University of North Carolina Athletics
Extra Points Wednesday
October 26, 2005 | Football
Oct. 26, 2005
By Lee Pace
Tar Heel football schedules in the Forties through the Sixties routinely included games with Tennessee, Georgia, Oklahoma, Tulane, Notre Dame, Michigan, Michigan State and Ohio State - not to mention a certain school set amidst the sun, sand and citrus of South Florida. Carolina made five trips to Miami in a decade spanning 1952 to 1961, four of the games scheduled by Jim Tatum, the Tar Heel head coach from 1956-58.
"It was a recruiting thing with Coach Tatum," says Moyer Smith, who lettered as a running back from 1958-1960, the first of those seasons under Tatum. "They told us, `Come to Carolina and we'll play at Miami. We'll play at Southern Cal. We'll play at Notre Dame.' We had some nice trips in those days. We'd play Miami on Friday nights but not come home until Saturday night or Sunday. That would give us a free day at the beach."
Adds Don Stallings, who came to Chapel Hill from Rocky Mount to letter in football from 1957-59: "Going to Miami was something else. It was like going halfway around the world. Our first trip to Miami was the first time I'd ever been on an airplane."
The Tar Heels make their first trip to Miami in more than four decades this weekend as the evolution of the 21st century ACC continues. The Hurricanes visited Chapel Hill a year ago for their first meeting with Carolina since joining the league for the 2004 season. That result will live forever in Tar Heel hearts as freshman kicker Connor Barth nailed a 42-yard field goal on the game's last play for a 31-28 Tar Heel win.
Now it's Carolina's turn to take to the road. The Heels will venture into the Orange Bowl at noon Saturday afternoon to meet a team stoked for revenge and antsy to return to the field after a week of Hurricane Wilma distractions, not the least of which was the postponement of last Saturday's scheduled home game against Georgia Tech. Wilma's wrath included enough damage to the lighting apparatus at the Orange Bowl that Saturday's game has been moved up three and half hours so the entire game can be played in natural light.
"I'm excited about going there because I've never been to Miami, and this is only my second time going to Florida," safety Trimane Goddard says. "I've never been to the Orange Bowl, so I'm ready to go down there and play."
Adds tailback Ronnie McGill: "They are real athletic, and they are going to be at home, and they are going to be thinking about last year. So we have to go in there and basically play our best game of the year."
Coach John Bunting has several challenges this week. One is to simply deal with all the talent the Hurricanes possess on their roster. The second is to make sure the Tar Heels focus on this year's Miami team - and not get distracted with the tradition of the Miami program or the aura of the Orange Bowl. Both are rich.
Miami has won five national titles and produced two Heisman Trophy winners. Quarterbacks who've thrived in the NFL are household names - Vinny Testaverde, Jim Kelly, Gino Torretta, Steve Walsh and Bernie Kosar - not to mention skilled athletes across the rest of the field like Santana Moss, Ray Lewis, Kellen Winslow, Warren Sapp and Edgerrin James. The Canes have generated 43 first-round NFL picks since 1984, well ahead of second-place Florida at 26 and Florida State at 25.
The Orange Bowl Stadium might not mean as much to 20-year-old college players as it does to middle-aged writers. The Miami Dolphins have played in Dolphins Stadium (formerly Joe Robbie Stadium) north of the city for 18 years, and the post-season bowl game moved there in 1997. But the venue originally known as Roddy Burdine Municipal Stadium (it opened in 1937 and was renamed the Orange Bowl in 1959) is special to anyone who followed football closely in from the late 1960s through the 1980s. There was Joe Willie Namath leading the Jets to victory in Super Bowl III; Jim O'Brien's field goal to anoint the Colts in Super Bowl V; the Dolphins' undefeated season of 1972 with Griese and Csonka and Kiick; or any number of New Year's Day bowl marathons concluded at 8 p.m. over black-eyed peas and collards with Nebraska or Oklahoma (the old Big Eight champion) waging war in the Orange Bowl against Notre Dame, Penn State or someone else from the eastern U.S.
Today Orange Bowl Stadium is ancient, rickety, has few creature comforts and is hardly located in a garden spot of Miami. Still, it's one of the classic venues of football in America.
Carolina's history with Miami began with an early season meeting in 1946. The Hurricanes and the world of college football had never heard of one Charlie Justice, but they would soon enough. The Tar Heels opened that year with a lineup of players moving from the military or armed-service football to civilian life and could manage only a 14-14 tie with Virginia Tech to begin the season. Playing his first game as a Tar Heel, Justice had one long scoring run but also had two quick-kicks blocked.
"After the game, Charlie said he'd never get another kick blocked, and he was right," remembers teammate Bob Cox.
Miami had no idea who Justice was when the Tar Heels traveled by train to Miami for the Oct. 4 game. But the Hurricanes of Coach Jack Harding drew a record regular-season crowd of 31,451 for the game, which saw Carolina control from start to finish in logging a 21-0 win. Justice had a 68-yard TD run on the third play of the game and a total of 206 yards on 10 carries.
