Tim Peeler: Remembering a lost mascot and an NC State win over the Tar Heels

Before T.A. McLendon, there was Ward Marslender Jr..

And he might have been in, too.

Much will be remembered, 20 years after the fact, about the infamous phantom touchdown McLendon scored in 2004, when the running back from Albemarle plunged at the goal-line with six seconds remaining in the annual rivalry game at Kenan Stadium. After initially signaling a touchdown, game officials took the points off the scoreboard, leaving the Tar Heels with a 30-24 victory that is still disputed to this day for many in red and white.

Since that game was not televised in local markets, it’s been replayed in the vocal voices of NC State fans for two decades.

Yet no one ever talks about the similar outcome of Tar Heel unfortunate Marslender, a sophomore quarterback for the Tar Heels in 1960. He suffered a similar, but mostly unremembered fate in the second quarter of the 50^th meeting of the old rivals, approaching the goal line with fury in his heart, only to have the ball knocked out of his hands by Wolfpack safety Roman Gabriel.

Gabriel, also a sophomore quarterback in State’s single-platoon lineup, played one of the greatest games in his Wolfpack career that day in Chapel Hill. The late NFL star was the Pack’s top rusher with 41 yards. He was the top passer, obviously, even though he only completed four of his seven attempts for 41 yards all afternoon. And he turned out to be the team’s top defender, a key reason why coordinator Al Michaels’ squad stopped the Tar Heels each of the four times they advanced inside the Wolfpack’s 10-yard line.

The Red Zone, that day, belonged to the red and white defense.

“I’ve never seen a team with its back to the goal-line so many times,” Wolfpack coach Earle Edwards said after the game. “I thought we’d never get out of our own back yard. I’ve never seen two teams play around the goal line so much for such a low-scoring game.

“I’ve never seen a closer game.”

Second-year Tar Heel coach Jim Hickey summed it up more succinctly.

“I woudn’t say [the game] was a fluke—but it was damned peculiar,” Hickey said.

Let’s back up a moment, though, to a time when the rivalry between the state’s top two public schools was not necessarily about winning records, bowl qualification or Atlantic Coast Conference finishes. It was about the intensity of the relationships between the schools, the students and the alumni, when the university in Chapel Hill often looked down on the college in Raleigh.

To a time when NC State’s team was led by a couple of future NFL standouts and Carolina was guided by a future Vietnam War hero.

After World War II until the end of the Earle Edwards era (1971), the teams usually met early in the season, often as the season-opener for one or both squads. For nine consecutive seasons, the games were played in Chapel Hill, only because NC State’s on-campus Riddick Stadium (20,000) held fewer than half of UNC’s Kenan Stadium (41,000). The schools split the ticket revenue and State was designated the home team in alternating years. It was a good set up for the Pack, which won seven of those nine games.

When the teams met on Sept. 24, 1960, it just so happened to be one of the wildest weeks in North Carolina history. The state was still buzzing by the appearance of Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, who dazzled national politics by making five campaign speeches in one day in the Old North State, including the first ever stop by a national candidate in eastern North Carolina. The aerial whistlestop tour began in Greenville, moved to Winston-Salem and Greensboro, traveled to Asheville, then Charlotte, then Raleigh for a grand finale in Reynolds Coliseum.

The tour reached its progressive peak in Charlotte when Kennedy was escorted on to the stage by four donkeys from a farm in Gastonia, a rare success story for mascots that week.

Folks in Raleigh were upset because State’s live-wolf mascot, Lobo, had quietly disappeared into the Wake County woods from his holding pen at NC State Chemistry Supply Director Lawrence Burnette’s farm on Highway 401. Despite dog-led searches and meat-baited traps from Raleigh to Fuquay-Varina, Lobo was never found.

Some claimed his pen was forced open by pranksters; some claimed it was left open by an unattentive farm worker; some claim still today that Lobo’s DNA is in every hybrid coyote now roaming the woods west of Interstate 85.

