A Perfect Title Run

 

 

Celebrating NC State's 10th ACC title on the floor of the Capital Centre.

 

NOTE: This was originally posted on March 7, 2007, near the 20th anniversary of NC State's most recent ACC men's basketball championship on www.gopack.com. Reprinting here to get rid of garbled text, with a few updates and corrections. 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.

BY TIM PEELER
(c) NC State University, 2007

RALEIGH -- It was the perfect path, with a near-perfect performance.

Jim Valvano took his 1987 team into the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament after one of the rockier regular-seasons he ever had. It was nothing compared to the near-fiasco of 1985, when he had to suspend Chris Washburn for most of the year and endured a lot of heat in the process, or his final year of 1989-90, after which he was forced to resign, but it was pretty close.

The season was pock-marked with potholes, including preseason injuries to Charles Shackleford, Walker Lambiotte and Vinny Del Negro, a loss to Division II Tampa in a game in which Valvano had to stay home because of a viral infection, the departure of the team's starting point guard, Kenny Drummond, and a loss to Virginia because Valvano and his staff didn't get the team out of its huddle in time after a late-game timeout. There was also the longest losing streak of Valvano's career, six in a row.

The outcome of the Virginia game was something else.

What else could have gone wrong?

Even the coach--you know, the guy who said "Never give up; don't ever give up"--was a little down on this particular edition of the Wolfpack.

"Our kids are trying very hard, but we're not winning because, to be honest, we're just not good enough," the coach said of his team at one point late in the season. "It's just a down year, a bad year."

Except for the beginning and, most importantly, the end. The Wolfpack opened the season with a remarkable win over Navy and center David Robinson in the Tip-Off Classic in Springfield, Mass., a game in which little-used junior guard Vinny Del Negro came of the bench to win the game's Most Valuable Player Award in the town where he grew up, a Valvano-esque ending if there ever was one.

Del Negro played an integral role in how that season ended as well. He was inserted into the starting lineup after Drummond left, his first consistent action after spending nearly two and a half years on the bench, mostly as a frustrated practice player.

Valvano made some further adjustments to the lineup, also inserting junior Quentin Jackson into the starting lineup at point guard, along with Del Negro in the backcourt, and a frontcourt trio of Lambiotte, Shackleford and Bennie Bolton. He brought senior Mike Giomi, in his only season at State after transferring from Indiana, and freshman Chucky Brown off the bench. That lineup led the Wolfpack to three consecutive wins to end the regular season.

"He tried Vinn Del Negro first at the point after Kenny left, then Kelsey Weems and then he gave me my opportunity," said Jackson, a one-time director of basketball operations for men's basketball under head coach Sidney Lowe. "For me, it was an easy transition. I had all this talent around me. We just needed somebody who could get everybody in the right position.

"I had nothing to lose. What was coach going to do, start someone else? He had already tried everyone else."

The Wolfpack entered the ACC Tournament at the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland, with a 17-14 overall record and a 6-8 mark in the ACC. It was seeded sixth in the eight-team event.

But, as happened in 1983 under Valvano, there was a little tournament magic going on. The Wolfpack upset No. 17 Duke in overtime in the first post-season meeting between Valvano and Duke's Mike Krzyzewski, thanks primarily to Del Negro's eight overtime points.

It the survived a double-overtime thriller against Wake Forest and diminutive guard Muggsy Bogues, in part because Valvano made a late change in his starting lineup, replacing Lambiotte with Brown, who scored 13 points and grabbed nine rebounds. Del Negro continued his inspired play, scoring 15 points and grabbing a career-high 12 rebounds.

The Wolfpack's reward for surviving the overtime contests was a championship game meeting with North Carolina, which had won 16 straight games against ACC opponents, sweeping 14 straight in the regular season and beating Maryland and Virginia in the tournament. Like the Wolfpack, however, the Tar Heels were pushed to double-overtime in the semifinals, before finally vanquishing the Cavaliers, 84-82.

Sunday, both teams were a little winded, but the title game didn't disappoint anyone who was eager to see the old rivals play. Valvano had his team control the tempo on a Tar Heel squad that had averaged 91.3 points per game that year, and with a minute left to play, the Heels were holding on to a slim 67-66 advantage. The Wolfpack had made all of its free throws in the game and shot better than 56 percent from the field in order to stay with the heavily favored Heels.

