Oct. 21, 2009
by Lee Pace
Thirty-three hours earlier, two planes on suicide bombing missions had careened 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 all been postponed, and as John Bunting gathered his Tar Heel football players around him after practice that Wednesday afternoon, he officially moved beyond the SMU rescheduling 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 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.
***
The backdrops were three-fold on Sept. 22, 2001, when the Florida State Seminoles came to Kenan Stadium to face the Tar Heels in the first home game of Bunting's Carolina coaching career.
First, the United States was beginning to return to life on something of a routine basis following the suicide attacks by Al-Qaeda the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 11. Bunting was preparing to conduct his weekly news conference that morning when hijacked jets crashed into the World Trade Center. The news conference was called off and reporters already at the Kenan Football Center forgot about interviewing the Tar Heels and instead followed the horrifying events on televisions in the players' dining area. All college football games scheduled for that weekend were postponed.
"Getting back to playing football was good for everyone--the players and fans," says Jeb Terry, a sophomore offensive guard that season who went on to play in the NFL and now is pursuing a graduate degree in business at Carolina. "It was kind of an escape for everyone, we didn't have to dwell on what had happened. We could just go out and play football. It was a way to work out the frustration and get back to normal life."
Two, the Tar Heels were winless in three games, having lost at Oklahoma by 14, at Maryland by 16 and at Texas by 30--all three of those opponents to finish in the top 11 teams in the final AP poll. There actually are some similarities between the '01 team and this year's squad that has posted a 4-2 record but has endured troublesome losses to Georgia Tech and Virginia--both teams are blessed with veterans and playmakers on defense, both have had plenty of unsettled issues on offense. Carolina eight years ago started one senior on the offensive line, center Adam Metts, and three sophomores in Terry, Wilson and Greg Woofter and a freshman in Willie McNeill. After senior quarterback Ronald Curry struggled in the opener, freshman Darian Durant was given a chance and showed an ability to move the offense; Curry and Durant would share the job the rest of the year.
"That team knew they were better than they had showed," says Jeff Connors, who was in his first year as the Tar Heels' strength and conditioning coach in 2001 and remains on the staff in that capacity today. "We had some problems offensively that year. There were some questions about the offensive line, and we had the `two-headed quarterback' with Durant and Curry. But those guys were threats--Durant with his arm, Curry with his feet. They could make things happen. That team was just waiting for the pieces to fall into place."
Adds Andre Williams, a tailback that year and currently the football program's director of student-athlete development: "We definitely had something to prove. We had a chip on our shoulder. We had a lot of great hopes for that season, and we didn't want to give up."
And three, the opponent was Florida State, the biggest and baddest dude that Atlantic Coast Conference football had ever known. In the nine years the Seminoles of coach Bobby Bowden had been members of the ACC, they had won the league title each year, lost only two games (at Virginia in 1995 and at N.C. State in 1998) and walloped the Tar Heels by an average of 24 points since 1993--the last two hammerings by 32 and 49 points. They were ranked sixth nationally when they came to Chapel Hill, but pollsters probably were voting more on history and overlooking the fact that Bowden had lost 16 starters, seven on offense, from an 11-2 squad in 2000.
"No one was really whooping it up going into that game," says Kory Bailey, a senior receiver in '01 who today runs his own fitness training business in the Chapel Hill area. "We were quiet, reflective and focused. I think we went into that game thinking we could win, but a lot of people didn't think we had a chance. I remember us being very, very focused on that game and the task at hand."
"We knew we were playing Florida State, but on that day it didn't matter who we were playing," Williams says. "We wanted to play the best football we could possibly play and represent Carolina like champions that day."
The game drew a noon start for ABC-TV, and some 53,000 fans flocked to Kenan Stadium. Many attendees, including the Tar Heel coaching staff and cheerleaders, wore red, white and blue ribbons, and donations were collected for an educational fund to benefit children of victims of the 9-11 attacks. There were few dry eyes as the Marching Tar Heels played God Bless America, and the crowd stood for a moment of silence in memory of Ryan Kohart, Carolina's lacrosse captain in 1998, who perished on the 104th floor of Tower One while working the trading floor of Cantor Fitzgerald.
"The fact that they announced my son's name, I know he was up there, over Kenan Stadium, smiling," his father, Geoffrey Kohart, told The Herald-Sun of Durham.
One year earlier in Tallahassee, the Seminoles had slashed the Carolina defense to ribbons in the first quarter, scoring touchdowns their first two possessions with quick strikes lasting only three and one minutes. But this was a different Carolina defense, one bolstered by future first-round draft picks Julius Peppers and Ryan Sims and by linebacker David Thornton, soon to be a force on the pro level as well. The Seminoles tried to establish the running game early, handing the ball to Kannapolis native Nick Maddox on three straight snaps, but they were forced to punt. When Merceda Perry stuck Maddox for a loss of two yards on a toss sweep on second down and Peppers exhorted the crowd for noise on the next snap, you sensed this was a different kettle of fish altogether.
"On defense, we felt we could dominate their offense from the first play of the game," Thornton said.
Carolina's offense sputtered with Curry at the controls its first two possessions as well, then Durant took the field and the Heels began moving the ball toward the end of the first quarter. On second-and-10 from the Seminole 20, Durant faked a hand-off to the tailback, rolled right and found Sam Aiken open at nine yard-line. Aiken collected the ball, turned and headed toward the right corner, then went airborne at the three. He soared over the attempted tackle of safety Chris Hope and extended the ball over the goal, just inside the pylon, for the game's first score.
Curt Brossman was a senior on the cheerleading squad and remembers the combination of a noon start and seasonal September heat, the post 9-11 hangover and the Tar Heels' perceived limited chances against their old nemesis as putting an early cap on the crowd's upside emotion. But the defense's sturdiness followed by Aiken's big play elicited a fresh wave of energy.
