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Roth: Don't Miss This Duke-N.C. State Game
Oct. 23, 2003
DURHAM, N.C. - Enjoy this week's Duke-N.C. State football game. You might not see another one for a few years.
Everyone knew there would be scheduling casualties in an expanded Atlantic Coast Conference. With 11 schools slated to play eight league games apiece beginning next fall, and with Boston College now set to come on board as the 12th member, several rivalries contested during the ACC's first 50 years will have to go. Duke-State, State-Virginia, Clemson-UNC and UNC-Maryland all were axed to make room for the addition of Virginia Tech and Miami to the 2004-05 schedules. Others undoubtedly will be sacrificed to work Boston College into the mix.
That's all well and good, but it would be a shame if Duke-State became a long-term victim. The series between the Triangle neighbors is much older than the ACC. In fact, it's even older than Duke itself. The first game was played in Raleigh to open the 1924 season -- about three months before James B. Duke's indenture of trust turned Trinity College into Duke University. The schools have met every year since, except in 1944.
Duke dominated the early years of the rivalry. From 1933 through 1962, a Blue Devil win over N.C. State was about as automatic as a Florida State win over Duke today. Duke's record vs. the Wolfpack during those 30 years was 26-1-2. Eight of 11 straight Duke victories between 1933-43 were by shutout; from 1938-43, the Devils outscored State 254-12.
State has had the upper hand in recent years. The Wolfpack's record vs. Duke is 14-2-1 since 1986. But the games haven't been nearly as one-sided as those final results would seem to indicate. State has blanked Duke just once during that stretch, while the Blue Devils have averaged over 26 points a game against the Pack -- a much higher scoring rate than in the rest of their games.
In fact, Duke-State has been one of the more entertaining games in the ACC for over a decade, regardless of the teams' records.
Who could forget the Steve Spurrier trifecta against Dick Sheridan in the late 1980s? A 47-45 loss, a 43-43 tie and a 35-26 win, classics all. The penalty-aided tie of 1988 so infuriated Spurrier that his criticism of the officials earned him a suspension for the following game. Spurrier's successor, Barry Wilson, will never forget the 1993 contest -- a muddy 21-20 win in his final home game as Duke's coach, against a nationally-ranked Wolfpack contingent.
True, State jumped out to a 49-0 first half lead on its last visit to Wallace Wade Stadium in 2001. But that was an aberration. Eight of the last 12 Duke-State games have been decided by a touchdown or less. Duke has been floundering at or near the bottom of the ACC for most of those dozen seasons, while State has been playing in bowl games, but that hasn't mattered much when they've faced each other.
Back in the 1950s a former Duke football player, Horace Hendrickson, served as N.C. State's head coach for two years. Hendrickson's alma mater hammered him, 57-0 and 31-0, in games that were over early. When Duke and State play these days, you don't dare leave your seat early. Not that you can stay in it, either, with all the tension that's been known to bubble into the fourth quarter.
Take Fred Goldsmith's first Duke-State game in the Blue Devils' last bowl year, 1994. His team had a 23-7 second half lead on the Pack, only to watch Terry Harvey spark State to a one-point win in the closing moments. Then Goldsmith's last Duke team trailed State 24-7 in the second half before Bobby Campbell rallied the Devils to within three points of an upset.
Carl Franks' first Duke-State game was one of the most dramatic, with Sims Lenhardt drilling a 50-yard field goal as time expired to force overtime. In 2000, a winless Duke team that couldn't move the ball on anyone rolled up almost 500 yards in Raleigh. If not for one of the worst pass interference calls in ACC history, State quarterback Philip Rivers would not have had a final down to run in the winning score with 32 seconds left.
Last year, an undefeated and 13th-ranked State team might have been done in by the Devils on the last play of the game had Duke been able to make one catch in the middle of the field to set up a makeable field goal, instead of the 65-yarder that came up way short. Duke recovered a rare onside kick to give itself a chance at the end of that game; State did the same thing in 1991, scoring with 14 seconds left, taking a 32-31 lead on a clutch two-point conversion, but not daring to exhale until Duke's Brad Breedlove was run out of bounds on a game-ending 65-yard kickoff return.
Seeing red has brought out the best in the Blue Devils for years. In 1961, Walt Rappold and Stan Crisson hooked up on a touchdown pass with only 1:20 to go give the Blue Devils an important victory on their road to the ACC title. The next year, Hall of Famer Jay Wilkinson had 160 yards in punt returns against the Wolfpack, including an 82-yard insurance touchdown in which he eluded seven would-be tacklers.
In '83 Ben Bennett orchestrated a comeback from 26-7 down to win his senior night game against State 27-26, finding Mark Militello in the end zone with just 26 seconds left. In '85, true freshman cornerback Fonda Williams had to knock down four straight State passes in the end zone to preserve a Duke victory.
"I don't know why Duke and State always seem to play such good games," Franks says. No one does. All we know is that Virginia Tech replaced State on the 2004 Duke slate in the ACC's first crack at an expansion schedule, and who knows what might happen when Boston College joins the fold.
Nothing against the newcomers, but let's hope the Wolfpack's absence from the Blue Devils' schedule is a short one. More than once it's been the best Duke game of the year.