"Charlie stood 'em on their ears," says Cox. "They had no idea what hit 'em. After that, people knew who Charlie Justice was."
Carolina went on to an 8-1-1 regular season and date with Georgia in the Sugar Bowl. Thus began one of the golden eras of Carolina football, as Justice and mates posted a 32-9-2 record over four years and went to three major bowl games. By the early 1950s, however, Coach Carl Snavely's program had deteriorated and the Tar Heels lost 11 games running over a two-year period in 1951-52.
When Carolina departed for Miami for its Nov. 28, 1952, season-ending game with the Hurricanes, rumors were rampant that Snavely's contract would not be renewed. Some observers speculated that Tatum, the head coach at Maryland, might be lured back to Chapel Hill, where he'd starred as a lineman from 1932-34. They were right, but they were three years off; it would not be until after the 1955 season that Tatum would become Carolina's coach. Others believed the heir apparent to Snavely's job was George Barclay, another ex-Tar Heel who had resigned as head coach at Washington & Lee a year earlier to join Snavely's staff as an assistant. Barclay's charge upon returning to Chapel Hill was to install the new split-T offense.
It had been a miserable fall for the Tar Heels. To begin with, two early-season games (versus N.C. State and Georgia) were cancelled because of a polio outbreak in Chapel Hill. The Heels were 1-6 and had been pounded by Duke 34-0 the week before. Not one Tar Heel was named first-team All-Southern Conference; defensive end George Norris was the only Carolina player to make second team. Meanwhile, eight Duke players were first-team All-Southern Conference.
The Tar Heels played with a nothing-to-lose attitude on a rainy night in the Orange Bowl, jumping to a 27-0 halftime lead and never looking back in a 34-7 rout. They carried Snavely off the field on their shoulders after the win, but in the end, Snavely resigned the following week and was reassigned to the physical education department. George Barclay took over as head coach, lasted three seasons and then gave way to the much-heralded return of Tatum.
Tatum liked Miami because he'd been to the Orange Bowl as coach at Oklahoma and Maryland. He knew the glamour of the city and where to go to have fun. One year actress and singer Gloria De Haven, a friend of Tatum's, was in Miami and watched from the Carolina sideline. Xavier Cugat, the "King of the Rumba" bandleader, was playing across the street from the team's headquarters at the Hotel Monte Carlo. Tatum rolled the dice an initiated what would be a four-game series of games in the Orange Bowl with Miami coming to Chapel Hill only once. Unfortunately, Tatum would take only one of those trips--for a 20-13 win in 1957. He died of Rocky Mountain spotted fever prior to the 1959 season. Successor Jim Hickey had no luck at all on the Hurricanes' home field, losing 14-7 in 1959, 29-12 in 1960 and 10-0 in 1961.
Hickey had his best team in 1963, and Miami's first visit to Kenan Stadium was part of a memorable football weekend in the Triangle of North Carolina. On Nov. 16, the second-ranked Naval Academy with Roger Staubach at quarterback played at Wade Stadium at Duke. The Hurricanes with George Mira at quarterback and Pete Banazak at halfback were playing in Kenan Stadium.
Halfback Ken Willard was the workhorse for Carolina in leading a 27-16 win in front of 28,000 fans in Kenan Stadium. Willard rushed for 112 yards, and quarterbacks Junior Edge and Gary Black each passed for one touchdown each. Carolina's offense controlled the ball the last six minutes of the game, driving 73 yards and Willard scoring from the one with under a minute to play to secure the win. The Heels finished 8-2 that year in the regular season, were ACC co-champs and won the Gator Bowl.
The Tar Heels and Hurricanes didn't play for another 41 years, until the ACC expanded into South Florida, New England and the hill country of Virginia by adding Miami, Boston College and Virginia Tech. The Hurricanes were ranked fourth in the nation in late October and the Heels were reeling from their annihilation two weeks earlier at Utah. But Carolina hung tough early, gained confidence and momentum as the game evolved and fed off a boisterous Kenan Stadium crowd. Senior QB Darian Durant led Carolina on two fourth-quarter scoring drives, the final one a thing of beauty as it set up Barth's winning field goal.
"I'll never forget Darian Durant and the way he maintained his poise throughout that game," Bunting says.
No doubt Bunting will talk often about poise this week as Carolina ventures into a museum of football history.
Send your questions about Tar Heel football to Lee Pace at leepace@nc.rr.com . Questions may be used either in Friday's TarHeelBlue.com mailbag or in a special pregame segment on the Tar Heel Sports Network on Saturday. Please include your first and last names and hometown. Individual replies are not possible because of volume of mail received, and names of recruiting prospects and commitments cannot be published on a school-sponsored site until the national signing day in February. The Q&A column will appear each Friday during the season.
