Saturday, September 6, 2025

Zero First Downs and a Win Over Virginia

© Tim Peeler, 2025

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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).



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Saturday, August 30, 2025

When Lee Corso Didn't Drown At Riddick Stadium

 © Tim Peeler, 2025

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Lee Corso as Mr. Wuf 

Lee Corso almost didn’t make it through his second season as Florida State’s quarterback, much less 38 years of broadcasting on ESPN, thanks to a 1954 game at NC State’s Riddick Stadium.

“We’re going to drown, Buddy,” Corso told his college roommate as they lay at the bottom of a pile up at the Wolfpack’s one-time on-campus stadium. “We’re going to die right here on the football field.”

Buddy Reynolds, of course, became more famous as an actor when he changed his named to Burt and moved to Hollywood, pushed out of footballbecause of a game against the Wolfpack three years later.

On Oct.16, 1954, many people thought they were going to die, mainly because the most powerful hurricane to ever hit the North Carolina,Hazel, was still trailing its way across the East Coast. It made landfall the day before on the North Carolina-South Carolina border and caused some damage in Raleigh, including blowing the roof of the Riddick Stadium press box. In all, the Category 4 hurricane killed 95 people in the United States.

Florida State’s football team wasn’t sure their players would be healthy, either, having escaped the largest polio outbreak in state history, which was raging across the panhandle. It was a mild version of the rampant disease, but so pervasive it was later named “The Tallahassee Strain.”

None of that mattered to Lee and Buddy that night on the field that later became main campus’ biggest parking lot, as water streamed through the ear holes of their helmets. They were unable to get up because of the defensive tackles laying on top of them on the notoriously swampy field.

“We’re going to die,” Corso gurgled one last time.

They didn’t, of course. In fact, they went on win the game 13-7, as Corso rushed seven times for 22 yards. The decisive play was a controversial punt block in the fourth quarter that put a damper on Homecoming crowd of 9,000.

Corso had other opportunities to stand out against the Wolfpack, particularly during his 1956 return to Riddick Stadium. He was the star of the Seminoles’ 14-0 victory on Oct. 13, 1956. He scored the Seminoles’ first touchdown on a 35-yard run and set up the other with a 61-yard punt return.

“They have a fine player in that Corso,” said NC State coach Earle Edwards. “He was the difference. He had more to do with the outcome than any other individual.”

For the game, Corso had 10 carries for 108 yards, completed five of his run-option passes for 74 yards and had a big day as punt returner.

Corso did have another significant interaction with the Wolfpack at its new field, Carter Stadium. On Oct. 4, 1975, Corso was the head coach at Indiana, trying to get a scouting report on an undersized freshman running back in the Wolfpack backfield.

That running back, Ted Brown, had almost quit the team two weeks before, but was inserted into the starting lineup by Wolfpack coach Lou Holtz after his veteran tailbacks fumbled the ball away five times the week before in a regionally televised 37-15 loss at Michigan State. Brown was joined by fellow freshman Scott Wade, who gained 55 yards, and Ricky Adams, who gained 62.

Corso and his staff didn’t figure out a way to stop Brown, who rushed for 121 yards and two touchdowns. The High Point native finished his career as the Atlantic Coast Conference’s all-time rushing leader with 4,546 yards (plus 399 uncredited bowl yardage), a record he still owns almost a half century after his career ended.

“We just got beat,” Corso said after the game. “When you get beat, you take your bat and ball and go home, and you get ready for the next game.”

The next season in Bloomington, Indiana, Brown ran for another 141 yards on 23 carries with two more touchdowns against the Hoosiers.

On the positive side, no one drowned.


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Thursday, August 28, 2025

The ECU-NC State rivalry began with the theft of Mr. Wolf

 

A returned Mr. Wolf leads three live dog mascots into Carter-Finley Stadium in 1970.

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© Tim Peeler, 2025

The first game in the NC State-East Carolina rivalry began with thievery. The most recent one ended in fisticuffs on the grounds of a military academy.

Fortunately, no weapons were involved.

There has always, however, been some amount of battlefield-level conflict between the two state schools that dominate the eastern part of North Carolina because of their passionate fanbases, their overlapping recruiting territories and their general disregard for each other’s positive attributes.

That conflict will return tonight at Carter-Finley Stadium when the schools renew the rivalry that began in 1970 and was played annually until 1987, when all hell broke loose.

Again.

Writing about that conflict has been a big part of my college football coverage through the years, when I worked at newspapers around the state and when I worked for the NC State athletics department. I even spent time on a university-led committee to find solutions for the rowdiness, along with an assistant housing director who later ended up being East Carolina's athletics director. 

After three years of covering the State-ECU rivalry in the press box for the student newspaper, Technician, I actually was on the opposite side of the stadium in the student section for 1987's earth-shaking game, thinking it would be nice to enjoy the game with friends in my last semester at school.

