The Rarest Score on the Rainiest Day

(From the Miami News)

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© Tim Peeler, 2018

A conscientious World War II objector, a late-season Atlantic hurricane and the rarest score on the gridiron—mix it all up and what you get might be the strangest victory in NC State football history.

It was 11 months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor when coach Williams “Doc” Newton took his 33 Wolfpack players by train to Miami for a Nov. 7, 1942, game at what was then called Burdine Stadium (later named the Orange Bowl). It was one week after Newton’s team pulled off a stunning 21-14 Halloween upset over rival North Carolina at Riddick Stadium.

After that game, however, the team’s star offensive blocking back and defensive tailback—not to mention baseball pitcher/outfielder and future women’s basketball coach—Robert "Peanut" Renfrow Doak was shipped off to Camp Pokomoke in Powellville, Maryland, for training in the Civilian Public Service for conscientious objectors.

Doak was the son of longtime NC State baseball coach Charles “Chick” Glenn Doak, namesake of the Wolfpack’s baseball stadium, and the younger brother of Charles “Chick” Wilson Doak, who played baseball at State in 1941 and ‘42. Both Peanut and the younger Chick were drafted into the Army in the fall of 1942, but as devout Quakers, they petitioned for relief from military duty on religious grounds and voluntarily entered homeland service, spending much of the war working in domestic hospitals.

Peanut ended his college football career out with a bang, serving as game captain for the Wolfpack’s second consecutive victory over the Tar Heels.

“That was the last time I ever put on a State College uniform,” Doak said in a 1974 interview.

He was replaced in the lineup for the Miami game by Joe Suniewick, a freshman from New Jersey who had played quarterback much of the season.

The game was not without difficulties.

The Wolfpack’s train arrived in Miami on Friday evening, about the time an unnamed Category 2 hurricane bounced between Cuba, the Florida straits and Miami proper. Public schools and all three of Miami’s high school football games that night were canceled.

Rain and winds lingered throughout the next day and there were talks about moving the college game to Sunday or Monday. The storms lightened by the afternoon, so both teams agreed to keep the scheduled 4:30 p.m. kickoff.

Besides, Newton and the NC State athletics staff had sprung already for three dozen rare steaks for that Saturday morning’s pregame meal, and with voluntary meat rations the norm in Miami during those war years, they knew there would be no chance for another such banquet any day in the coming week.

The field, however, was a sloppy mess when 11,267 spectators filed through the turnstiles that afternoon. Neither team could maintain traction in the wind and the rain.

Miami had nine first downs the entire game. NC State had three. Miami gained a grand total of 128 yards in total offense, while NC State had just 22. Of the 10 total passes attempted in the game, Miami completed two on its final possession and NC State had just one the entire afternoon. The biggest advantage came in penalties, as the Hurricanes were flagged for 50 yards while the Wolfpack had 15.

It was a rough and sloppy game, despite the loss of only one fumble. Three different on-field skirmishes led to the ejection of six players, three from each team.

“Up where we come from we’re not used to that sort of ball playing,” Newton said. “In fact, we do not tolerate it.”

After three quarters, the game was still a scoreless tie. The only thing of note to that point was a wind-aided 83-yard punt by NC State’s Eddie Teague, which is tied for the longest punt in school history, though not currently listed in the NC State football record book.

Another deep punt in the fourth quarter pinned Miami back on its 11-yard line. That’s when Hurricane coach Jack Harding, with the wind at the team’s back, decided to punt on first down. At the time, it was a good strategy, a chance to perhaps flip the field and set up a game-winning score. Besides, Miami’s biggest running back, Al Kasulin, was also the team’s punter.

Kasulin was standing near the goal line when the ball was snapped directly to him, NC State charging right guard Eddie Gibson broke through the Hurricane line and got his hands on the ball. It bounded over Kasulin’s head and between the two goal posts at the back of the end zone for a two-point safety.

It was described this way in a local newspaper: “Eddie Gibson’s sudden bolt from his line like the Mad Monk of Siberia bursting from his cell with a helluva yell to camp right on top of Kasulin’s great toe, catch the impact of the punt full on his manly bosom and see it bound into the air through the east goal posts and wobble crazily around in the end zone with Gibson and Bob Douglas and Kasulin himself in full pursuit.”

Miami had two threats in the red zone in the final quarter, but did not attempt a field goal because of the swirling winds. They were stopped one-yard short both times. The fourth-quarter safety was the game’s only points, and the 2-0 Wolfpack victory remains the only game with that outcome in program history.

But not in Miami’s. The Hurricanes won the most recent college football game decided by a 2-0 score, beating Oregon on Dec. 6, 1958, at the Orange Bowl in the only game ever played between those transcontinental schools.

I don’t have a definitive list of 2-0 games in college football history, but it is much rarer than any other score, by a longshot. The last scoreless college football game was a 0-0 tie between, oddly enough, Oregon and Oregon State in 1983.

Charles "Chick" Glenn Doak

As for the Doaks, the elder Chick was NC State’s baseball coach and a teacher at the school for 34 years. From 1924-39 with the baseball team, he compiled 145 wins, 131 losses, 6 ties. (Little known fact: before he was NC State's baseball coach, he was the basketball coach at both North Carolina and Trinity [now Duke] and the baseball coach at UNC.)

He died of a heart attack 10 months after retiring from his NC State physical education teaching position in July 1958.

The younger Chick played professional baseball after the war and settled into the business world when his playing days ended. He bought the Wilson Candy Company in 1977 and moved it to Rocky Mount. One Sunday morning he surprised a burglar and was hit in the head and strangled with a giant candy cane made at the plant. Two days later, he died from those injuries on Aug. 31, 1988. At the Doak family’s insistence, the convicted killer was spared the death penalty.

Peanut completed his service in 1944 and returned to his native North Carolina to play minor league baseball for the next nine years. In the off seasons, he spent time as the head football coach at Guilford High School, multiple sports at New Bern High School and the football coach at Presbyterian Junior College in Laurinburg (now St. Andrews College).

Robert "Peanut" Renfrow Doak

From 1969-74, Doak handled the Raleigh operations for the American Basketball Association’s Carolina Cougars, which split time between Raleigh, Greensboro and Charlotte.

When NC State athletics director Willis Casey decided to elevate the women’s club basketball team to varsity status in 1974, he chose Peanut Doak to be the team’s interim first-year coach, while he searched for a permanent leader of the program.

Doak led the inaugural Wolfpack women to a 13-4 overall record and a NCAIAW tournament championship in Wilmington, in his only season as head coach.

Casey eventually found who he was looking for in Elon College coach Sandra Kay Yow, who spent 35 years as the Wolfpack women’s head coach until her death of cancer in 2009.