Tim Peeler: How NC A&M beat Tennessee in 1911, the program's last win over the Vols

By Tim Peeler

The week and a half leading up to the 1911 football game against Tennessee might have been the most devastating 10 days in the first 50 years of athletics at the school then known as the North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts.

Maybe even ever.

The Farmers and head coach Eddie Greene had just pulled off an impressive 6-0 home upset of Bucknell College, a game played on campus at what was then called the New Athletic Field, later known as Riddick Stadium, with a remarkable 2,500 spectators sitting on the wooden bleachers.

The game was played in the middle of the North Carolina State Fair, a traffic-snarling tradition even then.

It had been a good calendar year in athletics. The winter featured State’s first basketball team, which lost its first game at Wake Forest and captured its second against the Baptists in Raleigh, in a two-game debut season.

In the spring, baseball stars Tal Stafford, David Walter “Dutch” Seifert, Harry Hartsell and Dave Robertson had led the A&M baseball boys to an 18-3 overall record, including a 6-4 victory in an exhibition game against the Major League’s Philadelphia Athletics (now Phillies), featuring rookie pitcher Grover Cleveland “Pete” Alexander.

The season also featured a magnificent pitching duel between Robertson and Guilford star Ernie Shore, in which Robertson struck out a college-record-shattering 23 strikeouts in a 6-4 victory. The young pitcher/slugger so impressed a scout for the New York Giants, he was offered a contract by manager John McGraw to turn professional over the summer.

Robertson, of Portsmouth, Va., wanted to play one more season of football before signing McGraw’s contract and negotiated the right to play in four football games to reduce the risk of being injured.

In the season’s third game, the State Fair contest against Bucknell, Robertson was playing particularly well, with more than 50 rushing yards in the first half. He helped set up the Aggies’ only touchdown, and the only score of the game, in the first half, but on a third-quarter carry around the end, Robertson crashed into the line pitching-shoulder first.

He left the game for medical care but returned shortly after for another plunge into the line, leading this time with his other shoulder. He was again removed from the game.

After the game, though X-rays were not yet in common use for medical diagnosis, it was determined that Robertson, the pitching phenom, had broken both shoulders, ending his football playing days and casting serious doubt on his professional baseball career. Two other starters were seriously injured in the contest.

Losing Robertson would be similar to Tim Stoddard, Terry Harvey, Andrew Brackman or Russell Wilson suffering a career-altering injury playing their second-best sport.

The Aggies were shorthanded for their next game, scheduled for Oct. 28, 1911, against Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association foe Tennessee, also to be played at the New Athletic Field. Greene told local media before the game that Robertson and the other injured players were ill, and it was doubtful they would be able to play against the Volunteers.

“Robertson is sick and will not be able to play in the game, at least that is the way things stand at the present moment,” the News & Observer wrote. “He is made of iron, and you cannot always tell what an iron man will do.”

The lone local reporter to show up for the game was surprised to see Robertson on the sidelines in street clothes when the game began. Few other people noticed, because only 375 spectators attended the contest due to a heavy rainstorm the night before and morning of the game.

“A goodly company of the faithful who love football too well to mind a little chilly and moisture-soaked air saw A. and M. put it over the University of Tennessee,” the News & Observer reported. “A woefully small number of rooterettes [from Raleigh’s three women’s schools] were on hand. The landscape [had] much less cheer than usual.

“Those who didn’t go missed a considerable amount of fun.”

The soggy field was not conducive for much scoring by either team. Tennessee was favored in the contest, but truthfully no one knew what to expect in this intersectional matchup.

Six minutes into the game, Robertson’s replacement, “Chiller” Cool, carried the ball into the end zone for the dreary day’s first score. Seifert missed the extra point, leaving North Carolina A&M with a 5-0 lead.

Seifert, who grew up in New Bern, was the star of the game, handling several forward passes and carrying one of them over for a score. (The year before, Seifert earned a spot in the school record book by making the first pass reception in A&M history, as well as the first interception.)

Stafford — who later became the head football coach, the first athletics director and the hard-nosed editor of the school’s alumni magazine — scored A&M’s second touchdown. Seifert’s kick made the score 11-0.

Late in the third quarter, North Carolina A&M’s Lonnie Dunn blocked a punt and recovered it on Tennessee’s 17-yard line. Stafford hit Seifert on the next play for a rare touchdown pass. Seifert celebrated by missing his second extra point of the game, but the Aggies held on for the 16-0 victory. Coupled with a 12-6 win in 1893, A&M owned a 2-0 record in its first two games against the neighbors from Tennessee.

After the game, players from both teams piled into street cars and headed to downtown Raleigh, where they were guests of the Raleigh Academy of Music Opera House to see a live interpretation of the rom-com book “Beverly of Graustark,” starring local actors Dorothy Redding and Lawrence Avart.

The stars of that 1911 North Carolina A&M team did big things. Stafford was in athletics as a coach and administrator before the Great War, but returned afterwards to work in publications. Seifert and his brothers became some of the school’s biggest financial boosters and, in 1936, Dutch Seifert was put in charge of the “Doc” Newton Scholarship Fund. That later became the NC State Student Aid Association, or the Wolfpack Club. Seifert was elected the organization’s first president in 1940.

What about poor Robertson, the pitcher whose career was ruined by two end-around runs in football? He turned himself into a slugging third baseman/outfielder and went on to play Major League Baseball for the New York Giants and Pittsburgh Pirates.

Robertson twice led the National League in home runs (12 in both 1915 and ’16) and started for the Giants in the 1917 World Series against “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and the Chicago White Sox, hitting better than .500 in the five-game series. He is now a member of the NC State Athletic Hall of Fame.

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