A Little Piece of Reynolds Coliseum

The update of the first book I ever wrote, Legends of NC State Basketball, has been out for a few weeks now. I saw it at Raleigh's Quail Ridge Books, which makes it official. I had some delivered to my house, which means I can’t park in the garage anymore. And I sold one to former Governor Jim Hunt at the Wolfpack Club’s annual ACC men’s basketball tournament breakfast in Greensboro last weekend, which was kind of cool.

The book—with new chapters on Sammy Ranzino, Hawkeye Whitney, Tom Gugliotta and T.J. Warren and a new foreword by current head coach Mark Gottfried—is available on this site, on Amazon.com and at previously fine bookstores everywhere.

To be honest with you, writing books hasn’t exactly filled up the kids’ college funds. Most authors don’t make that much on these projects, unless their surnames are King, Grisham or Rowling. My basic cut on a $25 book sold via a bookstore or on-line retailer is about 65 cents.

That’s why I slog around selling them on my own. If you are interested, buy it where ever it is convenient.

Two of the first three books I did were pretty much busts because the publisher went out of business and never paid any royalties. That included the funds that were promised to the V Foundation for When March Went Mad, which was published in 2007 for the 25^th anniversary of NC State’s 1983 NCAA championship and provided an outline for the Emmy-Award winning 30-for-30 documentary, Survive and Advance, produced by Dereck Whittenburg and directed by Jonathan Hock. The few profits I made on sales went to fulfilling that donation to the charity created by Jim Valvano.

The new book won’t pay off our recent kitchen renovation either, but thankfully not because of any publisher woes since the new group, Skyhorse Publishing of New York, seems to be in good financial standing.

Instead, since it’s another book devoted to Wolfpack basketball, it makes more sense that much of the income should benefit a project that is near to my heart: the renovation of Reynolds Coliseum.

NC State University and the athletics department are collaborating to rejuvenate what I believe to be the most important building the state of North Carolina ever built, turning “The House That Case Built” into a permanent home for the NC State Athletic Hall of Fame and a differently arranged home for Wolfpack women’s basketball,volleyball, gymnastics and wrestling.

It’s projected to cost $35 million.

Many of the displays in the Walk of Fame will be relics from the basement and upper concourse closets that were saved through the years by the late Frank Weedon. When I was asked to go through some of that stuff a few years back, it was always my hope that they would be saved for an athletics museum or some such thing.

In the spirit of Weedon, who gave more money to the Wolfpack Club than any other athletics department employee, I wanted to leave a small lasting legacy for my kids and family when Reynolds reopens in the fall of 2016.

Somehow, my old roommate Tracy Fulghum was dragged into this as well and he has agreed to help save a little piece of NC State heritage. Tracy earned an electrical engineering degree and an engineering doctorate from NC State while I was out playing around with various newspapers around the Carolinas, so he is the smart one in this project.

For my part, the majority of profits from the sale of the new book and any future publications will go to the Wolfpack Club to pay for this financial commitment. So buy a book, and help save a little piece of Reynolds history.

What we plan to do is make sure the old noise meter that hung in the rafters of Reynolds Coliseum for decades is preserved forever in the Walk of Fame, with a gift specifically for that display.

Five years ago, the two of us and a couple of his engineering friends dug the old meter out the basement of Reynolds, freshened it up with some new red-and-white paint, rewired it and made it portable enough to roll out onto the court at PNC Arena for the State-UNC basketball game when the two schools were celebrating their 100^th-anniversary of basketball.

All old-time State fans know about the meter, a homemade box with vertical columns of light bulbs on each of the four sides. As Reynolds got louder at games, white lights came on to gauge the sound. When it got as loud as, say, a jet engine, a red light would flicker at the time. During a Carolina or Duke game, the lights were almost always on.

Most everybody now knows the meter was fake, operated by someone up stationed in the ceiling barges fiddling with a row of light switches. It doesn’t matter. It was the inspiration of many exceedingly loud, raucous upsets and wins.

It was the first thing I thought of when contemplating what an NC State athletics museum might include.

In the coming months, the Wolfpack Club will have other displays that are available for naming gifts. For us, it’s an investment that ensures the old-time legacy of Reynolds will have a future at NC State.

And the noise meter will always remind people of the echoes of the Wolfpack’s greatest victories in the old barn.

At Tournament Time, We're All Family

At this year's ACC tournament in Greensboro, 1987 Everett Case Award winner Vinny Del Negro will be celebrated as NC State's ACC Legend. Which reminded me of the most unusual tournament title I ever semi-covered.