With 14 seconds to play, Del Negro was fouled and sent to the free-throw line. The 89 percent free throw shooter calmly hit both shots, giving the Pack a 68-67 lead. But the Tar Heels had one final chance to win the game.

Jackson remembers going to the bench after those free throws and telling Valvano to take him out of the game.

"Look, the only way they can beat us is if Kenny Smith touches the ball," Jackson told the coach. "I can't guard him. Take me out and put Kelsey Weems in and go to our box-in-one."

Valvano, the ACC king of junk defenses, did just that. Weems prevented Smith, the All-America point guard, from touching the ball in the final possession. The Tar Heels did get off two shots to win the game, but both Joe Wolf and Ranzino Smith missed jumpshots, and the Wolfpack won its 10th ACC tournament title.

Tournament MVP Vinny Del Negro

Del Negro, an unlikely winner of the Everett Case Award as the tournament's most valuable player, gave Valvano all the credit for keeping the team calm in the final minute against a team that was loaded with talent.

"In the timeout before the free throws, his mentality wasn't 'Let's see if Vinny makes these free throws,'" Del Negro said. "It wasn't 'If he makes them' or 'What are we going to do when he misses.' It was always 'After Vinny makes these free throws, Kelsey, I want you to deny the ball, keep your man in front of you.'

"He was just so good at instilling confidence in a young player in a tense situation. It was a huge moment because we needed to win the tournament just to get into the NCAA Tournament. And beating North Carolina is always a huge thing, especially in a game of that magnitude. For me, it was the great culmination of a frustrating first couple of years at NC State. It was a great feeling."

Jackson wasn't surprised to see Del Negro play well in the tournament. The two had been performing with each other ever since arriving in the fall of 1984 with junior college transfer Nate McMillan, high school All-America Chris Washburn and John Thompson, in one of the nation's top recruiting classes that season.

"When we came here, we all came in knowing we could play at this level, but we also respected the guys who were before us: Ernie Myers, Terry Gannon and Spud Webb," Jackson said. "So I wasn't surprised Vinny did well, because I watched him every day in practice for three years.

"He just finally got his opportunity."

Brown was also a hero of the championship game, scoring a career-high 18 points and grabbing 11 rebounds against the Tar Heels.

"That was one of the most gratifying things in my career," he said more than two decades later.

The Wolfpack received the ACC's automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament, but didn't last long, losing in the first round to Florida in Syracuse, N.Y. It was a game that paired Valvano and his team against former Wolfpack coach Norm Sloan and his top assistant Monte Towe, who both helped NC State win the 1973 and '74 ACC titles and the 1974 NCAA Championship.

Nothing, however, detracted from winning the unlikely ACC title, and beating the heavily favored Tar Heels.

"We basically played a perfect game," said Jackson, who made all three of his shots in the contest and had four assists. "We made all our shots from the free-throw line (14-for-14 for the game). We shot well from the field (56.6 percent). We hit the shots when they were about to make runs.

"For us, it was a Big Four Tournament within the ACC Tournament," Jackson said. "And that made winning the title that much more gratifying."

An NC State-UNC Trophy Idea

 

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© Tim Peeler, 2023

Someone asked me on Twitter what the trophy should be for the NC State-UNC-CH football rivalry. So I answered:

You refer, of course, to the Croatan Cup (TM), an ornately carved pine cone decorated with dogwood petals and a cardinal perched on top, hewed from an old-growth Long Leaf Pine. It sits on a triangular platform made of construction cones from I-40, I-85 and I-95.

Winner gets to take it home, but when they try to take it to the next year's game, it mysteriously won't be there.

For the next 365 days, the winner also gets to fly its logoed flag over the USS North Carolina in Wilmington to designate flagship status and atop Mount Mitchell so it can be seen from six states.

The game ball will be delivered to the appropriate stadium by (picture below):

Pregame military flyover should be a good mix of fighters from Cherry Point, Bragg and Seymour Johnson, with a light drizzle of paratroopers from the 82nd Airbourne, preferably unarmed.

The pregame coin toss will be conducted by the sitting governor. The coin will feature O. Max Gardner as heads and Jim Hunt as tails. Care will be provided by UNC Hospitals.

After every kickoff trained canine mascots, Plott hounds named Murphy and Manteo, will alternate retrieving the tee from field, with a great roar from the crowd. Care will be provided by NC State's College of Veterinary Medicine.