When the Pirates took and early and raucous lead in what turned out to be a 32-14 ECU win, I turned to my date and said: “Let’s get the hell out of here before this turns ugly.”

It turned ugly. (The game, not my date.)

What happened afterwards has been well-chronicled through the years. Mostly Pirate fans took the field and tried to uproot the goalposts. NC State athletics director Jim Valvano canceled all future games against East Carolina. The Peach Bowl decided to renew it on New Year’s Day 1992. The two teams have played multiple times, though not annually, since then.

And the Military Bowl paired the two teams together last December, re-inflaming the rivalry and some of the animosity that has flared up through the years with a postseason game.

To be fair, the difficulties began before the rivalry did, thanks to an automobile break-in on a Raleigh sidestreet. On the Wednesday before the first ever matchup between the Wolfpack and Pirates (Oct. 10, 1970), someone broke into senior Dick Scott’s car, parked on Furches Street in between Hillsborough and Clark Avenue.

The villains stole the only thing of value Scott had in the backseat: The Mr. Wolf mascot costume.

He kept it in there throughout the week so no one on campus would take it, but when he went to his off-campus parking spot the fuzzy gray felt body suit and floppy felt head were gone. He reported the value of the setup at $210 for the suit and $40 for the newly remodeled head (about $2,100 in today’s dollars).

So Mr. Wolf, long before his name had to be shortened to Mr. Wuf, was not on the field for the game. Scott sat with the cheerleaders, the lonelier than a freshman at a frat party. It didn’t much matter, though, as State easily won the game, 23-6.

Mr. Wolf seems happy to be back in action.
Scott and his cheerleading teammates were quite upset, because a new suit would have cost about $400 to replace before basketball season, when they would be expected to help head coach Norm Sloan and team defend their Atlantic Coast Conference championship.

“However, we are desperate to have the suit back in time for our remaining conference football games,” told Technician, NC State’s student paper.

Scott promised that if the hooligans who stole the wolf costume returned it in time for the Duke football game, he would let them borrow it back for Halloween.

At the time, it was too hard for students on campus to get too worked up about the loss of Mr. Wolf. They were too enraged that Vice President Spiro Agnew had just accepted an invitation to address a rally of Republicans at Reynolds Coliseum, dispelling rumors that Led Zepelin and Jefferson Airplane would play a free concert on the Brickyard to protest the Agnew appearance (as reported by UNC-Chapel Hill’s Daily Tar Heel), a telephone threat of two bombs planted in the air conditioning ducts in Harrelson Hall and the discovery of a cigarette baked into a hamburger bun at Harris Cafeteria.

Two of those proved to be hoaxes. (Hint: the cigarette was real and the only effective protest of the Agnew rally was campus security towing two Secret Service limos from the parking lots behind Reynolds.)

No one could firmly put the theft’s blame on Pirate skullduggery, and Mr. Wolf’s absence did little to hinder the 24-6 win for a Wolfpack team that had been winless in its previous eight contests going back to the end of the 1969 season (0-6-2).

While the suit’s theft was well-covered in local media, its return was never announced. However, there are pictures of the mascot in football games after East Carolina and at all home basketball games.

That, however, was the atmosphere in which the rivalry started.

My introduction to college football was on Sept. 10, 1983, the first weekend of my freshman year, which is the unofficial kickoff to the rivalry’s heated passion. It was a late-night game that bumped the Atlanta Braves off cable superstation WTBS, so that a national audience, if it cared to, could watch what unfolded that evening.

Fans of both schools were well-lubricated prior to the 8 p.m. kickoff and were rowdy throughout.

Or, as my late friend Bruce Winkworth put it in his column after the game, “It always hurts to lose to East Carolina because of their fans, for they may well be the most obnoxious and insufferable lot of bumpkins around. I walked the parking lots prior to the game and nothing I saw at any of their tailgate parties did anything to enhance my extremely low opinion of [Pirate] fans.”

State took a two-touchdown lead through the first three quarters, but turnovers and some big plays by the Pirates made the game close in the final minutes of head coach Tom Reed’s first game.

An estimated crowd of 57,700, then the largest number of spectators to see a sporting event in the state, stayed in their seats or stood at their standing-room-only ground until the final play.

East Carolina had taken a 22-16 lead thanks to a Wolfpack turnover, and the teams traded fumbles twice more in the final four minutes. State had a chance to retake the lead with 15 seconds remaining on the clock. On fourth-and-1 from the 10-yard line, new quarterback Tim Esposito ran the only option play of the game, pitching the ball to halfback Vince Evans.

He was knocked for a 7-yard loss that ended the game, ruining a good offensive performance that included 160 yards on 21 carries by junior tailback Joe McIntosh.

