North Carolina State University Athletics
Tony Haynes: Rivers Is One of a Kind
11/18/2003 12:00:00 AM | Football
Nov. 18, 2003
By Tony Haynes
It was early January of the year 2000 when Philip Rivers and his parents packed up two cars and started the journey from Athens, Alabama to Raleigh. One of the cars was the 1996 Ford Taurus Rivers would use to get around town during his early days as a college student at NC State. As he pushed his way up the highway that day, the 17-year old, an early high school graduate, wasn't exactly sure what he was getting into. Now he knows. Four years and 49 consecutive games later, the Taurus has about 120,000 miles on it. Meanwhile, Rivers precious right arm has produced roughly 7.2 miles through the air. No quarterback in ACC history has thrown for greater distances than No. 17, who will make his final home appearance at Carter-Finley Stadium this Saturday afternoon.
For anyone who bleeds Wolfpack red, seeing Rivers in that stadium for the last time will be an emotional experience, not only because of the way he's made a difficult position on the football field look so easy for four years, but also because of the way he's represented his school. His coach, Chuck Amato, knew what he was talking about some four years ago when he predicted that there would probably be no way to quantify just how important Rivers would be to the program and the university by the time he was finished.
Amato was dead on, which is one of many reasons why it will be difficult for him to say farewell to the first recruit he visited after he took over the NC State program in early January of 2000. There will be plenty of tears to go around on Saturday, some of which may even belong to Rivers himself.
"I'm emotional every game just running out there and seeing all the fans," Rivers said. "I love NC State, but a lot of that comes from how much I love the game and love to play. It should mean something to you when you've played this many games at a school. I think it will be that way for all our seniors. It's one of those things that's happy and sad. It's the end of something that's been great for you here at NC State for four years. It's something you don't want to end because of all the memories you have."
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Although too numerous to mention, the memories of many events, even those that occurred in the early days of January nearly four years ago when his parents came with him in that second car, are still quite fresh in his mind.
"You didn't really know what to expect," Rivers recalled of those early days on campus. "It was tough at first because you really didn't have the football; you had the weightlifting and the early morning workouts. I remember my dad saying 'just wait until the football gets there and you'll be rolling.' That was true. I'll never forget that first day of practice and coming home and I was going on and on with them that it was awesome."
During that first spring, Rivers remembers one of the biggest snowfalls ever in Raleigh, a blizzard that left the entire area in total paralysis for nearly a week.
"I was running around with Levar [Fisher] and three or four other guys and starting to feel comfortable and act my normal self," Rivers said. "I was picking at Levar and he slammed me right in the snow headfirst. It was about 18 inches of snow."
There wasn't any snow in Rivers' first game, but there was an awful lot of rain. It was also the first game of the Amato era against an unheralded Arkansas State team. As it turned out, the Wolfpack would need a near-miraculous effort from its freshman quarterback to avoid total embarrassment in a game that had been eagerly anticipated since Amato's hiring eight months earlier.
"I can remember like it was yesterday that Arkansas State game, coming out and being amazed with all the people," Rivers recalls." I was sitting over there scanning the crowd. I was glad we were on defense first or I would have been awful for awhile."
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The entire NC State team, in fact, was awful for most of the game. But with the rain pouring down, Rivers found a way to win the struggle, leaving Amato with a win and a memory he will cherish forever. In fact, when asked to name the one play or one game involving Rivers that comes to his mind, Amato doesn't hesitate.
"The end of the first half and the end of the second half in the first game we played right out here in the mud," he said. "At the end of the first half he led us to score when we had timeouts, but we didn't need to use them. And then the end of the second half where we go down the field without any timeouts to get into field goal position just to get into overtime. If that doesn't happen, Lord only knows what it would have been like. We didn't have a crystal ball back then, but that was just a sign of things to come from that young kid."
Rivers would go on to lead his team to come-from-behind wins in three of his first four games that year. It was plainly clear by then that NC State might have itself a player and a quarterback for the ages.
When he runs onto Wayne T. Day Field for the final time against Maryland shortly after 3:30 on Saturday, Rivers will set a new NCAA record with the 50th start of his career. He will leave, of course, with many records, including almost all of the ACC's passing and total offense marks. But playing in every single game of his college career is something neither he nor anyone else could have possibly imagined at the beginning.
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"I never thought I wasn't going to play," Rivers said. "There was never a time when I thought during the week that I wasn't going to be able to do it. I've known for all 49 of them that I was at least going to go out there and start 'em."
Football's iron man can't even remember missing a game going all the way back to 7th grade when he once played quarterback with a broken thumb.
"I wasn't very good," he said with a chuckle.
Already the first quarterback in the 51-year history of the ACC to pass for over 3,000 yards in three different seasons, he is now just 260 yards away from joining Florida State's Chris Weinke as the only quarterbacks in the league to throw for better than 4,000 yards in a single season. He needs only 14 more yards passing to become 2nd on the NCAA's all-time list behind Ty Detmer of BYU.
By the time Amato arrived at NC State as a player in 1964, it was already commonly accepted that quarterback Roman Gabriel wore the crown as the greatest football player ever at NC State. It wasn't until just recently that Amato was forced to change his opinion on that particular subject.
"I don't mean that as a slight to Roman Gabriel," Amato said. "He did so many great things for that era. But times have changed. It took 40 years for another Roman Gabriel to come around here; I just hope it doesn't take another 40 before another Philip Rivers comes around."
Unfortunately coach, it may take even more than 40 because Philip Rivers has truly been one of a kind.