Halftime activities will be sponsored by the City of Asheville, which is halfway back to New York from Florida.

Title sponsor ideas:

• Bojangles

• Cheerwine

• Krispy Kreme

• RTI

In case of a tie, instead of overtime, one player from each team will be selected to complete a difficult challenge to decide the game. This will be called The Virginia Dare.

Winning coach will receive a bouquet of Venus Flytraps and doused by cooler full of Texas Pete. (Goggles not provided.)

The game's MVP will be required to shout "I'M GOING TO TWEETSIE" when accepting the Croatan Cup on behalf of his team.

Every player on losing team will receive a one-day pass to Carowinds (South Carolina side only).

Fans will be required to attend church the immediate next Sunday wearing a tie or scarf in the color of the winning team. Like Christmas and Easter, attendance will be mandatory. Other faith communities will similarly participate.

 

Innocent Fun, Contemplated: NC State vs. UNC Football

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 to keep posts like this free of ads.

© Tim Peeler, 2023

By and large, the NC State-North Carolina football rivalry has been relatively prank free, likely because of an admonition given by one of the state’s foremost leaders at the turn of the 20^th century.

Writing in NC State's Red & White student newspaper, the sports editor said: “Innocent fun in all may be contemplated, but is in the highest degree reprehensible and should receive more than passing consideration.”

The scolder, writing in 1903, was future North Carolina governor O. Max Gardner, who played football at both NC State, as an undergraduate, and UNC, as a graduate law student. For the most part, students from both schools have listened to him – at least for football.

Basketball has been a different matter, as students have been much more active, generally with spray paint and stolen trinkets such as championship banners.

Students from UNC have painted NC State’s iconic and hallowed Free Expression Tunnel and the base of the Memorial Tower on Hillsborough Street so often that the NC State Student Government hosts an annual “Ram Roast” pep rally at the Brickyard before every home basketball game against UNC to protect the tunnel from light blue paint.

For years, throughout the 1970s into current times, the student newspapers printed fake editions of the other school’s paper to not-so-gently stir up passion for the rivalry. Usually, UNC’s Daily Tar Heel generates a spoof issue during football season and NC State’s Technician prints a spoof issue during basketball season for the Tar Heels’ trip to Raleigh.

Here, without in any way endorsing vandalism or violence, are some of the better pranks through the years.

• As early as 1933, NC State students banded together to steal UNC’s live mascot, an adult sheep named Rameses, from the Orange County family farm where it lived. When leadership groups from NC State, UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke got together on Nov. 14, 1933, to discuss improving relations among the student bodies, just before the State-Carolina football game, Rameses disappeared from Jack Hogan's farm. The mascot was returned before the game. Jack Hogan was a former football player at UNC. His family has provided a home for every Rameses mascot since 1925. It was at this time that NC State students began raising money to purchase a live wolf for its home football game. The school went through several of those through the years (1935, 1947, 1966 specifically), and it was never stolen. Since 2010, State has used a Tamaskan husky named Tuffy, which resembles a live wolf, to serve as its game-day mascot.
•  In 1935. State students marched two cows and a sheep onto the field of Riddick Stadium, right in front of sitting governors Ehringhaus and Gardner. The sheep was rumored to have been kidnapped from the Hogan farm, but it was not. The feisty lamb escaped from custody just before kickoff and romped around the Riddick field.
  
