NC State-East Carolina rivalry roots date back to weird 1971 season

It was the oddest of seasons, perhaps because of the dramatic transition going on within NC State’s athletics program.

Early in 1971, as the Wolfpack’s defending ACC champion basketball team was losing star player Ed Leftwich just before the start of the ACC tournament, NC State athletics director Willis Casey was trying to find a replacement for Buffalo, the opponent for his football team’s season opener that announced it was dropping immediately football as a varsity sport. Casey scrambled to add an unknown opponent, Kent State, to open the season on Sept. 11.

“We’re losing games before we even play them,” veteran head coach Earle Edwards quipped.

It would not be the biggest loss, nor the biggest disappointment, of the season. That would come in the seventh week of the year when NC State suffered its first ever loss to East Carolina, the former teacher’s college in the eastern part of the state that had just begun its rivalry with its big-brother opponent in Raleigh.

Just before the start of fall camp, veteran coach Edwards unexpectedly announced he was retiring from the job after 16 seasons and five Atlantic Coast Conference championships, leaving defensive coordinator Al Michaels in charge as an interim head coach.

Interest in football was waning coming out of the 1960s. Basketball was emerging as the top sport on campus, especially when the freshman basketball team that included David Thompson, Monte Towe and Tim Stoddard played for the freshman team. Wolfpack athletics was going through the twin transition of full integration in all sports and the introduction of women’s team sports. Growing pains were evident everywhere during the fall of 1971.

After losing his first four games — including a 23-21 setback to Kent State on a last-second field goal — it was obvious that Michaels was not going to be a candidate to succeed Edwards. Then, on one of the more freakish plays in Carter-Finley Stadium history, the Wolfpack defeated defending ACC champion Wake Forest for Michaels’ first career victory on a special teams play that still defies credulity.

Trailing 15-14 with 22 seconds to play, the Demon Deacons lined up for a game-winning 52-yard field goal. The Wake kicker slipped on a muddy field, the ball squirted into the hands of NC State’s Bill Miller and he was off down the sidelines when Wake quarterback Larry Russell came off the bench to tackle Miller. After some discussion, Miller was awarded the touchdown and the Wolfpack scored a 21-14 victory.

Little else went right for the Wolfpack over the next three weeks, losing 41-13 at Duke the next week and 14-10 to Virginia for the first time in a quarter century three weeks later.

Sandwiched in between was a loss that fully established the rivalry between the Wolfpack and East Carolina.

On Oct. 23, 1971, the Wolfpack hosted the Pirates at Carter Stadium in just the second meeting in the history of the now-intense rivalry.

The year before, the Wolfpack had beaten the struggling Pirates in the inaugural meeting in what was supposed to be a two-year contract with a gentleman’s agreement to play every season through 1980. East Carolina finished that season 3-8 record under one-year coach Mike McGee, who brashly declared that the start of the series marked the end of the Big Four and the beginning of the Big Five.

“It will be a great game,” he said. “Regardless of who wins, both schools — and more importantly, the people of eastern North Carolina — stand to benefit.”

Unfortunately for McGee, the Pirates lost handily, 23-6. At the end of the 1970 season, McGee was hired as head coach at Duke.

The 1971 game featured two first-year coaches, Michaels and East Carolina’s Sonny Randle, who both sported 1-5 records going into the game. Only 18,000 fans showed up to watch the budding rivals face each other on a rainy evening.

Both teams had young talent, especially in their backfields. Michaels jumbled his starting lineup to include for the first time sophomore quarterback Bruce Shaw and sophomore tailback Willie Burden. The Pirates featured running backs Les Strayhorn, who scored two first-half touchdowns, and sophomore Carlester Crumpler.

The upstart Pirates won in surprisingly easy fashion, countering an early 7-0 NC State lead with three unanswered second-quarter touchdowns to take a 20-7 advantage into halftime. Mistakes cost the Wolfpack a chance for a second-half comeback and the Pirates held on for a 31-15 victory.

Randle declared it “the greatest victory in the history of East Carolina football,” while Pirate fans swarmed the field and pounded on the ECU dressing room door at the A.E. Finley Fieldhouse, demanding a curtain call from their players.

“I remember very little about the game with the exception of sparking the team with some effective rushing early in the game,” said Crumpler, now an athletics department academics coordinator. “The team was pumped, we gained momentum, and never relinquished the lead.”

Crumpler, who had a 28-yard kickoff return and a long gain of 18 yards, did not play in the second half because of an eye injury that still bothers him today because he was punched in the face on a second-quarter carry.

“My face was swollen for more than a week,” he recalled.

NC State’s mood was deflated, especially after a rain-soaked loss to Virginia the next week. It was the Wolfpack’s first loss to the Cavaliers since 1948.

What began as a lost season, however, ended on a high note when NC State beat heavily favored Miami, 13-7, in a Friday night game at the Orange Bowl, lost in a fourth-quarter collapse at No. 5 Penn State, 35-3, and then ended Michaels’ only season with a 31-23 upset at Clemson.

Those final three games gave NC State optimism heading into the 1972 season, in which first-year coach Lou Holtz led the Pack to an 8-3-1 record and an appearance in the postseason Peach Bowl. Holtz never lost to the Pirates during his four years.

Since then, however, the rivalry has burned brightly between two of North Carolina’s biggest schools, with NC State holding a slim 18-14 advantage heading into next week’s season opener against the Pirates at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium in Greenville.

Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at [email protected].