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| J. Platt Turner and future NC Governor O. Max Gardner |
© Tim Peeler, 2018
Barely two minutes into the game, the Farmers from the North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts in Raleigh gave the University of North Carolina the surprise of its football life.
They scored.
In a game played on Oct. 28, 1899, at the old N.C. State
Fairgrounds across Hillsboro Street from the current location of NC State’s
D.H. Hill Library, the fledgling Farmers of A. and M. College caught the
university boys completely off-guard.
While not played during the State Fair, the game drew a
large crowd, one that eventually stormed the field during a game-halting
controversial call as either: (A) time expired or (B) 17 seconds remained on the clock,
depending on which timekeeper you chose to believe.
At the time, each team traveled with its own timekeeper in
an effort to prevent such disputes.
Early in the game, however, it was a student named J. Platt
Turner who grabbed the headlines. Soon after the overconfident University boys ended
their game-opening drive with a failed forward pass on fourth down, the young
halfback on Dr. John McKee’s team plunged through the line for the first
touchdown ever scored by the school now known as NC State against UNC-Chapel Hill.
Here’s the great thing about Turner’s touchdown more than 12 decades ago: His son told me all about it. Former NC State football player Raeford Turner often recounted how his dad scored that day
against the Tar Heels at Wolfpack Club events. He even told it while playing in
a spring alumni football game with Roman Gabriel back in 1985, when he was a
spry 57-year-old receiver.
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| Raeford Turner of Greensboro. |
(It was just as well: Turner had already played seasons at
Baylor and Carson-Newman and was likely ineligible, even by the NCAA’s lax
post-World War II standards of the day.)
“We didn’t have much luck anyway against North Carolina and
Choo-Choo Justice,” says Raeford Turner, who operated Turner Landscaping in
Greensboro for decades.
His father, though, should be remembered as a Wolfpack hero,
having ended North Carolina’s scoring streak at 212-0 against A&M, which
worked on a limited athletics budget during its first decade. The school’s
board of trustees limited the financial contribution to all athletics to just
$50 and had already once voted to end all participation in college football, a
vote that was overturned midway through the 1896 season.
Carolina had established varsity and scrub (or second team)
football as early as 1888 and clearly had the upper hand in the early years of
the rivalry. The first time the two teams faced each other, in the spring of
1893, A&M sent a collection of untrained students to face UNC’s scrub team.
The second-string Tar Heels beat the Farmers 22-0.
That game is not recognized by either school in this
sometimes heated rivalry. The two schools played a pair of games against each
other in 1894, with the UNC varsity beating A&M 44-0 in the first game and
the UNC scrubs winning a little less handily 16-0 in the second. The teams met
three times over the next three years, varsity against varsity, but the Farmers
failed to score in any of those games.
When the 1899 season opened in Chapel Hill, McKee’s team
fell once again, 34-0. Newspaper reports of the day, however, said the Farmers
“played a plucky game,” despite a lopsided score.
The second game that season was held at the open fields of
the Raleigh fairgrounds. The outcome was completely different and unexpected
from the first game, as the undefeated Tar Heels may have been looking ahead to
its game two days later against Maryland or the ones that followed against
powerhouses Navy, Princeton, Georgia and mighty Sewanee.
A&M held a significant 11-5 halftime lead, following
touchdowns by Turner and Bill Person, whose long scoring run in the first half
was called “a hair-lifter” by one of the newspapers covering the game.
North Carolina tied the score in the second half and was
moving in to score the game-winning touchdown as the dual game clocks wound
down, one in the pocket of A&M time keeper Charles Pritchett and one in the
pocket of UNC timekeeper Mr. Carr.
With North Carolina on the 2-yard line, Pritchett announced
that the game was over, while Carr said 17 seconds remained—time for at least
one more play.
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| 1899 A&M football squad. |
But the home team won the final argument, claiming a
final—and official—11-11 tie.
“The game was a red-hot one from start to finish,” the Morning Post said. “The A. and M. team
put up a corking game, which was a surprise to everyone. The teamwork was
excellent, and it showed the result of hard training and excellent coaching.
“The Varsity 11 was handicapped by the absence of three of
its best players, who are laid up with injuries: Cunningham, the centre [sic],
and guards Captain Stull and Bennett, did not take part in the game. Carolina’s
team play was poor. Fumble after fumble was made, which cost the team dearly.”
State’s military cadet student body, some of whom had just
returned from fighting in the Spanish-American War, celebrated the unexpected
tie as a victory, quickly taking to the streets of the state capital for hours
after the game ended at 2 p.m.
“The A. and M. boys owned the city last night,” The Morning Post reported. “They
celebrated the result with great demonstration. The greater part of the
students marched into the city, beating drums, blowing horns and making every
conceivable kind of noise. They were gaily bedecked in college colors. On
Fayetteville Street the college yell was shouted every few minutes. The boys
rejoiced as much as if they had won a victory.”
It was a night to remember, by all accounts.
“It sent the A. and M. students off on a wild celebration in
Raleigh,” reported the News &
Observer. “With drum and bugle and flags, they paraded the streets, leaving
a perfect din in their wake and stopping now and then to give the college yell.”
In fact, the students were still so rowdy when they returned
to campus they decided to torch “Old No. 7,” which is what they called the
school’s original outhouse. (At the time, State’s campus had just six school
buildings and dormitories, all of which were identified numerically.)
It was a regrettable decision for the students, who had no
indoor plumbing at the school, other than 10 showers that had been retro-fitted
in the basement of Watauga Hall after two young women attending a summer
teacher’s course died of typhoid caused by a lack of running water.
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| R.H. Morrison |
But the deed was done, and the A&M gridiron heroes went
on to beat Bingham Academy of Asheville, and play scoreless ties against
Guilford and Davidson. It ended the season with a 10-0 loss to Oak Ridge
Academy, to finish with a 1-3-2 record
That didn’t prevent the overexcited A&M fans from laying
claim to a mythical state championship of colleges and schools, which
conveniently left out the University, which at the time was the largest school
in the state.
A&M, led by future North Carolina governor and team
captain O. Max Gardner, produced two more ties with UNC, in 1902 and 1904. But
the teams began to feud over eligibility standards and UNC ended the rivalry
from 1906-1918.
That meant A&M’s two best teams, in 1907 and 1910, did
not play against UNC while rolling to undefeated seasons that earned them the
self-proclaimed South Atlantic Championships.
The two teams were firm in refusing to face each other in
football, but they did schedule a regular-season basketball game in 1913 in
downtown Raleigh, shortly after both schools began their varsity programs.
A&M rolled to a 26-18 victory in that game, which the News & Observer
described as “the Techs of Raleigh against the classicists of Carolina.”
And in March 1919, after both basketball teams laid claim to
the state championship, the administrations of the two schools agreed to play a
special championship game, again in Raleigh’s downtown auditorium, to decide
the title.
The Farmers won that game, as well, 39-29. More importantly,
the tensions between the two athletics departments eased significantly, and
they agreed to face each other again in football. North Carolina won the first
game in the renewed rivalry, 13-12, in front of 8,000 fans on the Thursday of
the 1919 State Fair.
The rivalry game became an annual attraction, and in the
following season, NC State College, as the school was now known, finally scored
its first victory over its blue-and-white opponents.
John “Runt” Faucette dominated the Tar Heels for two
consecutive years, setting up a pair of second-half touchdowns in a 13-3
victory in 1920 and scoring the game’s lone touchdown in a 7-0 victory the
following year on a 30-yard fumble return.
By then, the school had been fully equipped with indoor
plumbing, and there were no outhouses to ignite in celebration of either
victory.
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