conditions, punting the ball away to Virginia on either first or second down of every possession. The Cavs, mostly buried in their own territory, made it past midfield a few times, but never really threatened the goal line and also began kicking the ball on third down.
Early in the fourth quarter, as the heavy rain started to subside, Virginia half back Dick Michels attempted to punt the ball away on third down. The center snap flew over his head and when he tried to recover it, the ball squirted into the end zone.
There, NC State running back Lum Edwards of Big Stone Gap, Virginia, fell on the ball for the first touchdown of the game. Kicker Mendel Zickefoose of Buckhannon, West Virginia, kicked the extra point for a 7-0 lead.
Five plays later, Virginia again had the ball deep in its own territory following a clipping penalty on the kickoff, a 2-yard loss on a rushing attempt and an 8-yard loss on a fumbled snap.
When Michels tried to punt the ball away near his own end zone, the snap was low and it slipped by the kicker and into the end zone. NC State’s Tony Gaeta fell on the loose ball for the second gift of the game. Zickefoose's PAT attempt failed.
The Wolfpack recorded the shutout win despite just 10 yards of total offense and no first downs. It was the first of four wins against teams from Virginia, Feathers' home state, in his debut season.
NCAA records are rare for most teams, unless they are one of the major football factories. For State, kicker Marc Primanti still owns the NCAA individual record for his perfect 1996 season, in which he made all 20 field goals and all 26 PATs en route to winning the Lou Groza Award as the nation’s best kicker. Linebacker Nate Irving owns the individual record for making eight tackles for loss against Wake Forest on Nov. 18, 2010.
State owns two other team NCAA records, one for the most consecutive passes attempted without a running play (32 at Duke on Nov. 11, 1989, in a 35-26 loss) and another for the most tackles for loss in a single game (24 vs. Florida State on Nov. 11, 2004).