Celebrating an ACC championship.

When I was growing up in North Carolina during the 1970s and ‘80s, ACC basketball was not just a pastime. It was a family reunion.

You didn’t even have to be in the host city to bring all the aunts and uncles and cousins together to watch, because it was on every television in the state.

In school, hoops superseded studies. Teachers would roll in televisions on carts during our afternoon classes on the tournament’s opening day, and if you think we got in trouble for talking during class, you can’t imagine the consequences of saying something while Jim Thacker and Billy Packer were describing the action on the Jefferson-Pilot broadcast.We knew the words to "Sail With the Pilot," long before we mastered the middle school alma mater.

Even later on, when my youngest son was born on semifinal Saturday in 2004, just before NC State lost a 19-point halftime lead to Maryland, the ACC tournament was a day we just gathered to see what would happen. (Truthfully, my son almost didn’t make it through his first day, as I needed something to chuck at the television as State's lead slowly evaporated. Luckily, I had the remote control in my hand.)

When I was growing up, we never actually attended the tournament. We were way too poor and unconnected, back when ACC tickets were the hardest thing to get in sports this side of passes to the Masters. But we always watched. Every game.

During my days as a reporter, it was always a highlight to cover the tournament. I never expected to hear my name on the public address system, in front of a coliseum full of rabid fans. Yet, on March 5, 1987, at the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland, I was a student reporter covering my second tournament, watching North Carolina dismantle Maryland in the opening game.

That's when an usher tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I was Tim Teeler of the NC State student newspaper, echoing an announcement made in the arena. Close enough.

“Your dad wants you to call home,” he said.

My stomach dropped, because this had to be bad news. In the time before texts, email or social media, getting a call like that was devastating.

And it was. My maternal grandfather had died of a heart attack that morning, just a couple of days after my mom dragged me from my brief spring break vacation to spend a little time with him. I’m glad she did.

There were hasty travel arrangements to make. I couldn’t fly home until Sunday morning, but surely my reporting duties would be done by then. After all, NC State was limping into the tournament with 14 regular-season losses. It was just a matter of getting a few quotes from head coach Jim Valvano and his players to wrap up a once-promising season.

That season was marked with turmoil, as point guard guard Kenny Drummond abruptly left the team midseason. During one late-season stretch, the Pack lost 10 of 12 games. After a season-opening win over Navy in the Tip-Off Classic in Springfield, Massachusetts, where reserve player and hometown hero Vinny Del Negro was a surprise winner of the MVP award, tension and dissention ran rampant on the squad. At one point, Valvano’s team lost six in a row—to Kansas, Virginia, Oklahoma, DePaul and North Carolina.

The Pack finished the regular season 17-14 overall (6-8 in the ACC) and was seeded sixth in the eight-team league heading into the tournament. That wasn’t really unusual for Valvano’s teams at NC State—only twice in his 10 years did he have 10 conference wins and those came in 1988 and ’89.

So there was no need to expect something special in the ’87 tournament, especially since top-ranked North Carolina was all but guaranteed to win it that year. The Tar Heels won all 14 regular-season ACC games, beat Maryland and Virginia in the first two rounds of the tournament and were eager to get another blowout against NC State after 96-78 and 95-79 wins earlier in the year.

Valvano, king of the postseason upsets, pulled another rabbit out of his headband. The Pack beat Duke, a 1986 Final Four participant, in overtime in the first round. It beat seventh-seeded Wake Forest in double-overtime on Saturday, earning the right to face the Tar Heels in the title game.

But my plane for Charlotte left at 7 that Sunday morning, the title game was 1 and the funeral was at 3. No way I could make all of them.

At the funeral home, the director kept disappearing and coming back with score updates. Just after we gathered as a family, hugged each other and said one goodbye prayer, he told me Carolina had taken the lead in a close game. As I rode in my Carolina-crazy brother-in-law’s truck to the church, second in the funeral procession, we guiltily turned on the radio. Someone was taping the game on one of those fancy new video recording devices that were all the rage back then, but we just had to know what was happening, even if we were too ashamed to let my parents and sisters up ahead know what we were listening to.

Three miles away from the church, State took the lead. As we turned into the parking lot, Del Negro drained two free throws to put the Pack ahead by one with just seconds to play. Kelsey Weems guarded All-American guard Kenny Smith and the Tar Heels missed two game-winning shots. When Mike Giomi grabbed the game’s final rebound, the Wolfpack recorded its 10^th ACC title, tying it with UNC for the most among conference schools.

