When the NC State football team was introduced recently during the UNC Greensboro basketball game at PNC Arena, All-America defensive lineman Bradley Chubb implored Wolfpack fans to make the trip to El Paso, Texas, to see NCSU play Arizona State in the 84th-annual Sun Bowl.
“I know it’s kind of a long haul to get there, but we would love to have you in El Paso with us,” Chubb told the crowd.
And, by all means, for those who can make the trip, El Paso embraces its longstanding bowl tradition unlike most communities. Those who go will have the experience of a lifetime.
For many, however, the cross-country trip can be both cost- and time-prohibitive this time of year. Fortunately for fans of all college teams in the digital age, the many options for watching live broadcasts, streaming live internet feeds and getting instantaneous updates are quite mind-boggling.
No longer is being on television a rare opportunity and recruiting inducement. It’s practically a requirement, especially with schools reaching farther from their campuses to find regional, national and even international players.
It wasn’t long ago — less than 20 years, in fact — that playing on television merited a full-page mention in NC State’s annual football media guide, detailing every game that the Wolfpack ever played on TV.
The Pack first played on television in the 1950s, when the NCAA controlled how frequently teams could appear on TV during the regular season. That was the case until 1984, when the Supreme Court ruled that practice unconstitutional.
But there were times when schools and television stations could work around those cumbersome rules to broadcast games to a specific audience. And that’s exactly how NC State fans were able to see the last game between the Wolfpack and the Sun Devils.
On Nov. 16, 1974, third-year coach Lou Holtz took his team to Tempe, Arizona, to face Frank Kush’s team at Sun Devil Stadium.
It was a game that almost didn’t happen at all because of the 1974 energy crisis.
Fellow ACC member Wake Forest canceled its contract to travel to Oregon State for a football game at the request of the NCAA’s Energy Conservation Committee, which was charged with helping college athletics departments cut energy consumption. NC State had both a fencing match against Illinois and a swim meet against Clemson canceled because of the national gas shortage.
The Wolfpack-Sun Devil football game was saved, however, when athletics director Willis Casey scheduled a cut-rate charter flight for the team and staff. Few NC State fans, however, were in the Homecoming crowd of 48,042 spectators at Sun Devil Stadium.
Holtz’s team — and Wolfpack athletics — was hot. It was just months after Norm Sloan’s basketball team had won the national championship and Sam Esposito’s baseball team had captured its second consecutive ACC baseball title.
Holtz and his team, following a 6-0 start, had been eliminated from repeating as ACC champions because of back-to-back midseason losses to North Carolina and Maryland. But it answered with a pair of home wins, first over South Carolina (42-27) and, for the first time in the history of the series, a victory over No. 7 Penn State (12-7).
Those wins gave the offensively explosive No. 16 Wolfpack eight regular-season wins for the second year in a row. After defeating the Nittany Lions, Holtz and his team were invited to play Houston at the Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl at the Astrodome.
A win over the unranked but favored Sun Devils would give the Pack nine regular-season wins for just the second time in school history, matching the total of the 1927 Southern Conference champs.
It would have been a shame if the folks back in North Carolina could not see the rare matchup — the only other time the two teams ever played was in 1960, when former Pack football coach Earle Edwards agreed for his team to play the Sun Devils, who were also coached by Kush, who had played for Edwards at Michigan State in the early 1950s.
The NC State athletics department partnered with local television station WRAL for a special broadcast of the State-Arizona State game for the students, alumni and fans in North Carolina who were unable to make the 2,165-mile trip because of what were then oppressive travel constraints.
Broadcasting the game was not an easy task. WRAL had to get a waiver from the NCAA, convince ABC to release the broadcast rights and figure out what cross-country telephone trunk route would send a clear broadcast back to Raleigh, all within a week’s time.
And there was every opportunity for the NCAA to drag its feet, explained at the time by assistant athletics director Frank Weedon.
“We had to get the NCAA regional liaison officer’s permission,” Weedon told Technician, the NC State student paper. “And of course that happened to be Homer Rice, North Carolina’s athletics director. He had to move forward with the NCAA.”
The game was sponsored by the athletics department, the Wolfpack Club and several local businesses. However, the game was played without commercial breaks. All ads were worked in during national breaks in the action.
WRAL chose local broadcasters Nick Pond as the play-by-play announcer and Reese Edwards as the color analyst. They spent much of the time comparing the hyperactive sideline demeanor of Kush, who was in his 17th season with the Sun Devils, and Holtz.
Students organized watch parties around campus and at fraternity houses, attracting dozens at each location.
What they saw was a 35-14 blowout, the Wolfpack’s third straight victory after the two disappointing league losses.
Senior running backs Stan Frits and Roland Hooks led an offense that was one of the most productive in the nation. Fritts became the second back in school history to run for 1,000 yards in a season during the Penn State game the week before. He added 102 yards on 21 carries against ASU, scoring two rushing touchdowns and throwing for another. Hooks rushed for 79 yards on 16 carries with two rushing touchdowns, while quarterback Dave Buckey completed 11 of his 13 passes for 167 yards.
The team, which moved up to No. 13 in the AP poll following the victory, returned home the next day, toting a 9-2 final regular-season record and thinking about its postseason contest in the Astrodome, which it tied with Houston, 31-31.
The student body was thrilled with the opportunity to see the contest, noted a Technician editorial the following week.
“Rarely have the students at State found themselves favored by dear old Channel Five, home of Jesse Helms and William Cheshire,” it said. “But this week all Wolfpack fans were awarded a real treat, and we all owe a vote of thanks to [station owner] Fred Fletcher and WRAL-TV.”
Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at tmpeeler@ncsu.edu.
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