North Carolina State University Athletics
TIM PEELER: Football Alumni Overwhelm O'Brien, Team
4/14/2007 12:00:00 AM | Football
Updated: 6:10 p.m., to add photo gallery of Red & White Spring Game
BY TIM PEELER
RALEIGH – NC State coach Tom O’Brien looked over his shoulder throughout Friday afternoon’s final practice of the spring and couldn’t believe the crowd that swelled behind him.
More than 300 former Wolfpack football players – from Woody Jones (Class of 1941) to Tank Tyler and A.J. Davis (Class of 2006) – accepted the new head coach’s invitation to gather at the Dail Practice facility adjacent to Carter-Finley Stadium, something O’Brien hopes will become an annual spring tradition. Most of them joined O’Brien and his staff at a reception afterwards in Vaughn Towers Friday evening.
Even more were expected at Saturday afternoon's Red & White Spring Game at Carter-Finley Stadium, which was won 35-31 by the Red team on an 8-yard pass from Daniel Evans to Darrell Blackman with 16 seconds to play in front of an announced crowd of 14,800. An archive copy of the game will by available for viewing by Pack Pass subscribers on Sunday morning.
“It’s phenomenal,” O’Brien said as he walked off the field following Friday's two-hour practice. “It just shows you the passion that is here for NC State football that all these guys are here. This reunion will only get better and bigger from here. It is a good first step.”
Former players who couldn’t attend were still calling Friday afternoon to send in their regrets and to thank O’Brien for putting together this spring-time reunion. It’s an idea that O’Brien took from his days at Virginia, where his boss, George Welsh, would invite all football letterman back for a spring reunion. It was an idea that Welsh took to Charlottesville, Va., from Penn State.
The event was organized over the last three months by Joe Pate, NC State’s director of football operations and a former assistant who had coached a good many of the players who were in attendance. O’Brien, whose reunions at Boston College generally drew between 75-to-100 former players, admitted that he was shocked at the response. But he still sees room for growth.
“I want to see them all,” O’Brien said when asked how large he wanted the reunion to grow. “All that want to be part of the program.”
From the looks of things Friday and Saturday, there are certainly plenty of former football players who have been yearning to reconnect to the program.
“Words can’t explain how good this is,” said former NFL defensive back Dwayne Washington. “Some of these guys I haven’t seen since the day I left to go to the NFL. It is really and truly good to see so many guys here.”
There were at least a dozen current or former NFL players roaming around during practice and at the spring game, including current stars Mario Williams, Torry Holt, Jerricho Cotchery and Pat Thomas. There were others whose professional careers are now over like Washington and Danny Peebles. And there was at least one, defensive lineman Tyler, who might soon join the professional ranks when the NFL Draft takes place two weeks from now.
Former Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Bill Cowher was among the throng gathered at the practice fields, though he offered no instruction. Like everyone else, he was catching up with former teammates and meeting with others who once wore NC State on their jerseys.
There were representatives from all seven ACC Championship teams, including more than a dozen members of the 1957 team that helped the Wolfpack win its first ACC title under Coach Earle Edwards. They are eagerly awaiting the opportunity to celebrate the 50th anniversary of that title throughout the coming season, and hope to find a way to properly honor Edwards, the coach who brought NC State football back from the brink of extinction and was the primary force in moving the team from decrepit Riddick Stadium to Carter Stadium in 1966.
“Football was about to be dropped back in the early ‘50s,” said Bob Kennel, a member of Edwards first recruiting class. “The decision was made to go get one more coach, give it one last shot, and Earle Edwards was hired for the job. He was such a fine gentleman.
“We want to make sure that everything he did for this school is never forgotten.”
The connections went back to the very roots of NC State football. Raeford Turner of Greensboro (Class of 1949) was more eager to talk about his father, Jay Platt Turner, than he was to talk about himself. The elder Turner played in every play of every game from 1899-1902 and scored the first touchdown against North Carolina in the history of NC State football.
Woody Jones (Class of 1941) was the oldest former player in attendance, but he’s just as in tune with the Wolfpack now as he ever was when he played for Horace Hendrickson, primarily because his grandson, fullback John Kane, is on the current football roster.
“He is thrilled to death about the program,” said Jones, who retired in 1990 from his career as an electronics and appliance salesman. “Everybody loves the staff and everything that is going on.”
As were so many others who traveled from as far away as Colorado to be share in the reunion weekend.
Williams, who arrived in style from Houston in his brand new orange Lamborghini, is celebrating the one-year anniversary of being the first player in ACC history to be taken No. 1 in the NFL Draft. But he hasn’t forgotten his alma mater.
“I wanted to come out and see who was here and meet some people I had never met before,” said Williams, who watched Saturday's spring game from the tunnel in the South End zone grandstands. “It just shows that the roots are still here. Some of these guys haven’t even seen the stadium. It’s a good thing to see everybody come back.”
There were even more former players at Saturday's game, and they were all recognized by the decade in which they played on the field at halftime of the real-scrimmage game. The game was dominated by the Wolfpack's three current running backs, as junior Toney Baker rushed for 163 yards on 23 carries, Jamelle Eugene rushed for 174 yards on 15 carries and Andre Brown rushed for a combined 112 yards on 11 total carries for the Red and White teams. Brown and Baker eached scored two touchdowns for their respective teams.
Not everybody at Friday's practice or Saturday's game was a football star after leaving NC State, or even while they were there. There were twice as many former walk-ons – like former walk-on All-America John McRorie – as there were former NFL players.
But they all played at NC State, and that’s what they were all there to celebrate.
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
