Tim Peeler: NC State's storied history of kickoff return touchdowns

Kickoff return records aren’t exactly easy to track down because the modern standardized box score for college football games didn’t exist for offensive statistics until the 1950s, or for defensive statistics until the late 1970s.

So, despite pouring over newspapers, magazines and yearbooks I have access to, I haven’t 100-percent identified the first kickoff return for a touchdown in NC State football history because slogging through old media is no guarantee of getting accurate scoring reports.

However, I know for sure that on Nov. 8, 1919, on Charlotte’s Wearn Field, John Thomas “Runt” Faucette caught a kickoff at the 25-yard line to open the second half against Davidson, headed for the sideline and ran into the end zone untouched in a 36-6 victory that predates State’s “Wolfpack” nickname.

I know for sure that Howard “Touchdown” Turner raced 98 yards against Clemson in 1946 in a 14-7 victory that was a big part of why the Wolfpack qualified for the school’s first postseason bowl game.

And I know that Alex Webster, “The Kearny (N.J.) Express,” raced 94 yards for a touchdown in the season-opener against Catawba in 1951, a year after Webster led the Southern Conference in scoring. Research got significantly easier after that with the beginning of the Atlantic Coast Conference, standardized annual statistics and modern online scoring tallies. 

One thing about return specialists: Most of them have exceptionally strong nicknames. So current redshirt sophomore Julian “Juju” Gray, who went 82 yards with little opposition last week against Virginia Military Institute for his first career touchdown return, fits right in with the list below.

Sure, that name isn’t quite as descriptive as George “Wagon Wheels” Marinkov, the loosely jointed little speedster from Lebanon, Pennsylvania, who set all the early Atlantic Coast Conference records for kickoff returns when he became varsity-eligible in 1954.

Marinkov, whose nickname predates both the Old Crow Medicine Show and Darius Rucker versions of the song of the same title by a good half-century, showed his potential by returning a kick 98 yards against Duke in a 1953 freshman game, then ran 94 yards for a touchdown against Virginia Tech as a sophomore in Earle Edwards’ first game as head coach of the Wolfpack.

All-American halfback Dick Christy, who shared the nickname “The Pony Express” and “The Touchdown Twins” with backfield running mate Dick Hunter, was the first NC State returner to score on a game’s opening kickoff and the first to score in back-to-back games. He went 96 yards on a fourth-quarter return in a blowout win at Maryland and then went 98 yards to open the game at Clemson’s Death Valley when the stands were still half empty because traffic was backed up to Easley.

In 1961, sophomore Mike Clark became the first and so far only Wolfpack returner to run one back against North Carolina, which he also did on the opening kickoff in what turned out to be a disappointing loss to the Tar Heels at Kenan Stadium. (Lamont Reid became the third and most recent to return the opening kick all the way in a 2002 game against East Tennessee State.)

On Oct. 13, 1962, unranked NC State traveled Lincoln, Nebraska, to face No. 15 unbeaten Nebraska. Fullback Joe Scarpati had the game of a lifetime against the Cornhuskers. He set up NC State’s first-quarter touchdown with a long punt return, saved a touchdown following a State fumble by intercepting a pass at his own 18-yard line and, in the third period, ran a kickoff back 91 yards to give State a 13-7 lead that silenced the sold-out crowd at Memorial Stadium.

“Taking the ball at his own 9-yard line, he sprinted toward the middle, cut to the right sidelines and outraced everyone with a sudden jet of speed for the second Wolfpack TD,” wrote the Greensboro News & Record. “Mike Clark and Falzarano made key blocks early, and Tony Koszarsky made an important one as Scarpati broke away for good.”

But, clinging to a one point lead late in the game, Nebraska got a little help with a pass interference call on the Wolfpack, and a catch that seemed to have bounced on the turf, to score with 1:08 remaining on the clock and secure the victory.

Here’s where things turn weird: State went the next 32 years without returning a kickoff for a touchdown, a drought that spanned eight different Wolfpack football coaches, 362 games and 1,450 quarters.

It finally ended in one of the most remarkable offensive games in NC State football history, a 47-45 victory over Maryland in which the Wolfpack scored on every single possession of the game. Maryland’s Geroy Simon ran back the second-half kickoff for a touchdown, the Terps’ first in 13 years, and a few minutes later State’s Alvis “Quick” Whitted blazed across the field for a 97-yard return. (State still needed a Steve Videtich field goal with six seconds remaining to secure the win.)