• In 1942, after a delegation of UNC students defaced a building on NC State’s campus with chalk graffiti, four carloads of NC State College students sneaked over to Hogan’s farm in Chapel Hill to steal the UNC mascot, Rameses III, the week before the annual rivalry. The front half of the ram was turned red with a vegetable dye, and the back half was turned blue. UNC officials were upset and threatened to cancel the annual contest. “All athletic relations may be discontinued if students from both schools lose their heads and start a serious fracas,” said UNC system comptroller W.D. Carmichael, a former UNC basketball player and university administrator who has gymnasiums at both schools named for him. State’s entire student body gathered at Riddick Stadium and voted unanimously to return the ram. Most of the UNC student body was on hand the day before the game for the sheep’s return, but another group of State students stole Rameses III from the first group of State students before it could be returned. “Our neighbors can get our ram, but never our goat,” wrote the Daily Tar Heel. Student leaders all met for dinner at a Chapel Hill restaurant. Unlike most low-budget World War II-rationed gatherings, mutton was not served. NC State responded with its second consecutive win over the Tar Heels after a 13-year winless drought.
• In November 1947 NC State students painted red “NCS” letters on seven locations around UNC’s campus, including the Institute of Government’s Highway Patrol Training area and Quonset Hut No. 8.
• Wake Forest once tried to steal North Carolina’s mascot from Hogan Farm in 1965, but got the retired version of Rameses VII, not the newly incarnated Rameses VIII. Later that year, Duke students stole Rameses VIII before the annual Duke-UNC game.
• On Oct. 15, 1982, the Daily Tar Heel published a fake edition of NC State’s student newspaper, the Technician, just before the two schools played a football game in Chapel Hill. In response, during basketball season Technician published a fake edition called the Daily Tar Hell, which included, among other things, a photo of Dean Smith laying naked at center court of Carmichael Auditorium. The next day, NC State beat the defending national champion Tar Heels in Reynolds Coliseum, thanks, in part, to a ginned up student body and an overheated Smith, who got two technical fouls in the game. The next edition of Technician read: “Dean loses clothes on Friday, cool on Saturday.”
• In 1986, the two editors-in-chief wagered on the football game, both agreeing that the winning school would be recognized by having the losing school’s newspaper printed in the color of the winning team. When NC State beat UNC at Kenan Stadium by one point, 35-34, the banner of the Daily Tar Heel was printed in red. It was State’s first win in eight seasons against the Tar Heels.
• On Feb, 25, 1996, NC State students were blamed when Rameses XXIII was repeatedly stabbed, gutted and disfigured on the Hogan family farm just before the 1996 ACC basketball tournament. However, it was later discovered the death was caused by an intoxicated man seeking food, not a college prank.
• Following a spate of light blue creativity in the early 2000s at NC State's Free Expression Tunnel that made a lot of money for Big Spray Paint, State loyalists retaliated by painting "NCS" in red on several Chapel Hill landmarks, including the iconic Old Well. After drawing widespread condemnation from administrators on both campuses, student and social media and adults throughout the state, in 2005 the NC State Student Ambassadors turned the school's traditional pregame pep rally into a twice-a-year branded event called the Ram Roast, where groups and organizations spend three-hour shifts protecting the tunnel from an azure future. It's held before the football rivalry game between the two schools and home basketball games against the Tar Heels.  Through the years, it featured players, coaches, entertainment and prize giveaways and is still ongoing.
  

Lou Holtz's Mathematical Problem

NC State professor of mathematics Robert Ramsay

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.

This story was originally published in the Greensboro News & Record prior to Lou Holtz's first game at South Carolina, which was against Carter-Finley Stadium on Sept. 4, 1999.

It has been updated at the end to reflect Ramsay's retirement in 2004 and death in 2016 at the age of 75.

By Tim Peeler
© Landmark Communications, 1999

 RALEIGH — This just might drive Lou Holtz to the end of that thin thread by which his sanity hangs: Dr. Robert Ramsay briefly considered lacing up his running shoes for the first time since bad hips forced him to quit jogging five years ago.

"I probably won’t go jog up and down the sidelines in front of him during the game," Ramsay says. "But I have thought about it."

NC State diehards who remember the unprecedented success Holtz had during a four-year stay in Raleigh will have no trouble remembering Ramsay, the mathematics professor Holtz accused of being a spy for Maryland’s Jerry Claiborne.

Ramsay, just in from the dentist office, was out for his daily jog around the track encircling N.C. State’s football practice field when Holtz, a lottery pick in the control freak draft during his younger days, ordered him and the other people milling around the field to leave.

"I was kind of pissed off and I didn’t want to leave," said Ramsay, who usually did his four laps around the track during lunch. "I had just been to the dentist and I was running later than I normally did."

Ramsay told the coach he would have to have him arrested to get him to leave. That’s exactly what Holtz did, calling in a campus security officer to handcuff the professor and take him away. Ramsay was charged with "resisting , delaying and obstructing a public officer  while the officer was attempting to discharge his duty."

None of the players who were that that afternoon thought it was such a big deal.

"We all stood there and watched the whole thing with wide eyes as the campus security cops came down and tried to get the guy to leave," said Johnny Evans, the Wolfpack Radio Network color commentator who was a sophomore quarterback at the time. "It didn’t completely surprise us. He completely believed that the guy could be a spy and he wanted to get him removed. It was just another example of how intense Coach Holtz was."

