There is virtually no history between NC State and Kentucky in either football or men’s basketball.
The two teams, located 500 miles apart, will meet on Saturday in the 74th Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida, but it will be just the fourth meeting in the football series, with the most recent game played a half-century ago in Lexington, Kentucky.
That game, a 27-2 Wildcat win on Halloween afternoon in 1970, couldn’t have been less exciting for either team. No one knew it at the time, but it was the final season of head coach Earle Edwards’ successful career.
Just two years after winning his fifth ACC title, Edwards had a team with no clear-cut leader on offense and a defense that might have been the best in the league without creating many positive results. Midway through the season, the veteran coach switched quarterbacks about the same time as his top two running backs suffered injuries, but nothing seemed to work.
Kentucky, under the guidance of second-year coach John Ray, entered the contest on a five-game losing streak, but used Raleigh native and Broughton High School grad Al Godwin and Wake Forest-transfer wide receiver Lee Clymer to easily dispose of the Pack for its final win of the 1970 season.
Local newspapers correctly described the effort by both State and Kentucky as “lifeless.” The only bright spot for the visiting Pack was a blocked punt that went out of the end zone for a safety.
Contrast that, however, with State’s only win over the Wildcats, way back on Oct. 21, 1909. The North Carolina College for Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (NC A&M) needed a second-half comeback for an impressive 15-6 victory over the Kentucky State Blue and White at Riddick Field, in front of a massive throng (for then) of 3,000 fans on the Thursday of the North Carolina State Fair.
The rare regional game, billed as the greatest ever played in North Carolina, was the third game of the year for both teams, though the A&M Farmers owned a distinct advantage, having not lost a home game in six seasons, with a 16-0-5 record at the school’s athletics field dating back to an 18-0 setback to Kentucky in 1904 in the first meeting between the two schools.
The Farmers of first-year head coach Eddie Greene weren’t sure what to think of their new leader, who had coached UNC-Chapel Hill the year before to a perfectly mediocre 3-3-3 record.
The previous two years, under head coach Michie Whitehurst, A&M had compiled a 12-1-1 record, including an undefeated 6-0-1 record en route to the 1907 Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association championship.
“It will be the greatest game of football ever scheduled to be played in this state,” said the Raleigh News & Observer, reflecting back on the two decades since the sport was introduced on the state’s college campuses.
“No games of greater importance have ever been scheduled in the South. Nowhere else will there be an opportunity to witness such a mighty contest between football warriors, gladiators of the gridiron, as is presented in this Thursday of Fair Week game.”
Greene, a former All-American player at Pennsylvania, inherited a team of foundational stars for the future of NC State. His player roster included eventual State College football coaches Harry Hartsell and Tal Stafford, future baseball coaches Frank Thompson and Stafford, future athletics directors Hartsell, Stafford and John Von Glahn, and future Wolfpack Club president Dutch Seifert.
The only reason Greene didn’t have future Major League Baseball star Dave Robertson, NC State’s first professional athlete, was that the two-sport standout was back at home in Norfolk, Virginia, recovering from knee surgery.
A&M scored first, on a surprise 20-yard drop-kick field goal by Hartsell after a Kentucky fumble on the 9-yard-line, but the visitors’ offense used a relatively new weapon called the “forward pass,” which was legalized in 1906, to set up the game’s first touchdown. Hartsell tried two more quick-kicks, but both were blocked, and Kentucky maintained a 6-3 lead at intermission.
The game was not without mistakes. Referee Donnelly called a penalty on A&M for delay of game, which at the time resulted in the loss of possession by the offending team. At halftime, Donnelly told reporter Joel Whitaker, through tears “in his honest blue eyes as he said, ‘I did what I thought was right, and I would give all I have on earth rather than have anyone think I’d do a thing like that intentionally.’”
In the second half, Donnelly against took the ball away from A&M’s offense and gave it to Kentucky, with no reason given.
A&M quarterback S.F. Stevens overcame the mistakes to set up two Farmer touchdowns. He ran one yard for the first score five minutes into the second half and then returned a Kentucky punt 42 yards for the second with four minutes to play.
The Farmers celebrated what the NC State yearbook Agromeck called “The Greatest Victory in A&M College History” by marching down Hillsborough and Fayetteville streets behind the Red Coat Band to serenade the female students at the Baptist women’s college (now Meredith) and Peace College in a late-night display.
It was the only loss in 19 games, spanning three seasons for Edwin Sweetland’s Blue and White, including an 11-0 win over North Carolina in Lexington in 1910.
Kentucky’s first-half touchdown was the only score given up by the A&M defense in the first six games of the season. It didn’t surrender another until the season-finale in Norfolk, Virginia, where Virginia Tech won the SIAA championship with an 18-5 win over NC State.
The 1909 game is still NC State’s only football victory over Kentucky.
The lack of a modern rivalry in all sports between State and Kentucky is mostly a residual of basketball feud between legendary coaches Everett Case and Adolph Rupp, who only played against each other when they were forced to in the 1947 National Invitation semifinals, and the fact that State doesn’t generally schedule games in those sports against many Southeastern Conference schools.
Case and Rupp sniped at each other through various NCAA accusations, investigations and penalties for the remainder of their careers. Rupp never forgave Case for State earning the 1948 NCAA Tournament bid over the Wildcats. Case and his program never truly recovered from Rupp snitching on the Wolfpack and Texas A&M for recruiting high school basketball star Jackie Moreland.
State was given the NCAA’s harshest penalty at that time, a four-year probation that included a postseason ban for all sports, which prevented the 1957 ACC champion football team from participating in the Orange Bowl.
The two basketball programs have met only twice since that ill-fated meeting in the 1947 National Invitation Tournament, in back-to-back meetings in the 1980s when hoop coaches Jim Valvano and Eddie Sutton split home-and-home games.
Even in women’s basketball, the two schools have never met in a scheduled game, with all eight meetings happening either in postseason or in-season tournament play.
Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to the Wolfpacker and can be reached at tmpeeler@ncsu.edu.
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