North Carolina State University Athletics
A Game That Launched Hollywood Career
10/28/2010 12:00:00 AM | Football
Oct. 28, 2010
BY TIM PEELER
RALEIGH, N.C. – On a bright Florida day more than half a century ago, NC State’s reserve quarterback and All-American halfback launched a Hollywood career.
Ernie Driscoll, the backup to starter Tom Katich, trotted onto the field at Doak Campbell Stadium on Oct. 12, 1957, in a desperate attempt to put some points on the board against Florida State. The Wolfpack, playing the fourth of its five straight road games to start the season, had already beaten ACC foes North Carolina, Maryland and Clemson.
Head coach Earle Edwards had a certified star in halfback Dick Christy, and he needed someone to get the ball in his hands.
On the final play of the first half, Christy streaked down the sidelines, eluded a Seminole defensive back and caught a 46-yard touchdown for the only score in a 7-0 victory. How Christy got behind the oft-injured defender is still a topic for debate.
“First of all, he ran out of bounds,” said the burned cornerback, some 50 years after the game. “Secondly, I think he ran behind the bench and came back on the field. He disappeared out of my eye line and then he was behind me, which is my side of the story and I am sticking to it.”
Christy caught the spiraling pass from Driscoll and went untouched in the end zone. Florida State coach Tom Nugent berated his back for letting Christy get behind him.
“I did come back for the second half and I did play a little,” said the once promising college football player, who had been an all-state fullback during his senior year of high school. “But some of the things that were said to me at halftime, I didn’t like a lot. I was playing with one leg. I had a tremendous freshman year [in 1955]. Then I got hurt my sophomore and had a knee operation. Then I was in a terrible automobile accident, and lost my spleen and had my other knee operated on.
“The ball player that played against Dick Christy that afternoon was not the same ball player that I was as a freshman.”
So Burt “Buddy” Reynolds soon left the Seminole football team, tucked his last $80 into his sock and headed off to acting classes. Once he got to Hollywood, he starred in more than 90 feature films and some 300 television episodes.
“After that game,” Reynolds said in a 2007 interview with Don Shea, “I had a meeting with my roommate. I told him I was leaving the team, because I just wasn’t the player I once was.”
Of course, Reynolds isn’t so sure anybody could have stopped Christy on that particular play.
“He was a great, great ball player,” Reynolds said. “They had two great ball players on that team, Christy and Dick Hunter. They had an excellent team.”
The next week, the Wolfpack returned to Florida and fought to a 7-7 tie with Miami. The next week, aided by two distracting trains that rumbled past Riddick Stadium during Wolfpack scoring drives, the team tied then-mighty Duke, 14-14.
The next week, it maintained its lead in the ACC standings with a victory over Wake Forest. But the team slipped in its second home game of the season, losing 7-6 on Homecoming to lowly William & Mary.
After beating Virginia Tech 13-0 in Roanoke, Va., the Wolfpack went to Columbia, S.C., with a chance to earn its first Atlantic Coast Conference championship. The afternoon of Nov. 23, 1957, will go down as the greatest individual performance in NC State and ACC history, as Christy scored all of the Wolfpack’s points – including a game-winning field goal in his first career attempt, after time had expired – to give his team a 29-26 victory.
Coupled with Duke’s loss to North Carolina, the victory gave Edwards the first of his five ACC titles.
But it might never have happened if Christy hadn’t slipped behind a gimpy Florida State cornerback who went on to greater fame on the silver screen.
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
