Tim Peeler: Reflecting on NC State’s spring game history

Like many of college football’s popular traditions, it seems spring football games might become a thing of the past.

Earlier this week, NC State head coach Dave Doeren announced that all 15 of his team’s spring practices will be closed to the public and that the team would not host a spring finale contest at Carter-Finley Stadium, a regular part of the program’s history for some 100 years.

The Pack joins defending national champion Ohio State, Texas, Southern California, Florida State and Missouri among the Division I football teams that are skipping the spring tradition this year. Both Missouri and Florida State are doing so primarily because of renovations at their stadiums, but Doeren cites the need for privacy as his team begins preparations for the 2025 season with two new coordinators.

While fans love a good spring game — especially when they get revved up about which Triangle ACC team had the biggest attendance in the made-for-fan affairs — those games can be an annoyance for players and coaches, not to mention another opportunity for injuries.

Still, spring games at NC State date back to the 1920s and have had a lively history. Spring practice, in fact, got one Wolfpack coach fired.

Back in 1933, John “Little Clipper” Smith was the Wolfpack’s head coach, having finished with a laudable 6-1-2 record the previous fall with wins over Duke and Clemson and the only loss to North Carolina. Just before the start of spring practice, he checked out of his temporary lodging at the Sir Walter Hotel in downtown Raleigh and went on a two-week bender.

The former Notre Dame All-America guard left town and missed the first 14 practices of spring. He returned in time for the end of spring drills, but was told by school administration before the fall season ever started that he would not be retained after the final game. State finished the year with a 1-5-3 record.

Smith, who eventually was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame as a player, was replaced by another former Fighting Irish player, Heartley “Hunk” Anderson, who replaced Knute Rockne as Notre Dame’s head coach in 1932, but left for Raleigh in 1934.

Sometimes, the Red & White games weren’t just for the Wolfpack. In 1939, Williams “Doc” Newton and his prospective players held a regular four-quarter scrimmage against Richmond at the end of spring practice, then added two more quarters to allow other players to get some action.

Every coach puts a little different spin on how they want to recognize the end-of-spring drills. When he was hired in 1972, Lou Holtz brought a different approach. As he had done the previous year at William & Mary, the coach split his seniors into two groups and let them draft their own teams.

“It’s the most unique game in the world,” Holtz said. “Spring games can be sometimes dull, monotonous affairs. The first team usually plays the second team and the game ends up in a rout. But by letting the seniors choose their own teams, you automatically create a competitive situation that will ensure an enthusiastic and exciting scrimmage. Also, it makes it as equal and fair as possible so that one man doesn’t get an unfair advantage over his competitor.

“The kids really got a bang out of it, and I’ll have to confess, it was one of the most spirited offseason games I’ve ever seen.”

To spice up the game, Holtz let News & Observer columnist Joe Tiede and Raleigh Times writer Bruce Phillips serve as coaches, with radio announcers Bill Jackson and Wally Ausley on the sidelines as special advisors.

In 1975, prior to his final season with the Pack, Holtz and his team played two spring games. For the first, Holtz loaded up his roster of more than 100 players on buses and traveled to Belmont’s South Point High School, mainly as a reward for sophomore linebacker Jimmy Stowe. The Pack played a second Red & White Game at Carter Stadium.

There was nothing out of the ordinary under most coaches, though Tom Reed did not have a game in his first season. He did, however, have two games with former players and his varsity team in 1984 and ’85. In the latter game, former All-America quarterback Roman Gabriel returned to campus for one of the first times after the end of his 16-year NFL career to play against his alma mater — and to throw two touchdown passes.

Another former long-time pro, San Diego Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers, delighted the team and the crowd when he came back for the 2016 spring game, though he did not suit up and play. NFL All-Pro Torry Holt and dozens of other former players did suit up in an alumni scrimmage, played before the Red & White game.

Russell Wilson and teammate Stephen Hauschka returned the year after they helped the Seattle Seahawks win the Super Bowl, as part of the annual alumni weekend that was started in 2007 by first-year coach Tom O’Brien.

That popular tradition continues today.

O’Brien made another big change in 2009, when he changed the name to the Kay Yow Spring Game, in memory of Hall of Fame women’s basketball coach Kay Yow, with donations collected and given to both the Kay Yow Cancer Fund and the Wolfpack Club’s Kay Yow Memorial Scholarship. That has since been discontinued.

Few things were more exciting in the history of NC State spring games than the afternoon in 2011 when a tornado ripped through Raleigh and went over Carter-Finley Stadium, thankfully after all the fans had left for home. It was still harrowing for the reporters who huddled in an interior ground-level room in Vaughn Towers.

Fortunately, then, that won’t happen again this spring storm season, as Doeren and his team work out in private for their 15 allowed practices.

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