Extra Points: Bad To The Bone

The procession began shortly after 1 p.m. on Sunday, August 24, 1997. Chancellor Michael Hooker and Coach Mack Brown led the way, leaving the dressing room on the east side of Kenan Stadium across the field to the new building on the west. They carried a large wooden box containing a ram-head skeleton with horns painted blue representing the Tar Heel football team's "Bad to the Bone" moniker. Strength coaches Jeff Madden and George Smith pulled the Victory Bell. Andy Griffith's What It Was, Was Football comedy skit wafted through the public address system along with rock hits like Queen's We Are The Champions.

Players carried their equipment bags across the field and congregated at the tunnel leading to the new Frank Kenan Football Center, where Hooker and Brown said a few words to a team coming off a 10-2 season and annihilation of West Virginia in the Gator Bowl. Team captain and quarterback Chris Keldorf snapped the light blue ribbon with a pair of scissors, and the players filed into their sparkling new locker room.

West End Zone Kenan Stadium — John Swofford, Mack Brown, Kivuusama Mays, Chancellor Michael Hooker, Jeff Saturday and Greg Ellis in the fall of 1996.

Where the original Kenan Field House facility that opened in 1927 and was expanded multiple times over the years was moldy and leaky, the new building was fresh and clean and dotted with all manner of neat details—from personal dressing stools decorated with butting ram heads to color photos of each player identifying their respective lockers. Floors two and four were still under construction (the third floor being the public-access stadium concourse to the 8,000-seat west end seating addition), but Brown had pressed the Carolina administration and building contractor to finish the first floor in time for a vaunted group of players to use during their senior year.

"I feel like this is our house," linebacker Kivuusama Mays said at the time. "We were here when they started planning it, and our class was the first to use it. For the alumni to put their faith and trust in us, we're going to produce."

"It was very important to Coach Brown that we get to experience this building," defensive end Greg Ellis added. "He felt like our class had a lot of to do with good stuff happening. I can remember how new it smelled. I can remember coming through the tunnel the first time. It was a great experience."

***

Back before the transfer portal, early enrollees and third-year departures for the NFL, class affiliation was a significant delineator of pride, structure and camaraderie on a college football team. A group of 18-year-olds arriving in early August for their first preseason training camp (maybe a few of them slipping in for summer school) tended to form deep bonds that lasted four and five years on campus and decades after in the real world. In the 1990s, every Tar Heel football practice began with a "roll call" where players at various position groups yelled out their nickname in unison ("Freaks" for the receivers, "Rude Boys" for the defensive backs, for example).

The individual classes also barked out their years. And "Nine Trey" was a particular source of pride.

Carolina's recruiting class of February 1993 included 21 players signed in the afterglow of the Tar Heels' 9-3 season and pulsating win over Mississippi State in the Peach Bowl. That game was played in prime time on the Sunday after New Year's Day 1993 and featured two blocked punts by Bracey Walker and a kinetic Georgia Dome packed with hungry Carolina fans who had not been to a bowl game in six years. Brown and his coaches were recruiting in the early years of his tenure that began in 1988 on hope. Now they were attracting better players to reality.

"I remember watching that game at a family Christmas party," said tailback Jon Linton, who came to Chapel Hill from Catasauqua, Pa. "The way the crowd got into it, the emotion on the sideline, everyone was having fun—that drew me to Carolina."

Of those 21 players, eight were gone within two years via the usual assortment of injury, academic, homesick and poor-fit reasons. That left 13 players who were fifth-year seniors in 1997.

"At that time, everything revolved around your class," says Brian Simmons, a three-year starter at linebacker. "You hung out with your class, you ate with your class, you lived with your class. There was a lot of pride within a class and a lot of competition between classes. We could tell as our career evolved how much our class was a part of the success we were having. The amount of leadership we had in that class was a foundational part of the success we had in 1995, '96 and '97."

Greg Ellis, Brian Simmons and Greg Ellis — Greg Ellis, Brian Simmons and Vonnie Holliday pictured at the Old Well after the 1998 NFL Draft.

All 13 fifth-year players on the 1997 team earned a degree. Five were NFL draft picks (Ellis, Simmons, Linton, Mays and Omar Brown). Two who latched onto NFL teams as free agents won Super Bowls (Jeff Saturday and Nate Hobgood-Chittick). And they were supplemented during that era by a true senior in Vonnie Holliday and members of the 1994 and '95 classes like Ebenezer Ekuban, Dre Bly, Russell Davis, Na Brown, Keith Newman and Michael Pringley, all of whom were also pro draft selections.

And they got a boost from an interloper in the form of Keldorf, a junior college quarterback transfer from California who was recruited in late 1995 by Brown and assistant coach Cleve Bryant after Oscar Davenport injured his knee at Clemson in November.

