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| Future NFL star Alex "Red" Webster at NC State's Riddick Stadium in 1951. |
© Coman Publishing, 2017
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BY TIM PEELER
When Johnny Unitas and Alex Webster squared off in the 1958 NFL championship game at New York’s Yankee Stadium in New York, the game was the first NFL contest ever decided by sudden-death overtime.
It’s remembered as the “Greatest Game Ever Played,” mainly because it was nationally televised and helped popularize professional football to a broader audience.
When the two players met seven years earlier on a snow-covered field in Louisville, however, it most certainly was not.
They were just college players on Nov. 2, 1951, Webster a junior halfback for NC State College on his way to leading the Southern Conference in scoring and Unitas a freshman quarterback for Louisville making just the second start of his college career.
It was the first ever meeting between two teams that are now rivals in the ACC, who are now preparing to meet Saturday afternoon at Carter-Finley Stadium. It will be the first time the two teams have met since 2023 after playing nine years in a row.
Back in 1951, however, this was a dicey meeting between an established Southern Conference stalwart and a small commuter school with practically no football heritage.
“A high scoring game is a good possibility,” said the Louisville Courier-Journal on the morning of the first meeting. “Especially since the Cards uncovered a good passer in quarterback John Unitas last week against St. Bonaventure.”
However, on that Friday night 75 years ago, it was a white powdery substance that had the biggest impact on the game.
And it wasn’t the freshly fallen snow nor the 19-degree game-time temperature. They were both factors in the game, but did not have the biggest impact.
"When we left Raleigh, it was about 80 degrees," Webster said in an interview with the News & Observer's Bill Woodward in 1994. "We had lightweight uniforms, and there was snow all over the place when we got there. I just remember freezing my tail off."
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John Unitas, left, and cousin Joe Unitas during fall training in 1954. (Louisville Courier Journal file photo.) |
Sometime just after halftime, with Louisville clinging to a 6-2 lead, Webster took a handful of lime — the marking chalk used for hashmarks and yardlines — to the face, resulting in burns to his eyes that kept him from playing most of the second half.
Losing this versatile halfback — Webster threw almost as much as he ran for the Wolfpack in Feathers' single-wing offense — was a huge setback the Wolfpack. Feathers, nicknamed "Big Chief" for his Native American background, was an All-American back for the Volunteers and Gen. Robert Neyland in the early 1930s and the first NFL running back to rush for 1,000 yards. He was elevated to NC State’s football coach midway through the second World War, replacing Williams "Doc" Newton.
Feathers recruited Webster from Kearny, New Jersey, in 1948, two years after the Pack appeared in the program's first bowl game. By his junior year, “Red” Webster was one of the most feared weapons in the Southern Conference.
Red had in front of him an All-American tackle, Elmer Costa, to open holes on offense and plug holes on defense. Against Louisville, with the Pack listed as a two-touchdown favorite, Costa and the Wolfpack defense blocked two punts and caused a fumble in the first quarter on the snowy field, but managed only two points out of the turnovers.
After the offense turned the ball over on the Louisville 6, Costa forced Unitas to fumble in his own end zone, but Louisville recovered for a safety that gave the Wolfpack an early 2-0 lead.
Webster also was involved in a big play early in the game — but not in a good way. He not only played in the offensive and defensive backfields, he was also the Pack’s punter. His third kick of the night was returned 81 yards by Louisville’s Bill Karns for a touchdown that gave the Cardinals a 6-2 lead.
"I think it was the only punt that was ever run back for a touchdown against me," Webster said. "That just killed me."
The teams were still stuck on that baseball score going into the fourth quarter, when Unitas sparked Louisville’s T-formation offense with three fourth-quarter touchdowns on the frozen field. Without Webster — who had rushed for 67 yards and thrown for 90 yards prior to his injury — the Wolfpack offense was unable to move, and the game ended in a 26-2 Louisville upset.
"It was a tough night, and we got the best of them," Unitas said in a similar 1994 interview with the N&O. "[But] my freshman year overall was a good one. We beat some teams we had no business beating, and NC State was one of them."
The victory cemented Unitas as the Cardinals’ top quarterback, though the school decided to de-emphasize football in 1952, cutting back on athletic aid and tightening academic requirements for athletes. Unitas started throughout 1952 and ’53, leading his team to just a 4-12 record. Because of injuries, he played sparingly as a senior.
He didn’t make the cut after being drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers in the ninth round of the 1955 draft, but he won a spot with the Baltimore Colts through an open tryout and led the team to the 1958 and ’59 NFL championships.
Unitas had another brush with NC State near the end of his NFL career. In 1970, he and the Colts came to Carter Stadium to face the Detroit Lions in the fourth-annual Jaycees Charity Classic, an annual NFL preseason exhibition game played on NC State’s home field.
In front of 34,500 fans, the 37-year-old Unitas completed 11 of 24 passes for 102 yards, including an 8-yard go-ahead touchdown pass to Tom Mitchell late in the game. The Colts went on to finish 14-2-1 that season and to win Super Bowl V over the Dallas Cowboys in Miami.
Webster, after two years of playing in the Canadian Football League in 1953 and ’54, also had a stellar NFL career, leading the Giants in rushing in 1955 as a rookie. In the 1956 NFL championship game, Webster scored two touchdowns against the Chicago Bears in the Giants 47-7 victory, which was also played on an icy field.
He played in the championship game five more times and two Pro Bowls in his 10-year NFL playing career, including the 23-17 sudden-death overtime loss to Unitas and the Colts in 1958. Webster eventually went into coaching and became the head coach of the Giants. He was named the UPI NFL Coach of the Year in 1970 after leading the team to a 9-5 record.
He was inducted into the Giants’ “Ring of Honor” in 2011, which he called the greatest honor of his life, one year before his death.