Ramsay was pardoned by NC State's interim chancellor Jackson A. Rigney a day before Wolfpack played Maryland, but the Wake County district attorney told Rigney he had no authority to do so, which kept the incident in the news for more than a month. The charges were eventually dismissed, Ramsay was censured by the NC State faculty senate and forced to write a letter of apology to the officer involved.

"It wasn’t much fun," Ramsay says. "In retrospect it’s kind of funny, but at the time, it was nerve-wracking."

The distraction didn’t help either: State lost the game 37-22 to the Terrapins.

For Holtz, the incident was just another brick in the foundation of his eccentric coaching success. The clipboard-throwing, facemask pulling coach admits that he ``might have over-reacted’’ and that he has mellowed out since then.

"I am more patient, I am not out to prove anything or make any statement," Holtz said when asked how he’s changed from his N.C. State days to now. "I would over-react so many times. I still over-react, but not as much."

Asked if he was talking about the Ramsay incident, Holtz just laughed.

"That’s one of the things I was thinking of, but I wasn’t naive enough to bring it up," Holtz said. "Some things you don’t bring up."

Ramsay, in his 33rd year as an associate professor in the university's math department, is still accused of running Holtz off from NC State. Two months after the incident, Holtz accepted a job coaching the NFL’s Jets, though he never cited the runner run-in as a reason he left.

Ramsay, 59, has saved some of the hate mail he received back then, and his mother still keeps a scrapbook of clippings from the incident, which got national attention at the time. He was in newspapers from coast to coast and even had friends in foreign countries send him clippings.

Until Holtz took the job at South Carolina, it would probably have remained a forgotten incident from a bygone era.

"Every once in a while someone will bring it up, but very few of my students know anything about it," Ramsay says. "I don’t jog anymore, so I don’t go down to the track. But I do go to the gym every once in a while and sometimes people will remind me of it down there.

"Mostly, it’s forgotten, thankfully."

Ramsay never got an apology from Holtz, though a colleague did get the coach to autograph a picture as a going away present when Ramsay went on sabbatical to Stanford a several years ago.

"If I knew you were going to leave NC State,’’ Holtz jokingly wrote on the picture, ``I would have stayed."

Ramsay probably won’t get a chance to see the coach one more time this weekend. He doesn’t plan on going to the game.

Or practice, either.

 

EDITOR'S NOTE: Ramsay retired from his faculty position in 2004, the same year Holtz retired from coaching. He died in 2016 at the age of 75.

 

A Magician's Last Trick

 

Lou Holtz overlooking NC State's practice field.

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.

This story was originally published in the Greensboro News & Record prior to Lou Holtz's first game at South Carolina, which was against Carter-Finley Stadium on Sept. 4, 1999. It was also reprinted in the NC State Alumni Magazine.

It has been updated at the end to reflect the end of Holtz's career following the 2004 season.

By Tim Peeler
© Landmark Communications, 1999

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Fittingly enough, it was after a South Carolina game that Lou Holtz made an eternal impression on one of his NC State stars.

It was November 1974, and the third-year coach had just beaten the Gamecocks, as they did all four times when Holtz was the Pack’s coach from 1972-75. Seventh-ranked Penn State was on its way to town for the first time ever, and in nine previous meetings, the Wolfpack had never really come close to beating the Nittany Lions.

Holtz, who had taken the Wolfpack to the top 10 earlier in the season, was disappointed that back-to-back losses to North Carolina and Maryland had ended his team’s chances for a second consecutive ACC Championship, but he held out hope that the Wolfpack could return to the Top 10 with season-ending wins over the Nittany Lions and Arizona State.

"When we got into the lockerroom after the South Carolina game, he sat us all down and told us all we had to do was do our own jobs to the best of our ability," said Dave Buckey, the Wolfpack quarterback at the time. ``He said not to worry about what anyone else was going to do, just do what you had to do to beat your man.

Joe Paterno and Lou Holtz

"Then he added, 'Because I guaran-damn-tee you, I’m going to go out-coach Joe Paterno next week, and we’re going to win that game.'"

With that, Holtz stormed out of the lockerroom and the place erupted in cheers. Those cheers echoed for a long time, too, because the Wolfpack ended its nine-game losing streak to Penn State with a 12-7 victory, perhaps the biggest win in Holtz’s four seasons with the Wolfpack.

