North Carolina State University Athletics
PEELER: When Pupil Beat Mentor
10/28/2010 12:00:00 AM | Football
Oct. 28, 2010
BY TIM PEELER
RALEIGH, N.C. – It was Chuck Amato’s greatest “I told you so.”
As the second-year NC State head coach walked off the field at Doak Campbell Stadium on Nov. 10, 2001, he put his arm around freshman defensive back Marcus Hudson and repeated a recruiting promise in the young player’s ear: “I told you we would beat Florida State if you came here.”
For Hudson, the remarkable 34-28 victory – the first time any Atlantic Coast Conference school beat the Seminoles on their home turf since FSU joined the league in 1992 – was both revenge and redemption.
The revenge came against legendary Florida State head coach Bobby Bowden, who chose not to recruit Hudson out of Miami’s South Dade High School, even though Hudson’s older brother Jerel was a starting linebacker for the Seminoles. When the game kicked off, Hudson’s mom and 11 relatives sat in the Wolfpack section, while his dad and 13 other relatives sat in the FSU section.
Marcus Hudson, one of the first players to commit in Amato’s second recruiting class, reveled in the victory, if only because it helped erase three bad plays earlier in the game. He was burned on the Seminoles’ first touchdown pass and was twice called for pass interference penalties on scoring drives.
But late in the fourth quarter, with the Wolfpack clinging to a six-point lead, Hudson tackled FSU receiver Javon Walker to keep him from going out of bounds and to keep the game clock rolling. A few seconds later, as the clock wound down to zero, teammates Brian Williams and Terrence Holt knocked a pass out of the arms of FSU receiver Talman Gardner, and the game was over.
Hudson, Williams and Holt were some of the many heroes of the game, along with sophomore quarterback Philip Rivers, sophomore wide receiver Jerricho Cotchery, senior running back Ray Robinson and senior linebacker Levar Fisher.
For a few seconds after the final gun sounded, in front of a shocked crowd of 82,425 spectators, Amato ran around looking for someone to hug, just like NC State men’s basketball coach Jim Valvano did 18 years before when Lorenzo Charles dunked home Dereck Whittenburg’s airball to give the Wolfpack the 1983 NCAA championship.
Fittingly, Amato had inspired his players by showing them a clip of the farewell speech a dying Valvano gave in February 1993 at Reynolds Coliseum. Amato had hoped to show the more familiar “Never Give Up” ESPY speech that Valvano gave less than a month before he died. But Amato couldn’t find a good copy of it. So he had Wolfpack wrestling coach Bob Guzzo borrow a tape from cross country and track coach Rollie Geiger of Valvano’s Reynolds Coliseum farewell.
Emotions were high when the Wolfpack took the field, and even higher when center Derek Green recovered Cotra Jackson’s fumble into the end zone for the Pack’s first score of the game. The teams went back and forth the entire evening, leaving Amato almost too mentally and physically exhausted to celebrate.
But as he ran onto the field, he eventually jumped into the arms of his mentor, FSU’s legendary coach Bobby Bowden, who had been Amato’s boss for 18 years.
“Great plan, Chuck,” the mentor told the pupil, who had just ended Bowden’s streak of 25 consecutive Homecoming victories.
Amato was practically speechless after the game, a rarity during his seven-year tenure as NC State’s head coach.
“There is no way you can fathom this, to beat a man like Bobby,'' Amato said.
But Amato knew the Seminoles’ weaknesses. He and his staff unveiled an offensive game plan that included multiple formation shifts at the line of scrimmage and kept the Seminole defense on their heels the whole game. The capper came in the fourth quarter when Rivers, now one of the NFL’s top quarterbacks, led the Wolfpack on a 17-play drive that ate more than seven minutes off the clock.
It ended with a 32-yard field goal by Adam Kiker that gave the Wolfpack its winning margin.
“I was amazed at how good they played,” Bowden said. “Chuck knew us like a book and knew just how to hurt us. All that jumping around on offense. He knew how to confuse us.”
Rivers was magnificent in the game, completing 26 of 33 passes for 245 yards. But the defense twice stopped Florida State inside the 10-yard line and the offensive line did not allow a sack in the contest.
Even now, Rivers remembers the upset victory as one of the biggest highlights of his football career.
“We had the game against Notre Dame in the Gator Bowl my junior year, but that win at Florida State is real high on the list,” Rivers said earlier this year. “We did something no one thought we could do.
“Except us and Coach Amato.”
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
