TIM PEELER: Pack Helps Say Good-Bye to Orange Bowl

BY TIM PEELER

 

RALEIGH, N.C. You can’t blame Tom O’Brien for not mustering up a little nostalgia for Orange Bowl Stadium. He’s never won at the downtown Miami landmark as a player or a coach.

He was a junior defensive end when Navy lost at Miami 30-10 in 1969. He never faced the Hurricanes in his 15 years as an assistant coach at Virginia, though Miami beat the Cavaliers 31-21 just weeks after O’Brien left Charlottesville to become head coach at Boston College. With the Eagles, O’Brien was a disappointing 0-8 against the Big East’s southern-most foe, including five losses in the Orange Bowl.

So forgive O’Brien if he doesn’t get all warm-and-fuzzy thinking about the demise of the crumbling, 70-year-old downtown stadium when he takes NC State’s football team (3-5 overall, 1-3 ACC) and its two-game winning streak there to face the Hurricanes  at noon on Saturday, a game that will be carried live on the Wolfpack Radio Network and on ESPNU.

“A football field is a football field,” O’Brien said earlier this week. “You don’t think much about the stadium. What’s most important is how Miami feels about playing there Saturday afternoon.”

O’Brien, for his part, is only slightly less sentimental about the place than Florida State coach Bobby Bowden, who suffered through three “wide rights” and one “wide left” there.

The Hurricanes (5-3, 2-2) certainly have reason to be wistful about playing their next-to-last game in a stadium where they once won an NCAA-record 58 consecutive home games. In August, the school announced it would move to Dolphins Stadium for the 2008, sharing the same home with the NFL Dolphins, the MLB Florida Marlins and the actual Orange Bowl, the post-season college football extravaganza that moved away from the stadium a dozen years ago.

But forgive some old-time NC State fans if they have a little softer spot in their hearts for the dilapidated old structure where the Wolfpack has won three times and tied once in eight trips.

The Wolfpack’s first trip to what was then called Burdine Stadium was in 1939, just two years after it opened. The Pack then won back-to-back games there during World War II, a 2-0 thriller in 1942 and a 28-7 blowout in 1944.

But the year that will forever remain etched in the minds of the most sentimental Wolfpack fans is 1957, when State should have put the exclamation mark on the greatest season in school history, before or since, by playing two games at the fabled stadium. As it happened, Coach Earle Edwards’ team played there only once, without getting a win or a loss or even scoring a single point.

Still, what transpired there a half century ago is a little fresher in everyone’s mind as NC State celebrates the 50^th anniversary of its first ACC Championship. Thanks to the play of accomplished halfbacks Dick Christy and Dick Hunter, Edwards led the Wolfpack to a 7-1-2 season in 1957, including a scoreless tie against heavily favored Miami on a sweltering night in October, when the Wolfpack nearly gave up a safety with just seconds remaining that would have given the Hurricanes’ their own 2-0 win.

But the Pack held on, as Miami missed a 47-yard field goal on the game’s final play. The next week, Edwards’ team came back to tie No. 3 Duke at Riddick Stadium, 14-14, an outcome that allowed the Wolfpack to capture the ACC crown when it beat South Carolina and Duke lost to North Carolina on the final day of the 1957 season.

As ACC champs, NC State should have qualified to play Big Eight champion Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl, back when the four major bowl games were independent of the BCS Championship. It’s the only time in school history that NC State qualified for one of the traditional New Year’s Day bowl games.

But the team never got to load a chartered DC-9 for a return trip to Miami, thanks to a devastating four-year probation levied on Everett Case’s Wolfpack basketball program in early 1957. The terms of the probation the most severe ever handed out by the NCAA until it gave Southern Methodist the “death penalty” in 1987 for repeated infractions prohibited all NC State sports from participating in post-season events.

That meant the Wolfpack football team had to stay home, while Duke represented the ACC at the Orange Bowl against No. 4 Oklahoma. The result? Sooners 48, Blue Devils 21.

“They got killed,” said Darrell Dess, a tackle for the Wolfpack in 1957 who went on to play 12 years in the NFL. “I like to think that we would have represented the conference a little better.”

The Wolfpack did win once more at the Orange Bowl, a 13-7 victory in 1971 when Al Michaels was State’s interim head coach. It kicked off a five-game losing streak for the Canes’ who finished 4-7 that year.

So now it’s up to a much younger generation to take a final shot on the Hurricanes home field. A total of 22 Florida natives, 10 of which are from the Miami-Dade County area, are itching to play in one of the Orange Bowl’s final games.

“It is something special that I always used to think about,” said running back Jamelle Eugene, who grew up about an hour away in Naples, Fla. “That was the only place I had ever seen a college or professional football game before I came here.

“I always wanted to play a game there and this game has special meaning, knowing tht it will be one of the last games played there.”

Eugene’s first college football game was five years ago, when he watched the Hurricanes beat Florida State 28-27, a victory that was seals when the Seminoles missed a last-second field goal wide left.

Perhaps every Floridian on the team can point to a similar game they attended or watched closely when they were younger.

There is one thing O’Brien likes about his team’s appearance at the Orange Bowl this weekend the Hurricanes still have one more home game, next weekend against Virginia. He does not want to face the wave of sentimentality that will surround the closing a stadium that hosted five Super Bowls and saw 14 teams secure college national titles with Orange Bowl victories.

“I’m just glad we’re not playing the last game there,” the coach said.

You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.

North Carolina State University Athletics

TIM PEELER: Pack Helps Say Good-Bye to Orange Bowl

Related News

Related Videos