I couldn’t let anyone know what we had been doing, so there was no celebrating. My mom stepped out of the car and stood beside her father’s casket. I took my place as a pallbearer, consumed with conflicted sadness and suppressed joy.

Before we started, my mom leaned over, squeezed my hand and said, “They did it, didn’t they?”

I never expected a hearse to have a perfectly good radio.

In North Carolina, ACC basketball is family, with all the highs and the lows, the births and the deaths, the joys and the sorrows.

Five Quick Memories of Covering Dean Smith

Dean Smith, so, so happy to be in Reynolds Coliseum.

I was fortunate enough to cover UNC for the Durham Herald-Sun during Dean Smith's final four years as head coach. Saw the best and the worst in him, went head-to-head with him at times and had the final sit-down interview with him 10 days before he retired, specifically, he said, because he didn't want to talk to the N&O.

Among his top 5 greatest skills? The backhanded compliment. "I thought [fill-in-blank from opposing team] played well," Smith said, "until he got tired."

He always treated me with respect, even after he discovered my alma mater. For that I will be thankful. Rest in peace, coach, explore all four corners of heaven.

Here are a few quick memories that come to mind from those last days of his career.



1. In his latter years as a coach, Dean used to have weekly pressers, but we always knew he wasn’t particularly fond of them. Once, after I asked him a question and began to scribble down his answer: “Tim, do you have to write down everything I say?” Again, this was at a press conference.

2. In one of those pressers, he sang the opening words to the title song from the Broadway play “Camelot.” I have it on tape, along with all those other press conferences.

3. At the 1995 Final Four in Seattle, the press area was in a tent attached to the Kingdome, with a multiple parallel railroad tracks right outside, kind of like the ones near Reynolds Coliseum. Dean’s press conference was interrupted when a train blew through behind him. He paused, waited for the train to go by and said “Reminds me of NC State…”

4. The night before he announced his retirement, he had a team meeting to tell the players about his decision. I waited outside the Smith Center for him or one of the players to confirm that he was indeed retiring, typing my story on a laptop on the back of my car. I was out there for hours when they finally came out the basketball office. He was the last one out, and I asked if the reports were true. “Well, there is a press conference tomorrow, and it’s about basketball, so I guess I’ll be there.” And then he walked out the door of the building with his name on it for the last time as UNC’s head coach.

5. I had an interview request for him when I was working on a book about NC State. The home phone rang about the time he was supposed to call and I saw the number had a 962 exchange and when he said “Hello” I answered back “Hi, Coach Smith.” In his distinctive nasally Kansas twang, the one every sportswriter could imitate from the first day they were on the beat, he said: “Oh…I’m surprised you recognized my voice.”


Finally, here's how good a coach Dean Smith was: Sure, he could get Phil Ford, James Worthy, Michael Jordan, et. al. into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. But what about a pudgy, balding, no-jump, no-talent, 5-8 power forward from western North Carolina who never suited up after his 8th-grade Optimist Club season?

After Smith broke Rupp's record for most Division I collegiate wins, the Hall of Fame did a year-long display about Smith's career, and used my front page story from the Durham Herald-Sun as part of the exhibit.

It's the only hall of fame I have ever, or will ever, make it into without buying an admission ticket.

Down From the Mountains, Above the Treetops

We always have a seven-foot Christmas tree.

We know this because ever since my wife and I moved back to the Triangle in 1994, we have bought our annual Fraser fir at a grassy open lot on Cary’s Kildaire Farm Road. That’s where, since 1992, former NC State basketball All-American Tommy Burleson—all 7-feet, 2-inches of him—and his three sons have sold trees they grow on their farm in the North Carolina mountains.

For five weeks, starting at Thanksgiving, either Burleson, his sons or one of their farm hands are at the lot, trimming trees and loading them up on the cars of loyal customers and a fresh crop of newbies who wonder what the story is with the guy who is taller most of the trees he sells.

During their five-week selling season, someone stays on site in a small camper in the back of the lot. They are next to a church and a hospital, so they aren’t too worried about what might happen. Tommy returns home to Avery County, where he’s the head of the planning commission, but comes back every weekend with a fresh load of trees to check on business and sometimes to catch a Wolfpack basketball game.

Ever since our first son was born in 2002, we’ve taken our kids to have their picture taken with Mr. Burleson; they look forward to it as much as seeing Santa.

It’s always breath-taking to watch him pick up our tree and place it down on top of our SUV.