Regardless, Lobo was not there for State’s season-opening victory at Virginia Tech, disappointing the investors who paid 25 cents per share to purchase a timber wolf from a zoo supply farm in Massachusetts. The student mascot committee located another real wolf on a farm in Wilmington, hoping to ship him in for the game in Chapel Hill, but no one answered the phone when the chairman inquired about buying or renting it.

Things weren’t much better at UNC. The Tar Heels’ beloved mascot, 5-year-old Ramses VIII, needed emergency surgery to repair an abdominal hernia suffered when he was kicked by a cow at Hogan Farm in rural Orange County. That was seen as a particularly bad omen for Hickey’s team as it prepared to host the boys from Raleigh’s Cow College.

The poor ram limped along the sidelines with a bloodied cotton bandage around his waist, obscured by a thick blue wool blanket. Thankfully, the poor beast with the red splotch never had to run across the field to celebrate.

In fact, almost no one did.

The only scoring play in the entire contest was set up when Carolina botched a pitch to Skip Clement and Wolfpack defensive lineman Dennis Kroll fell on it at the Carolina 33-yard line. Gabriel pounded his team down to the 6-yard-line before it stalled. On fourth-and-2, offensive guard Jake Shaffer of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, dropped back to a kick field. With Gabriel serving as the holder, Shaffer booted a 21-yarder for the only points of the game. It ended as the lowest scoring game in the 110-year-old rivalry since a 0-0 tie in 1905 in Raleigh.

Carolina had a touchdown in the first half nullified by an illegal procedure penalty and twice turned the ball over on downs inside the 10.

The biggest missed opportunities, however, were in the second and fourth quarters.

First, the Tar Heels recovered a fumble—one of four giveaways by State’s offense—on the 30-yard-line and drove down to the 2. That’s when Marslender pre-imitated McLendon, trying to get the ball to break the plane of the endzone. Instead, Gabriel made contact and the ball flew into the arms of future NFL defensive back Claude “Hoot” Gibson.

The safety from Asheville hesitated, then ran the ball out to the 23-yard-line to end the scoring threat.

“Marslender thought he was in,” Hickey said, “but he would have thought he was in from the 5. Who would’ve thought that one play could have decided the game? If I’ve ever had so many breaks go against me inside the 10, I can’t remember when it would’ve been.”

The Tar Heels made one last pitch late in the game against the Wolfpack’s stubborn defense, getting down to the 9-yard line, within sight of ending it’s daylong offensive frustration.

UNC halfback Ray Farris threw a pass that bounced off the hands of teammate Moyer Smith and was picked from the air with one hand by Gabriel, who had stumbled onto the field the play before to replace cramping starter Tom Dellinger, at the 4-yard-line.

The Tar Heels were out of time outs, but Edwards still considered taking a safety to help his team run out the clock, which would have resulted in the only 3-2 final score in ACC history.

“We talked it over on the field and with the fellows [other assistant coaches] on the phone, but we had three plays and 53 seconds to go, so we decided against it,” Edwards said.

As the final 11 seconds ticked off the clock, State students at the game began pushing their way around hobbled Ramses and prepared to take down the Kenan Stadium goalposts.

It’s what students do after a big home win, even if that home game is played on the other’s team’s field.

State hardly played a perfect game, gaining just 100 yards in total offense. It crossed midfield just once in the first half and didn’t make a first down until late in the second quarter. The Pack lost four fumbles and Gabriel had little opportunity to throw the ball.

Carolina answered with five turnovers of its own.

“I’ve never seen a closer game,” Edwards said afterwards.

With Gabriel leading the way, the Wolfpack won its first four games and finished with a 6-3-1 record. The Tar Heels, one of the early season favorites to win the ACC, finished at 3-7.

And somewhere in the woods of southern Wake County, a lone wolf howled in delight.

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