"I will believe to the day I die that we won that game when Coach Holtz told us that," Buckey said. "He is amazing. I think he is the best underdog coach in America, hands down. You don’t want to be playing him when you are the favorite."

In his new job, as head coach at tradition-poor South Carolina, Holtz will be a perpetual underdog. It’s a challenge he will savor when he makes his return to college football tonight at 7:30 in Carter-Finley Stadium, when the Gamecocks face the No. 24 Wolfpack.

 Rebuilding The Ruins, Part VI

 A master motivator and part-time magician, Holtz admits he’s never been asked to pull off a bigger miracle than turning South Carolina into a consistent winner. The Gamecocks are coming off a 1-10 season that ended Brad Scott's tenure here.

"I have never had a team with a bigger challenge than this, I need not tell you that," Holtz says. "It doesn’t mean that it’s insurmountable. It doesn’t mean it can’t be accomplished. It just means it won’t be easy."

But, then, it never has been. It wasn’t easy at William & Mary, where he guided the school to the Tangerine Bowl in his second season.

The sidelines of Carter Stadium

It wasn’t easy at N.C. State, where he took a team with a 9-21-2 record in the three previous years under Earle Edwards and one-year interim Al Michaels, to four consecutive bowl games.

It wasn’t easy at Arkansas, where he took over for legendary coach Frank Broyles and immediately pulled off one of college football’s biggest upsets in the 1977 Orange Bowl in his first year at the helm.

It wasn’t easy at Minnesota, a team that went 1-10 the year before Holtz arrived, but was invited to play in the Independence Bowl after his second year.

And it wasn’t easy at Notre Dame, his dream job, where he was hired to knock the dents out of the Golden Dome left by Gerry Faust. Two years later, the Fighting Irish won the national championship.

At every one of those stops, Holtz has taken over a team with a losing record, then guided them to a bowl within two years of his arrival. He’s won over fans and players alike with his well-rehearsed aphorisms and ice-breaking magic tricks, though he almost always wears out his welcome with the administration.

Holtz left coaching in 1997, tired of fans expectations and tired of fighting the ghosts of Notre Dame’s coaching legends, not to mention his spoiled relationship with his boss, Notre Dame athletics director Mike Wadsworth. He spent two years working as a television commentator and giving motivational speeches at $20,000 a pop, before he decided he needed one last rebuilding challenge. His wife, Beth, was progressing in her treatments for throat cancer, and Holtz kept finding himself in first-class airplane seats with nothing to do but fidget. All that space to stretch out, and no strategies to plan.

"I talked with him when he resigned, and he said he might want to get back into it," Florida State coach and long-time friend Bobby Bowden says. "For me, there were two good bits of news: No. 1, that he came back to coaching.

"And No. 2, that he ain't in my conference."

So it wasn’t exactly a surprise when word spread that Holtz was looking into several coaching opportunities last fall.

"Anybody who knew anything about Lou, knew he wasn’t going to stay out of coaching," says Virginia head coach George Welsh. "He missed coaching big-time college football."

This Is the Big Time?

So how did Holtz wind up here, the land of the ``Chicken Curse,’’ with a team that lost to Vanderbilt just last year?

Gamecock athletics director Mike McGee, who never had success beating Holtz’s Wolfpack team when McGee was the coach at Duke, made a strong pitch to lure Holtz back to South Carolina. The coach spent two years as an assistant to Paul Dietzel in Columbia in the late 1960s.

Holtz claims to have turned McGee down three different times, before finally relenting after a bad day at the golf course.

"I am a teacher,’’ Holtz says. "What talents I have are geared to helping people realizing a dream and helping them achieve it. I didn’t think I would coach again after Notre Dame, because where do you go from there except straight to heaven and sit beside the pope?

Champions of the 1972 Peach Bowl

"It wasn’t my intention to come here and prove anything. But I finally accepted it, because it’s a challenge. It’s rewarding to work with young people."

So Holtz cleaned out his warehouse full of motivational tricks and shipped them to South Carolina, where he had to change the perception both inside and outside the program. He was welcomed by 4,000 spectators at his introductory press conference at Williams-Brice Stadium, then by a roomful of glum faces on his players during the spring.

"I would just like to see our guys smile," Holtz says. "It’s not like we are about to enter into a Death March."

