Although NC State is in a Power Five conference and Furman is a member of the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), the two schools actually have a unique shared history.

it even includes a recent one when in the winter of 2016 Furman sought to hire a Wolfpack assistant, then-running backs coach Des Kitchings, for its head coaching job. Kitchings, a Furman alum, initially accepted the offer before having second thoughts and turning it down.

Kitchings would coach at NC State for three more seasons, serving as co-offensive coordinator in 2019, before leaving Raleigh. He is now coaching for the Atlanta Falcons.

After Kitchings, Furman turned to Clay Hendrix, its current head coach. Hendrix is also a Furman alum, where he played for former Wolfpack head coach Dick Sheridan. When Sheridan was hired by NC State before the 1986 season, Hendrix went with Sheridan to be a graduate assistant for the Wolfpack for two years.

Hendrix’s first season at Furman included a game at NC State’s Carter-Finley Stadium. Furman proved pesky for a while, at one point scoring on a 71-yard touchdown pass that cut the Pack’s advantage to 21-13 with 2:35 left in the first half.

That’s when former Pack All-American Jaylen Samuels scored the last of his three first half touchdowns, which would be the first of four unanswered TDs for NC State as the Pack pulled away for a 49-16 victory.

Hendrix though has tasted success at Carter-Finley Stadium before. He was an offensive lineman on teams at Furman that won at NC State in back-to-back years.

In 1984, the Paladins bulled over the Tom-Reed coached Wolfpack with a 34-30 victory that included 304 rushing yards by the Paladins’ option-oriented offense. It was Furman’s third consecutive season with a win over a bigger Division I-A (now FBS) opponent, after beating South Carolina in 1982 and Georgia Tech in 1983. They added a fourth the next season with a 42-20 blowout of the Wolfpack.

Quarterback Bobby Lamb, with good protection from Hendrix and the rest of the offensive line, threw a school-record four touchdown passes, while the Wolfpack could not find the end zone, even with first-team All-ACC quarterback Erik Kramer and an offense that rolled up 508 total yards. It was the lowest point of Reed’s three-year tenure as head coach.

“We were awful,” Reed said after the game.

Not long afterwards, following three consecutive 3-8 seasons, NC State athletics director Willis Casey, who had tried to lure Sheridan to Raleigh in 1983, made his famous “If you can’t beat ‘em, hire ‘em” decision to bring the coach and a good portion of his staff to Raleigh.

Sheridan posted a 52-29-3 record in seven seasons at NC State after going 69-23-2 in eight years at Furman. This fall, Sheridan will be honored during games at both programs on separate occasions celebrating the 80-year old’s induction into the College Football Hall of Fame.

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