Mr. Christy, Buddy and the Bandit

© Tim Peeler, 2017

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For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction: That’s how an NC State backup quarterback gave the world “Smokey and the Bandit.”

His name was Ernie Driscoll, which sounds more like a character in a car-chase movie than a college football player. But there he was on Oct. 12, 1957, trotting on the field, taking the place of starting quarterback Tom Katich in the final moments of the first half.

The Wolfpack offense, which featured soon-to-be All-American halfback Dick Christy and Dick “Spook” Hunter, couldn’t get anything going that afternoon at Doak Campbell Stadium against Florida State. That wasn’t unusual that season, as head coach Earle Edwards built his early program around defense and this senior-laden squad posted a school-record five shutouts during the year.

In this particular game, the Pack as a little road weary, having also played its first three games on the road at Chapel Hill, at Maryland, and at Clemson, with another trip back to Florida the following week in a Friday night game at Miami.

The good news was that Edwards and his team were 3-0 heading into the non-conference game against the Seminoles and were surprisingly in the driver’s seat for the first Atlantic Coast Conference football championship in school history.

Nothing that happened in these back-to-back trips to the Sunshine State would change that, since this was long before either the Seminoles or the Hurricanes joined the ACC.

Late in the first half against the Seminoles, there was no score in this contest, and Edwards was itching to make something happen. So he sent Driscoll in to throw a bomb.

This was an era, of course, where down-the-field passes were still pretty rare, when undersized quarterbacks struggled to throw for first downs, let alone stretching out the defense half the length of the field. Driscoll could do it, though, so Edwards sent Christy streaking down the sideline. What happened next is still a bit of a dispute.

Christy outran his man, made a quick cut and sailed untouched into the end zone—this was the official version from everyone on the Wolfpack sideline.

Or he slipped down the sidelines, went out of bounds and around the Seminole bench, then darted back onto the field in time to catch a wobbly throw against a gimpy cornerback named Buddy—that’s how the Seminoles saw it.

“Oh, he ran out of bounds,” the cornerback recalled 50 years after the game was over. “I think he ran behind the bench and came back on the field. He disappeared out of my eye line and then he was behind me, which is my side of the story and I’m sticking to it.”

Christy caught Driscoll’s pass in stride and went untouched into the end zone, scoring the only points in what turned out to be a 7-0 Wolfpack victory.

Florida State coach Tom Nugent stormed over to the sidelines to give his cornerback an earful, one that all but ended the player’s football career.

“I did come back out for the second half and I did play a little,” said the one-time highly touted recruit who had been an all-state fullback as a high school senior in West Palm Beach, Florida. “But some of the things that were said to me at halftime, I didn’t like a lot. I was playing on one leg. I had had a tremendous freshman year [in 1955 when freshmen were eligible to play]. Then I got hurt my sophomore season and had a knee operation. Then I was in a terrible automobile accident and lost my spleen and had my other knee operated on.

“The [defensive back] that played against Dick Christy that afternoon was not the same player I was as a freshman.”

He was so different, in fact, that he had to change his name: the Monday after losing to the Wolfpack, young Buddy Reynolds, the double-limping cornerback from Florida State, quit the football team to concentrate on his student acting career. After a summer of stock theater in New York, Reynolds shoved $80 into his sock, went back to a shortened form of his given name “Burton Leon” and lit out for Hollywood.

Burt Reynolds hams it up on the sidelines with Florida State's Bobby Bowden and NC State's Chuck Amato prior to the Wolfpack's 34-28 victory over the Seminoles on Nov. 10, 2001. (Photo by Florida State athletics.)

Soon after, Burt Reynolds began what turned out to be a six-decade career that included 80 feature films and some 300 television episodes, from “Deliverance” to “Evening Shade.” He turned down chances to be both James Bond and Han Solo, but he did manage to pick up an Academy Award nomination for his role in “Boogie Nights” and starred in two of the greatest football movies of all time, The Longest Yard and Semi-Tough.

Reynolds was one of a string of football players who crossed over to acting after and during their careers, a list that includes NC State’s own Roman Gabriel while he was with the Los Angeles Rams. Reynolds was the biggest star, obviously, but Gabriel, Merlin Olsen, Rosey Grier, Joe Namath and O.J. Simpson all spent time in front of a camera, along with former NFL players Jim Brown, Fred Williamson, Carl Weathers, Fred Dryer, Bubba Smith, Ed Marinaro and Terry Bradshaw. [Most recently tight end Tony Gonzalez made his movie debut in xXx: The Return of Xander Cage.]

None of whom, obviously, ever reached the zenith of the profession in the way that former defensive lineman Alex Karras did when he uttered the immortal words in the movie Blazing Saddles: “Mongo just pawn in game of life.”

Gabriel never worked with Reynolds on screen, but they were tangentially connected in their college careers.

After NC State beat Florida State and ended Reynolds’ career, it ended up tying both Miami and Duke, losing to non-conference foe William & Mary, then beating South Carolina on Christy’s heroic effort of scoring all 29 points, including his first career field goal after time had expired in a 29-26 victory that gave the Wolfpack its first ACC championship.

That day, soon after the team buses pulled into Raleigh from Columbia, Gabriel called Edwards and told him he was coming to NC State to play football, basketball and baseball. By the time his career ended, he was a two-time All-American and a two-time ACC Player of the Year.

Reynolds, after a decade of smaller movie and television roles, made his big-screen break-through in 1972’s Deliverance and went on to become one of Hollywood’s favorite leading men during the 1970s and ‘80s. He remained close with the Seminole program, even getting a Hollywood friend to design FSU's famous gold pants.

He was frequently on the sidelines in Tallahassee, including on the afternoon of Nov. 10, 2001, when the Wolfpack--and Reynolds old friend Chuck "Chesty" Amato--became the first team to win an ACC game at Doak Campbell Stadium behind the arm of sophomore quarterback Philip Rivers.