But for most of its 105 years, South Carolina has been the Bataan of college football. Only once has the school won more than eight games in a season. Only three times in its history have the Gamecocks put together more than three consecutive winning seasons. In nine bowl appearances, the Gamecocks’ only victory came in 1995 when they beat West Virginia in the Carquest Bowl, a postseason futility of laughable proportions for a school that wants so badly to do well in football.

"You can’t win the national championship by winning the Carquest Bowl," Holtz says.

Among the first things Holtz did was try to improve the Gamecock’s Chicken Strut with cosmetic changes. It’s the same thing he did at NC State when he took over for Michaels in 1972. Holtz brought back white helmets with a block-letter S on side, made the uniforms look more traditional and removed players’ names from the back of their jerseys.

"We went 1-10 last year and it seemed like every game we got lower and lower on ourselves to where we felt we can’t win anyway," says senior running back Boo Williams. "We have a new attitude, new team. We started completely over.

"Our confidence level is totally different."

Holtz made more substantial changes, too, like extending practice time, improving off-season training and cleaning house of some problem players, including the team’s leading rusher the last two years.

"In the past, we haven’t always had confidence in our preparation and we haven’t always had confidence in our system," says senior tight end Trey Pennington. "With Coach Holtz, right or wrong, you know everybody is going in one direction, and when everybody does that, you can’t help but do right.

"I think 80 percent of football is mental and 20 percent is physical, and he has helped the mental part of our game. Just having him on the sidelines brings a lot of confidence to our team."

When Holtz walked into the team meeting room on the first day of fall practice, he still saw a lot of diverted eyes and downcast looks. After a clamorous attitude adjustment, in which he told his players to get a smile on their face and a song in their heart, he had the players looking squarely in his eyes.

"It’s almost like you are in a dream," says senior safety Ray Green. "He’s one of the greatest coaches to ever coach the game talking to us. He chose South Carolina, to make us better."

And that’s no small challenge.

Remembering NC State

Holtz will never forget the day he met NC State athletics director Willis Casey. The two were supposed to meet in secret at a gas station in South Hill, Va., for an informal interview. Both showed up early and waited for the other to arrive.

After waiting for an hour, Casey wandered over to a scrawny, accountant-looking fellow who was about 5-8, 130 pounds.

"Are you Lou Holtz?" said Casey, who had seen Holtz’s team play, but had never met the coach.

"That’s me," Holtz said.

"You sure don’t look like a football coach," Casey said.

Looking over his glasses at the pudgy Casey, the 33-year-old Holtz shot back: ``Well you don’t look much like an athletic director,’’ Holtz said.

It was the beginning of a successful, stormy relationship.

Willis Casey and Lou Holtz in December 1971

Casey had tried to hire Holtz after Earle Edwards suddenly resigned in the summer of 1971, but Holtz didn’t want to back out of his contract with William & Mary. Casey elevated Michaels, who had been the Pack's defensive coordinator under Edwards since 1954, to interim head coach to wait for Holtz. That fall, Casey saw William & Mary nearly upset North Carolina in Chapel Hill with a wide-open, high-scoring offense and it solidified Casey’s desire to bring the little bookworm to Raleigh.

The Wolfpack was 3-8 under Michaels, but it had won two of its final three games and was hardly devoid of talent, with a returning backfield that consisted of running backs Willie Burden, Roland Hooks, Stan Fritts and Charley Young, collectively known as ``The Stallions.’’

Sprinkle in an All-Conference quarterback in Bruce Shaw, an offensive lineman, Bill Yoest, who would become an All-America and a recruiting class that included twin freshmen Dave and Don Buckey, and Holtz had a lot to work with.

"No matter who N.C. State had hired, he would have been successful," Holtz says.

It wasn’t that Holtz was just successful. It was how he made the Wolfpack win. The ACC played defensive football back then, with little offensive imagination. Holtz’s twin-veer attack was exciting and daring, with long down-field passes that eventually packed Carter-Finley Stadium.

Holtz has developed a reputation as a conservative offensive coach in the years since then, but his first edition of the Wolfpack scored 409 points and gained 4,758 yards in total offense, a record that still stands.

"Until then, [the ACC] was a throw-if-you-had-to league," says Darrell Moody, a former NC State player and a graduate assistant to Holtz in 1973. "Lou brought option football and he also brought a good passing game off of that.

"At that time, NC State fans were not used to seeing a lot of points scored. They were used to winning a lot of low-scoring games, then they stopped winning. When Lou came in, it was a great marriage for NC State."