East Carolina flooded the field, a precursor to similar celebrations in 1985 when a restraining fence at the bottom of the grassy bank was uprooted and the total takeover of the field and goalposts in 1987. State fans did their part, as well, raining empty liquor bottles on to the field from the student section. Eyewitness accounts said dozens flew on to the field, with each miss eliciting groans from the crowd.

It made Winkworth rethink who the worst fans were.

“I was ashamed to be from the same university,” he wrote.

(The 1983 loss is so unpalatable that since 1999, the NC State football media guide has recorded that game as being played in Greenville, seemingly unwilling to accept that all the disruptions in that game and all that followed began in the state capital. Wikipedia and College Football Sports-Reference have recorded it the same way. State’s first visit to ECU’s Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium was Nov. 20, 1999.)

The five games in the 1980s turned what had been a mostly assured State victory into a competitive series, which has been great for football in the state, which is only diminished by the rabble behavior in the stands and on the field.

Here's hoping the 2025 game, the first in the rivalry ever played on a Thursday night, is free of such things.


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Monday, March 24, 2025

A Lifetime of NC State Basketball Coaches

A panel discussion on the history of NC State basketball.

NOTE: If you enjoy reading "One Brick Back" and would like to help offset research expenses for stories such as this one, please make a small donation to the cause and help keep posts like this free of ads.

© Tim Peeler, 2025

On Tuesday, former McNeese State coach and Clemson graduate Will Wade is set to become the 10th NC State men’s basketball coach of my lifetime (if you count the three-day tenure of former DeMatha Catholic High School coach Morgan Wootten, which I do).

Press Maravich had just taken over from Everett Case a few weeks after I was born and went on to win an ACC championship in his inaugural year.

During that time, there have also been four Wolfpack women’s head coaches,  beginning the Peanut Doak in 1973-74.

I’ve had the good fortune to write about each of them in varying degrees. For posterity’s sake, I collected many of those stories from their various formats: newspaper, magazine, website and blogs. Click the link to check out my lived history of Wolfpack basketball.

Men’s Basketball Coaches

Press Maravich

A star basketball player at Aliquippa High School and at Davis & Elkins College, Press enlisted in the Navy during World War II, becoming a decorated pilot in the South Pacific. After the war, he played basketball professionally for some minor teams in the Midwest, but eventually chose to go into coaching, a profession far less dangerous than the coal mines and steel mills he grew up near.

He was the head coach at two high schools and six colleges — West Virginia Wesleyan, Davis & Elkins (his alma mater), Clemson, NC State, LSU and Appalachian State. After retiring from coaching, he became an assistant athletics director at Campbell. 

Norman Sloan

Monte Towe, the emotional point guard on Sloan's best squads at N.C. State, helped lead the coach to his greatest glory, as part of two ACC title teams and the 1974 national championship squad. He also was an assistant coach at Florida when Sloan was fired.

But for Towe, the head coach at the University of New Orleans, there is no tarnish on Sloan's legacy.

"He should be talked about as a great, great coach," Towe said. "Because that's what he was."

Morgan Wootten

Few may remember it, but Jim Valvano was not the first choice to replace Sloan, despite what the people on the search committee called the greatest in-person interview they had ever participated in. It had happened two weeks before in Washington.

The first choice of athletics director Willis Casey was Morgan Wootten, the famed coach of DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville, Md. On the day Valvano was introduced, Casey so vehemently denied that Wootten had ever been extended an offer that it absolutely had to be true. Casey did say four college coaches had been interviewed for Sloan’s vacancy, and they were thought to be Valvano, Bill Foster of Clemson, Tom Young of Rutgers and Jack Hartman of Kansas State.

In other words: Who?

Jim Valvano

Just a few weeks before his 40th birthday, NC State coach Jim Valvano considered life as a middle-aged basketball coach. Sadly, ne never got to be a retired coach or television commentator.

“I guess I’m going to have to get serious about life,” he says, contemplating a number that before only described his jacket size. “I better figure out what I want to do in life.”

Considering he’s had a sampling of almost everything, Valvano shouldn’t have a hard time deciding. During his previous 39 years, and especially in his six years in Raleigh, Valvano’s been having a ball.

“I tend to enjoy almost everything I do,” he says.

And he tends to do everything he enjoys.


Les Robinson

Former star Chris Corchiani, who played his senior season under Robinson and maintained close contact with his former coach, agreed that Robinson had an important tenure at N.C. State, even if there were more losses than wins.

"I thought Les Robinson had a great impact on Wolfpack basketball," former point guard Chris Corchiani says. "He was a bridge from the troubled times when he came in to the success that the program is having now.

"He didn't have as much success as he would have liked, or as much success that the Wolfpack faithful would have liked him to have, but he put the train back on the track."

