University of North Carolina Athletics
LEE PACE'S EXTRA POINTS: Emotion In Motion.
September 24, 2001 | Football
Sept. 24, 2001
NOTE: Readers are encouraged to view this week's Extra Points in the convenient PDF Format. PDF Format contains all material seen below, as well as additional content that is only available through PDF, including The Inner Game, a look at Sam Aiken's spark to the offense and Julius Peppers's interception of Chris Rix. 
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By Lee Pace
Thirty-three hours earlier, two planes on suicide bombing missions had plowed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, killing thousands, stopping the world in its tracks and slinging the United States into war. College football games for the coming weekend had been postponed, and as John Bunting gathered his Tar Heel football players around him after practice that Wednesday afternoon, he officially moved beyond the Southern Methodist University scheduling and into the next week-Florida State week.
"I'm glad it's here three days early," Bunting said. "Guys, what an opportunity. Florida State comes to our place. It can be the biggest win in school history. I for one believe we can do it."
Bunting looked around him into the eyes and faces of a hundred kids. He picked a few of them out.
"Metts, do you love the game of football?" he asked the senior center named Adam.
"Yes, sir!" Metts answered back.
"Jupiter, how about you? You love football?" he asked the sophomore guard, surnamed Wilson, who responded in the affirmative.
And on around the team.
"What an opportunity," Bunting repeated.
"We're playing the game we love, at home, with a chance to beat a great team. Who's with me?"
A hundred voices erupted in unison.
An emotional period in America moved into its 12th day last Saturday in Kenan
Kory Bailey share in the excitement of Saturday's rout of No. 6 FSU. |
The emotions had been at the surface of the Tar Heel football family for some time now, and they churned throughout the weekend and spread to anyone who'd ever drawn a heartfelt connection to the sky and Carolina blue. They bubbled over during an afternoon that saw the Heels-chopped, diced and hashed by fans and media alike for an 0-3 start-decimate Florida State, 41-9. It ranks with Carolina's 34-7 triumph over preseason No. 1 Texas in 1948 as the university's biggest victory in football.
Bunting himself was nearly overcome with emotion Saturday morning walking with his team from the Old Well to the stadium, through a corridor of a thousand or so hardy Tar Heel fans. "I just about lost it," he said. "That was special."
There were emotions like those brought by assistant head coach Jim Webster, a man who was absolutely beside himself in misery following the Tar Heels' embarrassing loss at Maryland three weeks before. Waiting as players and staff filed somberly into the visitors' locker room, Webster could not stand still. He gyrated. He shook his head. He harrumphed a time or two. The poor man's world was caving in. This is a guy who was told as a Tar Heel linebacker in 1971 he'd never play football again, he gave the doctors what-for by tying weights to his head, leaning over a bench and rebuilding the atrophied muscles around his previously broken vertebrae in his neck. He later blocked a punt in the Gator Bowl.
In a quieter moment a few days after the Maryland loss,
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"I'd never lost to Maryland before," he said. "I can't settle for that. And I guarantee you that John Bunting can't, either."
On the practice field last week, Webster, who coaches defensive ends and coordinates the kick-off cover unit, gathered the kick-off squad around him at one point and railed at the players over two returns by Texas that averaged 34 yards.
"GET 'EM INSIDE THE TWENTY! I'M NOT USED TO THIS!!! I'M NOT USED TO KICK-OFF RETURNS TO THE THIRTY-SEVEN YARD-LINE!!!"
We are dealing with a serious individual here, ladies and gentlemen. Saturday against Florida State, the Tar Heels had the pleasure of kicking off eight times against the vaunted Seminoles. On seven returns, they averaged a gain of 16.8 yards. Case closed.
"That team in blue Saturday was more like what I knew from my days here," said Webster. "They played hard, with emotion, with a never-say-die attitude. We as a staff were able to instill a change of attitude in this team. That's what I'm most proud of."
Webster watched as former Tar Heel lettermen floated through the dressing room and fourth-floor offices late Saturday afternoon, some fighting back tears, some unashamedly yielding to them.
"I felt best for the seniors, the kids who'd never beaten Florida State," Webster said. "Next I felt for the lettermen. That victory was for them, too."
The emotion came from the Carolina sideline and the players on the field, from the offense as it put together scoring drives behind QB Darian Durant midway through the first half and early in the second half, from the defense, which harried FSU's red-shirt freshman and very green QB, Chris Rix, into two fumbles, one fumbled exchange, one interception and three sacks. It came from the offensive line, which pummeled an occasional hole in a Seminole front wall minus the Perez Boulwares, Reinard Wilsons and Andr? Wadsworths of the past, crevices large enough for Andr? Williams to run for 66 positive yards and freshman Jacque Lewis for 33 yards.