The other day, we stopped to get our tree on the way home from the NC State-UNC football game. Tommy’s whole family—sons Robert, David and Quentin and his wife Denise—were there, and we reveled in the big football win. It was pretty eye-opening that our oldest kid, not yet a teenager, is chest high to Burleson.

He’s always been tall for his age.

Tommy’s known for playing basketball, of course: in the Olympics, in college and in the NBA. Coached by Norm Sloan, inspired by fans and driven by the desire to be the best center in the Atlantic Coast Conference, Burleson helped NC State win two ACC titles and the 1974 NCAA championship. Sure, he got assistance from his best friend, All-American David Thompson, and point guard Monte Towe, but Burleson was the centerpiece Sloan began with when he built one of the best teams in college basketball history.

Burl is one of only four players in ACC men’s basketball history to win back-to-back Everett Case Awards as the most outstanding player in the ACC Tournament, and his 38 points and 13 rebounds in the 1974 tournament championship game against Maryland and Len Elmore might still be the best game ever played by an ACC big man.

But this isn’t a basketball story. Burleson doesn’t sell his home-grown trees because he needs the money, even though he had some agent-related financial troubles after he his professional basketball career ended in 1981. He doesn’t sell them to pay for his professional speed boat racing career, death-defying hobby he picked up after his on the court were over. And he doesn’t do it to fuel his time at the poker table, though he’s something of a cardsharp too. Last fall, he won first place—and more than $10,000—in a World Series of Poker No-Limit Hold ‘em Tournament he and his son David entered on a lark in Indiana.

Tommy sells trees to help his friends in Malawi. He raises thousands each year to pay for travel expenses to the impoverished landlocked country in southeastern Africa, one of the world’s least developed countries, with a low life expectancy and a high infant mortality rate.

He sneaks across the border from Ethiopia, then folds his 48-inch legs into a minibus to take medical supplies—mostly aspirin and antibiotics—to the town of Nkhoma, where Presbyterian missionary Barbara Nagy of Morganton, North Carolina, is a resident physician specializing in prenatal care, at the  local hospital. She’s part of a long line of missionaries from that denomination who have been in Malawi since David Livingstone first arrived there in 1859.

(Sneak? How does a giant who has towered head-and-shoulders over everyone he knows except Bill Walton his entire life sneak anywhere? Well, a bazooka and a crisp salute helps.)

Since 2005, Burleson has made one or two annual trips to Malawi with 10 other volunteers from Fletcher Presbyterian Church in Newland, North Carolina, on behalf of the Tommy Burleson Christian Evangelistic Ministries, his newly minted 501(c)(3) charitable organization.

Nagy has been at the hospital, which was built by missionaries in 1915, for the last decade, after working for years in western North Carolina and as a missionary in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She first elicited Burleson’s help in 2004, and he’s been one of her biggest supporters ever since. The hospital gets about 80 percent of its support from 51 churches in the Presbytery of Western North Carolina, but Burleson’s foundation and others such as Franklin Graham’s Boone-based Samaritan’s Purse help provide other support.

“It was a little rugged the first time we went,” Burleson admits. “We had outhouses and mostly outside facilities. I got an intestinal virus the first time I went.”

There was also an outbreak of viral meningitis on that first trip, something that could be treated with the Amoxicillin Burleson and his resource team had packed in their Actionpacker cargo boxes.

“We were saving lives within 15 minutes after we got there,” Burleson says.

In the decade since, the resource team has added 100 meters to the hospital’s men’s ward, 75 meters to the women’s ward, an updated pediatric unit, a new surgical theater and other hand-built first-world improvements. The Malawi government also has awarded Burleson the rights to operate 10 health clinics in the country, of which five are now complete.

“We’ve gone from serving a population of about 30,000 to covering more than 250,000,” Burleson says.

Burleson and his foundation have also helped educate some of the kids of the village. Currently, he’s funding scholarships for four electricians who signed contracts to work at the hospital for five years after they receive their degrees.

Tommy has raised money with low-cost basketball camps and clinics for decades. He’s had bowling tournaments that included many of his friends from the world of basketball. But his primary fundraiser is selling the trees he’s grown on his farm in the mountains.

At 62, Burleson says he’s within a year or so of retirement from his county planner job in Avery County. He’d like to spend even more time raising money for his foundation and doing even more good work in Malawi.

So if you need a fresh-cut fir this year, go see Tommy or one of his sons in Cary. Most all of their trees are seven feet or taller.

You can easily tell.