Herb Sendek

Many people thought Herb Sendek was a little lacking on the personality front. Not his friends and family.

“Funniest guy I know, other than some comedians,” says his wife, Melanie Sendek. "If he ever has to change fields, he would be great at comedy. He's spontaneous. He just thinks of things. He's really good at that."

Sidney Lowe

Morgan Wootten, who benefited from Lowe’s playground-sharpened skills for three years as the head coach at DeMatha Catholic High School in Washington, D.C., says he never had a player with Lowe’s intuition and court sense.

"He understood the game so thoroughly,” Wootten said. “He made everybody else better. He made everybody else believe in themselves. He wanted to be part of something greater than himself. He left his ego at the door. When Sidney had the ball in his hands, you knew everything was going to be all right.”


Mark Gottfried

The Wolfpack’s new mentor is relying on his experiences of the last two years of working for ESPN as a television analyst. Since he was last a head coach, he has seen a variety of new things from other programs, gotten new ideas from other coaches and recharged himself to face the challenge that lies ahead. He’s ready to run a program again, to teach the game to young players and to have the relationships he missed while he was out of coaching.

"I think, when I was coaching [before], I got going so fast ... I'm not sure my family I appreciated as much; I'm not sure I appreciated my job as much," Gottfried said in one of the many interviews he did after he settled into his job. "My team, my players: I think I've learned to appreciate those more. ... That's the thing when you're out of coaching, you miss it — just getting back to having that kind of relationship with everybody."

Kevin Keatts

This is a national championship program, so I consider this to be an unbelievable opportunity for me, something I don’t take for granted. I will work every day like it is my last day of work, that if I don’t do well, I have a chance to get fired. That’s the way I am going to build this program.

I am going to be the first person in the office and the last person to leave. I will be the first person to the court. I told those guys, no matter what you are going through throughout the day, it’s important that when you walk between those lines, that you are focused on NC State basketball. If we can get everybody to play together, to play for NC State, that will go a long way.

Will Wade

At his introductory press conference, Will Wade was brash and confident in his optimism.
 
“I want to be very clear,” Wade said. “This is not a rebuild. We're going to be in the top part of the [Atlantic Coast Conference] next year and we're going to the NCAA tournament.

“Make sure you have that on camera. This is going to be done quickly. We are here to win.”

Fifty years ago, when the NC State women’s basketball team played its inaugural varsity game, more than 11,000 curious spectators showed up at Reynolds Coliseum to see the first women’s team sponsored by the athletics department — and the only program to be fully integrated from its inception — debut on college basketball’s biggest stage.

That attendance might have been slightly boosted by the fact that the debut, under the guidance of interim head coach Robert Renfrow “Peanut” Doak, was the opening game for a doubleheader against Virginia with the Wolfpack’s top-ranked and defending national champion men’s team, featuring seniors David Thompson, Monte Towe and Tim Stoddard.

Regardless, it was a State sweep on Dec. 7, 1974, with the women winning 57-45 and the men winning 101-72.

 

Kay Yow

[Kay] Yow came along at just the right time: just after passage of Title IX of the 1972 Educational Acts that guaranteed women equal access to school-sponsored athletics at colleges and universities that received federal money. It opened the door for her to open the door for others, giving them the opportunity to play college athletics while getting an education.

Many times, however, Yow declared that she was “no women’s libber.” She wasn’t out to change the world or be a pioneer for equal rights. All she wanted to do was to be a successful coach, a righteous example and a good friend.

Funny, isn’t it, the unintended consequences of success?


Kellie Harper

She always knew that she would be a basketball player and a coach. Both her parents played basketball at Tennessee Tech. Her father, Ken, was a Tennessee high school coach and an assistant at White County High during Kellie’s junior and senior seasons there.

“I have always loved the game of basketball,” Harper said Thursday morning, shortly before she was named just the third women’s basketball coach in NC State’s history. “It’s been such a big part of my life. I could not imagine graduating college and not having that part of my life any more. I love teaching the game. I love it.”

 

Wes Moore

A native of Dallas, Texas, he’s a former office supply salesman who used that job to pay his way through college, working a year at a time to save money so he could go to school the following year, alternating between being a Dwight Schrute in boots and a Texas Pete Maravich.

Frank Weston Moore was a late bloomer whose educational journey took him from his hometown Dallas (Texas) Christian College to Johnson Bible College in Knoxville, Tennessee, thanks to strong childhood friendships, the Baptist-based Royal Ambassadors’ youth program and a boost from his first college coach, Gene Phillips, a former ABA player and NBA draft pick.

For the longest time, he was a scrawny little guy who hid his eating talents pretty well, even after marrying into a family with four generations of eastern North Carolina-style barbecue restaurant experience. He was basketball- and baseball-crazy, working off his calories in driveway pickup games and daylong sandlot games.


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