NC State football countdown to 2023 kickoff: 59

The NC State football season opener for 2023 is at Connecticut on Aug. 31 — or 59 days away. TheWolfpacker.com’s countdown for the season looks at the significance of the number 59 in Pack history.

NC State Football And The No. 59

• At the time he had completed his career, Jamie Barnette (1996-99) owned every passing record in the book for NC State football. Prior to Barnette, the school record for career touchdown passes was 38, set by Terry Harvey. Barnette shattered that when he finished with 59 scoring passes.

However, Barnette’s record did not last long. The signal caller that replaced him was Philip Rivers. Four years later, Rivers had thrown 95 touchdowns, still 19 more than any other NC State quarterback in history.

• The school-record for extra point tries in a season was 59 by Adam Kiker in 2003.

• NC State and South Carolina have a home-and-home scheduled for 2030 and 2031. The first game will be played at Columbia. The only other known non-conference game that season is Charlotte coming to Raleigh.

A year later, South Carolina travels to Carter-Finley Stadium. That same 2031 season, NC State football has road games lined up with Charlotte and Notre Dame.

Assuming this all goes off as scheduled, and in the era of college realignment that’s a dicey proposition, the next meeting between NC State and South Carolina will be the 59th in the two teams history. The Gamecocks have won the last three games between the two teams to give South Carolina a 28-26-4 edge in the rivalry.

Between 1956-91, NC State and South Carolina played each other every season except in 1967.

• In 1959, NC State football rolled out a quarterback who helped revolutionize the position — Roman Gabriel.

Gabriel completed 81 of 134 passes, for a career-best 60.4 percent, for 832 yards and three touchdowns with seven interceptions. The following year, Gabriel won the first of back-to-back ACC Player of the Year awards and was an All-American for the first of two straight seasons.

NC State football labored through a 1-9 season that year. The Pack defeated Virginia Tech in the season opener and then lost its next nine contests in a row.

However, Gabriel was part of history in 1959. Receiver John Morris caught 127 passing yards in a loss to Maryland from Gabriel, becoming the first-ever 100-yard receiving game in school history. The next did not come until 1966.

• Speaking of conference realignment and the aforementioned 1-9 season in 1959, the first time that the Wolfpack played a regular season conference game in the state of California was against UCLA that year. The Bruins won, 21-12.

The only other trek that far west was when NC State went back to Los Angeles in 1960 and lost, 7-0.

UCLA, along with USC, set off the latest shockwave in conference realignment by announcing they were leaving the Pac-12 for the Big Ten. The Bruins also famously backed out of a postseason assignment against NC State in 2021, and UCLA is now the subject of a lawsuit from Holiday Bowl officials.