The emotions rose as the Tar Heels pointed out to strength and conditioning coach Jeff Connors some visible signs of fatigue from their opponents, sights of Seminoles trudging to the sideline for a blow during the course of action. For once in this one-sided series, the Tar Heels seized the upper hand and held it throughout.
"They were a lot better than they were the last two years, a lot better," FSU offensive tackle Brett Williams said, referencing 63-14 and 42-10 thrashings in 1999 and 2000. "Their intensity was up, they felt stronger, and they didn't quit. In the past I felt they kind of let up, but today they just kept hammering the whole game."
The feelings engulfed Tar Heel fans throughout Kenan Stadium who started mocking the infernal Tomahawk Chop at Seminole fans in the fourth quarter. Even Chancellor James Moeser, taking the field late in the game, smiled broadly as he moved his right arm in a chopping motion while walking behind the Carolina bench.
The emotions flooded from the student seating section of Kenan Stadium as the final gun neared, with hoops specialists Kris Lang and Jason Capel among the first to hit the field, among those to smother QB Ronald Curry in celebratory hugs. "This ranks right up there with beating Duke at Duke," said Curry, the two-sport starter who played guard for Matt Doherty's team that won in Cameron Indoor Stadium last February.
The kids leaped the hedges and stormed the field and climbed atop the west end zone goal-posts, rocking and pulling and shimmying to no avail for more than 30 minutes. It turns out that guaranteed, indestructible goal-posts were installed when the Kenan Stadium field was rebuilt in the mid-1990s. The kids eventually tore off the aluminum uprights and snapped the weld of the crossbar to the gooseneck. The latter
goalposts after the game. |
"They were covered in mud," Bunting said. "I said, 'You guys belong on Franklin Street. You can dig to China and that thing's not coming up.' They looked at each other, smiled and walked off."
More emotions came from Starkville, Miss., where former tight ends coach Terry Lewis had left a voice-mail message for old friend Gary Tranquill before game's end. "What a total undressing of the Seminoles Saturday," enthused Lewis, now offensive line coach at Mississippi State. "This might be the beginning of the era everyone up there has been waiting for. I'm proud for the Tar Heels ... keep that ball rolling."
They came from Athens, Ga., where former Tar Heel Dick Bestwick watched from his home and moaned that the game was such a rout that ABC switched away in many areas with five minutes to play. Bestwick was one of more than a hundred members of the late-1940s Charlie Justice Era teams whose reunion was postponed the previous weekend.
"What a great effort," Bestwick, a retired college football coach, said in an e-mail dispatched at game's end. "I am happy for Coach Bunting and his staff, and particularly his kids. They obviously buy what John is selling, and I'm pleased that it is being in superior shape and hustling your buns off. They looked good on both sides of the ball, but particularly on defense, where they sure made some good things happen. Tell John he is allowed a little smile now before he gets it all cranked up for the next one."
Mid-September, 2001, adds up to a memorable period for the serious matters of life on this planet, an indelible period as well in the fun-and-games department. My VCR tape of Saturday's festivities is now forever prefaced, perhaps by divine intervention, with a clip from the September 11th Telethon from Friday night. I was moved for some reason to tape Neil Young's rendition of the old John Lennon ballad, Imagine. It was stirring indeed watching Young play the piano and, from beneath a cowboy hat and scraggly, graying hair, croon out in his smoky voice the haunting lyrics:
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.
I hope some day you'll join us, and the world will live as one.
Americans and Tar Heel fans might be moved to read a lot into those words in the aftermaths of September 11th and September 22nd.
NOTE: Readers are encouraged to view this week's Extra Points in the convenient PDF Format. PDF Format contains all material seen below, as well as additional content that is only available through PDF, including The Inner Game, a look at Sam Aiken's spark to the offense and Julius Peppers's interception of Chris Rix. Download Free Acrobat Reader
Many Tar Heel fans enjoyed Lee Pace's six-part series chronicling the playing and coaching careers of coach John Bunting that appeared at TarHeelBlue.com last spring. Now those same stories are available with new material in a book that promises to be a collector's item in the future.
Born & Bred is now available. It is on sale at a variety of venues around campus and Chapel Hill, as well as in the TarHeelBlue.com FANStore and by mail order.
New chapters cover Bunting's coaching staff, his visit in May to Tar Heel legend Charlie "Choo Choo" Justice, and efforts to improve the game-day experience in Kenan Stadium. In addition, there are sidebars on the 1980 Carolina championship team, led by Kelvin Bryant, and Bunting's key role in the 1982 NFL players' strike. Contact Lee Pace today at leepace@earthlink.net for ordering information.
Extra Points, now in its 12th year, is published 15 times a year, once following all Carolina football games as well as at the beginning of the season, the end of the season and at the end of recruiting and spring practice. Subscriptions $30 per year, payable by check or MC/Visa to:
Extra Points Publishing Co.
101-A Aberdeen St.
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
Lee Pace, Editor & Publisher
919/933-2082, leepace@earthlink.net
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