He won over the fans in his third game when he went for a game-winning two-point conversion against North Carolina in Chapel Hill. The attempt failed, but he left the field at Kenan Stadium that afternoon to a standing ovation from the Wolfpack fans in attendance.

Frank Weedon and Lou Holtz in 2006.

"For me, that was a huge moment in our program, because it got all the people behind this new coach,’’ says Frank Weedon, the retired associate athletics director at NC State. ``He could have gone for the tie, but we had just tied Maryland in the season opener.

"He wanted the win, and I think people appreciated that.’’

Eventually, Holtz’s relationship with Casey began to sour, as the two head-strong individuals were frequently unable to reach compromises regarding staff salaries, recruiting, long-awaited upgrades to Carter Stadium and other aspects of running the football program. He was courted by other schools, including, ironically enough, South Carolina.

It wasn’t until the end of the 1975 season, not long after Holtz embarrassed the school by having an NC State mathematicsprofessor arrested for jogging around the school's public track during a closed practice, the coach found a challenge big enough to lure him away. He became the head coach of the NFL’s New York Jets, where he lasted less than a full season before realizing his motivational gimmicks didn’t work on the professional level.

Holtz never leaves a town with the same love he receives upon arrival.

At Arkansas, he  resigned after seven years after his relationship with Broyles deteriorated. The final straw came when Holtz filmed a campaign announcement for North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms’ 1984 re-election campaign on public property.

At Minnesota, he left behind bitter fans with his departure for Notre Dame, the one school he had always wanted to coach. The Golden Gophers got a two-year probation after Holtz left for violations that included two by the coach himself. He was an immediate hero with the Irish, winning Rockne-like devotion after he won the 1988 national championship.

When no others followed, Lou’s golden shine faded in South Bend, with further allegations of NCAA improprieties, a disdain for his Machiavellian, sometimes abusive, coaching tactics and a strained relationship with AD Wadsworth. Current Notre Dame coach Bob Davie even questioned Holtz’s mental stability during court proceedings involving assistant coach, who fielded an age-discrimination lawsuit against the school.

The theme of Holtz’s career is common: He turns programs around, until he strains his relationship to a breaking point. That might not be a problem at South Carolina, where he has a long-lasting friendship with AD McGee.

"Besides, I’m 62," Holtz said. "This won’t be an eight-year rebuilding project."

 How Soon Is Soon Enough?

When Holtz lost his assistant’s job at South Carolina in 1967, he sat down and re-evaluated his life. He wrote down all the things that he wanted to accomplish before he died. When he finished, there were 107 items on the list and he showed them to his wife.

She reviewed them and told him he might want to think about adding one more goal: "Get a job."

Holtz had no trouble with that, and so far, he’s ticked off 102 of his original goals, which included coaching at Notre Dame, winning a national championship, having dinner at the White House, appearing on Johnny Carson and jumping out of an airplane. He never did run with the bulls in Pamplona and he’s never mastered a second language, but he should have some time for those things when he finally retires for good.

For now, he’s spending his vast reserves of energy trying to do what some people think is impossible: getting the Gamecocks to the top of the Southeastern Conference.

Ever the optimist, Holtz isn’t intimidated. After all, he has plenty of support from McGee and the fans, who continue to flock to Williams-Brice Stadium, even if they have no real reason. According to NCAA statistics, South Carolina ranked 15th in attendance last year at over 77,000 per game, for a team that won only once.

"I am not worried about winning in the long run," Holtz says. "We have all the support we could ever need. What I am worried about is winning quickly. I believe we can win here. I just don’t know how soon."

If history is any measure, soon enough.

 

EDITOR'S NOTE: Holtz's six-year stint at South Carolina began with a rain-soaked 10-0 loss to the Wolfpack at Carter-Finley Stadium during Hurricane Dennis and an 0-11 inaugural campaign. The Gamecocks eventually bounced back, winning back-to-back Outback Bowls in his second and third seasons and compiling a school-best two-year record of 17-7. His last three years with the Gamecocks, however, ended with two 5-6 records, a 6-5 final season, swirling allegations of improprieties and an on-field brawl against Clemson in his last game that cost the coach one last chance at winning a postseason game. He finished his career with a 12-8-2 bowl record.

He finished his career with a 249-142-7 record before handing over the reins at South Carolina to Steve Spurrier following the 2004 season.