"It was pretty quiet early in the game, but I remember when Sam Aiken made that great play for a touchdown, everyone kind of woke up and the feeling was, `Wow, this is fun, we might give them a game," says Brossman, today on the administrative staff at the Dean E. Smith Center.
The Tar Heels' confidence was further bolstered by their ability to hang around for yet another quarter, and a crucial holding penalty on the Seminoles negated an 85-yard scoring pass midway through the second quarter. The first half ended with FSU taking a 9-7 lead to the dressing room--the Heels' biggest snafu a center snap over the head of punter John Lafferty that resulted in a safety.
"We came in at halftime and the O-line was sitting there, and Metts said, `We can actually win this game,'" Terry remembers. "It was the first time we'd played Florida State that we were in the game at halftime. We thought, `Yeah, this is doable.' For the offense, that was huge. We got a big confidence boost in the fact we were hanging with Florida State. Our attitude coming out was, `Okay, let's go kick their tails.' We started putting big plays on the board and it rolled from there."
"We felt like we'd let a lot of opportunities slip away," Bailey adds. "We thought we could have had a big lead. We looked into each others' eyes and said, `Let's go win this thing.' And we did."
Durant hit Chesley Borders for 52 yards and a touchdown on Carolina's opening drive of the second half when FSU cornerback Malcom Tatum tripped playing press-man coverage, leaving Borders free for the catch down the right sideline. Jeff Reed added a field goal to boost the Heels to a 17-9 lead, then Peppers intercepted a Chris Rix pass over the middle while dropping into a fire-zone coverage. He returned the ball to the FSU 42, and soon Reed added another field goal. After another change of possessions and turn of the quarters, Curry scrambled and hit Bailey on a 53-yard strike and Carolina was rolling 27-9 with just 12 minutes left.
"I was supposed to be running a clear-out route, taking the safety out of the picture, but Ronald had to scramble to the right," says Bailey. "He's such a good runner that once he did that, the safety took about two steps up toward Ronald. I took off to the end zone and Ronald heaved it to the middle of the field. It was kind of a wounded duck, I remember it took forever to come down. I caught it, scored and remember looking around and there wasn't anyone within 20 yards of me."
The carnage was officially on red-alert by now and the Heels were rolling toward a 41-9 final score. Rix was hounded all afternoon long into two fumbles, one fumbled exchange, one interception and three sacks. The Seminoles lost five turnovers, and the Heels' only miscue was a pass interception that was immediately fumbled back to them. Carolina fans, including Chancellor James Moeser, started their own version of the ubiquitous tomahawk chop and war chant as the final minutes rolled off the clock and FSU absorbed its worst loss in 16 years. Carolina students began jumping the hedges and overwhelming security guards with just under a minute to play and had to be shooed off the end-zone turf with the clock stopped at 39 seconds. After the Heels ran one more kneel-down, the Tar Heels congregated at midfield with their helmets held aloft and were engulfed by thousands of screaming fans. Basketball players Kris Lang and Jason Capel were among the first to hit the field, and they quickly found their wintertime teammate, the two-sport star Curry.
"This ranks right up there with beating Duke at Duke," said Curry, who'd played on Matt Doherty's hoops squad that had edged No. 2-ranked Duke in Cameron Indoor Stadium the previous February. "Last night in chapel, we talked about David and Goliath--about how if your faith is strong, you can accomplish anything."
"Everyone from that era remembers the Florida State game as being their favorite, their most fun of all time," Brossman says. "It was so unexpected. It was such a relief after all the emotion from 9-11. It was almost surreal; it was totally out of the blue. It was fun to see the players laughing and smiling. We'd been on the road with them for three weeks, three tough weeks against three tough teams."
Indestructible goal posts were installed when the Kenan Stadium field was rebuilt in the mid-1990s, and hundreds of rowdy students began their assault on the west end zone goal posts. It took a while, but eventually they tore off the aluminum uprights and snapped the weld of the crossbar. But the gooseneck--the element mounted in the ground--never came up, its foundation buried securely in the dirt. Stadium official Mike Bunting found three kids still digging with their bare hands 45 minutes after the game.
"They were covered in mud," Bunting says. "I told them, `You guys belong on Franklin Street. You can dig to China and that thing's not coming up.'"
Carolina went on to win five straight games in 2001, including victories over in-state rivals N.C. State and East Carolina and a thorough demolition of Clemson in Death Valley. The Heels endured a November hiccup before dispatching Auburn in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl and finishing 8-5. Fans would storm the field again three years later when Bunting and the Heels skewered another Sunshine State behemoth, Connor Barth's last-second field goal nudging Miami. But there were too many lopsided losses to Wake Forest, Virginia, Utah and South Florida, and Bunting was fired in 2006. Florida State, meanwhile, lost its stronghold on the ACC title (Maryland was champion that year) and began an era of being pedestrian by FSU standards; the Seminoles went from averaging 11 wins a year in the Nineties to eight victories the last five years. Bobby Bowden is asked daily about his retirement plans, and successor Jimbo Fisher waits in the wings.
"That game seems so long ago, but it wasn't really, just eight years," Andre Williams says. "It was an emotional day, something you never forget and really can't put in words. It shows what can happen when a team comes together. We knew we had the potential. We just had to show it."
It seems like a similar opportunity exists Thursday night with the lights, camera and action of national television engulfing Kenan Stadium.
Lee Pace writes "Extra Points" twice weekly on Tarheelblue.com. He and the broadcast crew for the Tar Heel Sports Network answer reader email on the pre-game show, so send your questions to asktheheels@gmail.com.
