University of North Carolina Athletics
Extra Points: Notre Dame Memories
October 31, 2006 | Football
Oct. 31, 2006
By Lee Pace
Extra Points
A veteran scout on the Philadelphia Eagles staff wandered into the press room at Veteran's Stadium on the second day of the 1972 NFL Draft. Ray Didinger of The Philadelphia Bulletin approached Charlie Gauer as he looked at the draft board and asked if there were any prospects in the bunch.
"Naw, bunch of stiffs," Gauer said. "Except the linebacker from North Carolina. He can play. I scouted him. He's not perfect. He's not that big. But he's a good football player."
John Bunting appeared on Gauer's radar screen the afternoon of Oct. 16, 1971, when he was involved in 20 tackles (solo or assisted) in the Tar Heels' 16-0 loss at Notre Dame. That game primed the pump for his selection by the Eagles in the 10th round and an eventual decade-long career as a linebacker on the teams of Ed Khyat, Mike McCormack and Dick Vermeil.
"I don't remember a whole lot about that game," Bunting says, "other than how big Notre Dame's players were. We saw them without their shoulder pads and they were huge. I remember how different they looked compared to us. We were not a big team."
The Tar Heels were 9-3 that year and won the ACC title but weren't good enough to beat the Irish, who finished 8-2 and ranked No. 13 in the country under coach Ara Parseghian. Carolina has not been back to South Bend and Notre Dame Stadium in 35 years but will do so Saturday when Bunting leads the Tar Heels into a 2:30 p.m. contest with the 10th-ranked Irish.
"This is a great opportunity to go up there and be a part of their tradition," says Bunting. "Our kids will see it and feel it once they get into that stadium. Game day will be especially different from many of the settings we've been to. Oklahoma my first year here was a great experience with all the tradition there. This is another one of those experiences."
Adding to the experience will be a Friday afternoon visit to the College Football Hall of Fame following a walk-through in Notre Dame Stadium. The Hall of Fame features five former Tar Heel players and coaches: halfback Charlie Justice, tailback Don McCauley, end Art Weiner and coaches Carl Snavely and Jim Tatum. Former Notre Dame quarterback John Huarte will sign autographs Friday morning as part of the Hall of Fame's regular "Football Friday" festivities held on home football weekends.
"I expect the fans to be loud and for it to be real cold," tailback Ronnie McGill says. "They have a good football team with a lot of really good players."
"I cannot wait," says tackle-turned-tight end Andre Barbour. "They will be the best team we've played this season. They have a lot of talent and skill."
Two statistics are particularly amazing in studying the Irish and their tradition.
One, this game will mark the 191st in a row in which all tickets have been sold. Since 1966, every Irish home game has been a sell-out except a Thanksgiving Day game against Air Force in 1973.
Two, the Irish start nine seniors on offense and nine on defense. Sprinkled in the starting lineups are two juniors, one sophomore and one true freshman.
"Their quarterback is outstanding, their line does a terrific job, their receivers catch the ball," says Bunting. "The defense is active and strong. They are great tacklers. They do not give you anything. You have to earn it all."
Tar Heel Nation will be well represented in South Bend as well as Chicago, where many fans will headquarter given the lack of accommodation availability in South Bend. It took no time at all for the Tar Heel Ticket Office and Rams Club to go through its allotment of 5,000 tickets. The Tar Heel traveling party will stay at the Holiday Inn in Michigan City, Ind., 35 miles due west from South Bend, and the Rams Club travel party has taken nearly two-thirds of the rooms in the Conrad Chicago Hotel. The Rams Club has chartered a train in Chicago that will haul seven cars full of Tar Heel fans to the game.
One of the most famous games in Carolina football history was its 1949 meeting with the Irish in New York's Yankee Stadium. The contest was scheduled to showcase Charlie Justice, the Heisman Trophy runner-up for two years running, against Notre Dame, a school located in Indiana that nonetheless had bedrock support in the Irish-Catholic communities of New York. The Irish had never lost under coach Frank Leahy, winning 26 games from 1946-48 and being tied twice, and they were 6-0 in 1949 and ranked No. 1 in the nation when they collided with the Tar Heels.
Unfortunately for the Tar Heels, Justice sprained his ankle at the end of a 75-yard punt return against William & Mary the week before and could not play in his customary tailback position in coach Carl Snavely's single-wing offense. The Tar Heels, 27-point underdogs, jumped to a 6-0 lead after a blocked punt set up an early score and fought the Irish to a 6-6 halftime standoff. Notre Dame's power and depth won out in the fourth quarter, though, as the Irish exploded with 27 points and notched a 42-6 win. That game provided the impetus for a long-running series between the two universities. Carolina Athletic Director Chuck Erickson was good friends with Notre Dame AD Moose Krause, and they decided to begin playing football on a regular basis. Over the next 17 years, the teams played 13 times. Of the 16 games total, 10 have been played in South Bend, five in Chapel Hill and one in New York.
Notre Dame has won 15.
The Tar Heels have won once.
That was a 12-7 triumph in Kenan Stadium in 1960 over a team that included future NFL stars Nick Buoniconti and Daryle Lamonica. Tar Heel QB Ray Farris hit Skip Clement on a 47-yard scoring pass, and Mike Greenday had a 42-yard interception return for a TD. The Tar Heel defense was outstanding, picking off five passes and stopping the Irish five times inside the 20 yard-line. Some 40,000 jammed into Kenan Stadium (this was before the upper decks were added), and a jubilant hunk of them stormed the field and ripped down the goalposts afterward.
The late Bud Carson was a defensive assistant on coach Jim Hickey's staff from 1959-64 before leaving to become defensive coordinator (and later head coach) at Georgia Tech. He remembered that win over the Irish and another big one the following year (22-21 over Tennessee) with providing a foundation to the program that would win the 1963 ACC title and whip Air Force in the Gator Bowl.
"We were struggling to find ourselves in those days," Carson said in the summer of 2002. "We were just an average football team, trying to get over the hump. Those games gave our players some confidence they'd lacked. It was difficult building a program at that time. The General College seemed to be flunking out half of the football team every time you turned around. Academically, it was very tough at Carolina. We didn't have the tutoring staffs and counseling support they have today.
"Those wins were the building blocks. We had the great year in '63, then for whatever reason couldn't sustain it."
The Irish also came to Kenan Stadium in 1975 and rallied late in the game behind an untested quarterback for a 21-14 win. Bill Dooley's team had a 14-0 lead through three quarters when Irish coach Dan Devine inserted sophomore quarterback Joe Montana into the lineup with 6:04 to play. He sparked Notre Dame to two quick scores, the game-winner an 80-yard strike to split end Ted Burgmeier on a simple out-pattern with 1:04 to play. One Tar Heel gambled on an interception and slipped and another missed a tackle, allowing Burgmeier to score.
"We tore 'em up and they were dying in the fourth quarter," center Mark Cantrell said afterward. "Then I don't know what happened. I can't believe we played the way we did and lost."
Among the interested spectators in South Bend on Saturday will be Farris, the starting quarterback of the 1960 team, and a number of his teammates. They organized a modest reunion of players from that team to make the trip, primarily seniors and juniors, but the scope of the travel party had to be limited because of the intense competition for Carolina's supply of tickets.
"I wish we had a bundle of tickets, but the demand has been really high," says Farris. "We've got as many guys going as we could supply with tickets. We'll enjoy seeing one another. I haven't seen Rip Hawkins in 15 to 20 years, same thing with David Riggs. I am looking forward to seeing these guys and others again. We'll have fun reliving those games."
Send your questions about Tar Heel football to Lee Pace at leepace@nc.rr.com. 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.