That basically opened the floodgates for scoring on kickoff returns: Since then, State has scored 19 times on kickoff returns in 29 seasons, including another by Whitted in 1996 against Florida State just after he competed in the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials.

Twice, the Wolfpack has scored on opponents’ onside kicks (Jerricho Cotchery at Clemson in 2002 and Tramain Hall against East Carolina in 2004). And twice it has scored on kickoff returns in postseason bowl games, both times against Vanderbilt, by Tobais Palmer in the 2012 Music City Bowl and Nyheim Hines in the 2016 Independence Bowl.

Hines ran back two during his college career and last year, in his first season with the Buffalo Bills, became just the 11^th player in NFL history to score twice on kickoff returns in the same game. 

T.J. “Speedy” Graham, a world-class sprinter like Whitted, was involved in 3 kickoff scoring returns, 2 of which he took into the end zone himself and 1 of which he caught on the 8-yard line at Duke, pitched to teammate J.C. Neal at the 11 and watched as Neal went the rest of the way to score.

Zonovan “Bam” Knight holds the school record with three kickoff returns for touchdowns, starting with a 100-yard return against Miami in 2020. He then replicated Christy’s accomplishment of scoring on kickoffs in back-to-back games, against Wake Forest and Syracuse, in 2021. 

Below is a list of every kickoff return for touchdown that I have identified. I do not claim it to be comprehensive and am happy to make additions as the season goes along, either with new submissions or additions made by Gray or his teammates.

Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at [email protected].

Date Player, game, location Yards Time Result
11/8/1919 J.T. “Runt” Faucette vs. Davidson at Charlotte 75 2Q W, 23-0
10/05/1946 Howard “Touchdown” Turner at Clemson 98 1Q W, 14-7
9/15/1951 Alex “Kearny Express” Webster vs. Catawba 95 3Q W, 34-0
9/18/1954 George “Wagon Wheels” Marinkov at Virginia Tech 93 4Q L, 30-21
9/29/1957 Dick “Touchdown Twin” Christy at Maryland 96 4Q W, 48-13
10/5/1957 Dick “Pony Express” Christy at Clemson 97 1Q* W, 13-7
9/30/1961 Mike Clark at UNC-CH 83 1Q* L, 27-22
10/13/1962 Joe Scarpati at Nebraska 91 3Q L, 19-13
11/05/1994 Alvis “Quick” Whitted at Maryland 97 3Q W, 47-45
9/19/1996 Alvis “Quick” Whitted vs. Florida State 96 4Q L, 51-17
8/31/2002 Lamont Reid vs. East Tennessee State 90 1Q* W, 34-0
9/28/2002 Lamont Reid vs. Massachusetts 97 2Q W, 56-24
10/24/2002 Jerricho Cotchery at Clemson 42^ 4Q W, 38-6
11/27/2004 Tramain Hall vs. East Carolina 44^ 4Q W, 52-14
11/04/2006 Darrell Blackman vs. Georgia Tech 95 3Q L, 31-23
9/22/2007 Darrell Blackman vs. Clemson 99 1Q L, 42-20
10/4/2008 T.J. “Speedy” Graham vs. Boston College 100 1Q L, 38-31
11/8/2008 J.C. Neal at Duke 89 1Q W, 27-17
10/10/2009 T.J. “Speedy” Graham vs. Duke 93 3Q L, 49-28
11/10/2012 Tobais Palmer vs. Wake Forest 100 3Q W, 37-6
12/31/2012 Tobais Palmer vs Vanderbilt 94 2Q L, 38-24+
10/31/2015 Nyheim “NyNy” Hines vs. Clemson 100 2Q L, 56-41
12/26/2016 Nyheim “NyNy” Hines vs. Vanderbilt 100 4Q W, 41-17++
11/6/2020 Zonovan “Bam” Knight vs. Miami 100 3Q L, 44-41
11/13/2021 Zonovan “Bam” Knight at Wake Forest 100 3Q L, 45-41
11/20/2021 Zonovan “Bam” Knight vs. Syracuse 97 2Q W, 41-17
9/16/2023 Julian “Juju” Gray vs VMI 82 2Q W, 45-7
Record 15-12
*Opening kickoff
^Onside kick recovery and return
+Music City Bowl, Nashville, Tennessee
++Independence Bowl, Birmingham, Alabama