Yes, Carter-Finley Stadium is Raleigh’s premier home for college football. But it’s also been host to a handful of NFL exhibition games and a full season for one of the most unsuccessful franchises in professional football history.
For four straight years in the late 1960s, NC State’s home field hosted an NFL exhibition game called the Jaycees Charity Classic as a fundraiser for the Raleigh Jaycees. Some of the most familiar names in football history played on NC State’s home turf: quarterbacks Fran Tarkington and Norm Snead, and linebacker Dick Butkus, just to name a few.
But the highlight of those four games was in 1970, when 37-year-old, future Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Johnny Unitas led the Baltimore Colts to a come-from-behind 20-14 victory over the Detroit Lions in front of 34,500 fans, the largest crowd to attend one of the four charity games. Unitas completed 11 of 24 passes for 102 yards, including an 8-yard pass to Tom Mitchell for the game’s go-ahead touchdown.
The Colts went on to finish 11-2 that season and win Super Bowl III over the Dallas Cowboys in Miami.
On August 20, 1989, Carter-Finley became the birthplace of the two-time Super Bowl participant Carolina Panthers when the Philadelphia Eagles faced the New York Jets in an exhibition game dubbed the “Carolinas Kickoff.”
It was organized by future Panthers’ owner Jerry Richardson as part of the Charlotte businessman’s push for an NFL expansion franchise. A near sellout crowd of 52,855 sweat-soaked spectators saw the Jets take a 19-10 victory on Carter-Finley’s field.
Richardson was awarded a franchise in 1993, and the Panthers played their inaugural season (1995) at Clemson’s Death Valley, before moving into what is now Bank of America Stadium in downtown Charlotte a year later.
In 1991, Carter-Finley was the home field of the Raleigh-Durham Skyhawks, a charter member of the World League of American Football. Wearing their red and Kelly green uniforms and coached by former NC State All-America quarterback Roman Gabriel, the Skyhawks lost all 10 of their games.
George Shinn, then owner of the Charlotte Hornets, also owned the Skyhawks, but shut the franchise down after its one fruitless season, blaming the paltry average attendance of 12,066 on the lack of beer sales at Carter-Finley.
But it couldn’t have helped that the team’s offensive building blocks were former UNC quarterback Mark Maye and Duke receiver Clarkston Hines. Besides Gabriel, the only NC State contributions to the franchise were radio announcers Tony Haynes and Gary Hahn.