"It was really special the way they accepted me almost immediately," Keldorf says. "I came in in January 1996. It was an assimilation that was really easy. There was no conflict or friction or, 'Who's this guy who hasn't paid his dues?' kind of thing. I could tell I was coming into a very mature environment with a lot of mature teammates who acted a lot older than they were. They were all aligned with their vision of what they wanted to accomplish. I was there to help, to do what I could. That's special. Within 30 days it felt like I had 30 new best friends, all with a common goal."

That goal was to compete for and try to win a conference and national championship. The teams in 1996 and '97 had their chances, winning 21 of 24 games and finishing in the Top Ten both years. The problem was that Florida State was at its Bobby Bowden peak in the 1990s and an opportunistic pick-six by a Virginia cornerback turned a potential Tar Heel rout into a loss in Charlottesville.

Otherwise, it was clear sailing for the Tar Heels. The offense in 1996-97 had switched to a four-wide, West Coast attack under new offensive coordinator Greg Davis. Keldorf was tall, smart and strong armed, and his back-up Davenport ran like a gazelle. Saturday was the glue along the offensive front, Freddie Jones was a lethal tight end and L.C. Stevens and Brown were sure handed in the passing game.

But it was the defense that defined that era.

The numbers seem like misprints in this day of no-huddle offenses playing entire games like they're six points down with one minute to go. Over two seasons, the Tar Heels averaged allowing 11.5 points and 217 yards a game. Two opponents didn't score a point and four others were held to single digits. The highest point total by an opponent was 20 points.

"The games were easy," Saturday says. "Every day in practice, we walked out and faced the best in the business. On Saturdays, there was no fear. We had absolutely lights-out defenses. From an offensive perspective, if you put up 21 points you win all the games."

"That was a sick defense, they were insane," says Allen Mogridge, a reserve linebacker at the time who later moved to offense and started at tackle in 1999. "They could do whatever they wanted. Those guys could flat-out run, every single one of them. I don't know what K. Mays ran in the forty, but tackle-to-tackle there was no one faster. Dre Bly had 13 picks one year because no one could throw on Robert Williams."

Carolina blew past Clemson and Georgia Tech to open the 1996 season and didn't allow any team more than one touchdown the first six weeks of the year. The Tar Heels issued a stress test each week with any combination of linebackers and backs coming after the quarterback from multiple angles. They whipped their opponents mentally and physically.

"Their blocking schemes get confused and they start arguing with one another," said Mays, the middle linebacker. "It leads to chaos and you keep coming with more and more and more."

"By the third quarter, you can see it in their eyes," added Ellis. "Like they are saying, 'Oh no, I've got to pass block this guy one-on-one.' I'm watching for that look. When I see it, I'm gone. You know you've got them beat."

The Tar Heels got leadership, organization and structure from Brown and his position coaches and those on the strength and conditioning staff. But what made the operation really click was a remarkable level of maturity and self-policing.

"We held each other accountable," Saturday says. "It was not just coaches, it was players, we believed in being a player-led program and we drove each other. When guys needed to be corrected or criticized, we did for each other. My class, the senior class, saw the program get better and take it to the next level. We had a true shot at it all. Unfortunately, Florida State was in the way. But my junior and senior years, we were a force to be reckoned with in college football."

***

Blink and 25 years have flown by.

Jeff Saturday and Brian Simmons have retired from successful careers in the NFL, Saturday now living in Atlanta and working for ESPN and Simmons coaching high school football in Orlando. They served as co-analysts with play-by-play announcer Jones Angell on the Tar Heel Sports Network broadcast of last Saturday's Notre Dame game. The point was broached pre-game that a win that day by the Tar Heels would give them a 4-0 record—their first such start since that 1997 season when the "Nine Trey" guys were seniors.

"Jeff and I kind of looked at each other," Simmons remembers. "It's like, 'Where did 25 years go?' It goes quick."

Saturday, Simmons and some 50 additional players from those 1996-97 teams have planned to return to Chapel Hill this weekend for a 25-year reunion, with dinner functions on Friday and Saturday and a ticket block for the Virginia Tech game.

"What I tell young guys is, before you know it, your football career will be over," Simmons says. "If you were a player who really cared about the game and really had pride, what drove you was not what you did well or your success, but, 'What could I have done better, what plays could I have made?' That's the nature of the game, particularly if you're a competitor."

Well said. And it's apt perspective on one glorious era of Tar Heel football with applications as well for what Brown is trying to recreate a quarter of a century later.

Chapel Hill writer Lee Pace is in his 33rd year writing features on the Carolina football program under the "Extra Points" banner. He is the author of "Football in a Forest" and reports from the sidelines of Tar Heel Sports Network broadcasts. Follow him at @LeePaceTweet and write him at leepace7@gmail.com

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