Tim Peeler: Remembering NC State's first-ever trip to play at Miami

The first time NC State College’s football team went to Miami to play, the two-dozen or so players who made the exhausting trip ran out of the tunnel at the old Orange Bowl, still stove up from the overnight train that left Raleigh Wednesday morning and arrived the next day to prepare for a Friday night kickoff.

It was a rugged season for head coach Williams “Doc” Newton, who put together one of the toughest schedules for any team in the South that season in hopes of raising enough money to keep the program afloat and to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the land-grant school’s opening in 1889.

Newton’s Pack took their beatings that fall with a diminished roster that lost two players to injury, two players to attrition, one to academics and one to a shotgun wedding. Writers of the day were actually quite kind to Newton for only losing to defending and future national champion Tennessee 13-0 and to unbeaten and untied Duquesne, then a national contender, by a narrow 7-0 score.

Sure, the 17-0 loss to North Carolina, 28-0 loss to Duke, 32-0 loss to Wake Forest and 25-6 loss to Clemson in Charlotte took some of the shine off their full-throated defense of Newton, a likeable coach who was hired from Davidson to stabilize the program’s finances, recruit more North Carolina natives on his roster and bring a flashy style of play to Raleigh.

Some of those promises became a reality in his seven years of coaching the Wolfpack, but not enough for him to remain as coach during the fiscally troubling times during World War II.

Like Earle Edwards after him, Newton was willing to go just about anywhere to play an opponent willing to pay a guaranteed sum of money to host the Wolfpack. That’s how they ended up in Boston, New York City (twice), Washington, Detroit, Pittsburgh and Miami in his first three seasons.

All of those destinations were reached by brutal train trips of as many as 24 hours in the days before chartered plane service. “Ironically enough, on its way to Detroit, the team shared a sleeper car with mechanized-flight co-inventor Orville Wright.”

Newton tried a little bit of everything to boost his program, installing an offense that often used trickery and deception to confuse opposing defenses. The most famous of those plays was a naked reverse borrowed from the University of Delaware, in which a running back hid the ball on the back of his hip and another running back came from the other side of the line, took it away from his teammate and ran unprotected around the opposite end.

It was called the “Sally Rand” play, named after a popular stripper of the day. It totally titillated newspaper writers during the Great Depression.

The Pack used the play successfully to score a touchdown in a 12-7 upset of Furman and to gain big yards— but no points — against Duke and UNC.

Newton also borrowed a page from former coach Gus Tebell to gain some attention with his team’s uniforms. For the big game against Tennessee, as part of the college’s 50-year jubilee, his players ran onto the field wearing gray satin pants with shiny red and white piping and bright red jerseys.

They cracked them out a couple of times that season, including on the trip to the Orange Bowl after its long southern train ride for the Friday night game against the Hurricanes. A whopping 11,420 spectators attended the game, which was played on even terms for the first half.

The Hurricanes scored first, but the Wolfpack called on Sally Rand yet again to score its only touchdown of the game. Led by All-America tackle Ed “Ty” Coon and quarterback little Artie Rooney, Newton’s team felt good about its chances to win its third game of the season.

Those hopes ended as Miami scored three unanswered touchdowns in the second half for the 27-7 victory, which sent the dejected Wolfpack back to the train station for a long ride home.

The Hurricanes owned the box score even though they didn’t throw a pass all night long. They outrushed Newton’s offense 324 to 115 and made 18 first downs to NC State’s 8.

There was no waiting crowd to greet the players as they arrived in downtown Raleigh on a chilly Sunday morning, just a couple of letters to both the student and local newspaper calling for Newton’s head.

George Gillette, president of the State Alumni Association, wrote one and student reporter Sam McDowall wrote the other, putting forth a radical plan to require students, alumni and fans to raise money to pay Newton’s players, a practice that was, unlike today, not legal under ever-changing NCAA and Southern Conference rules.

“There is definitely something lacking in the Wolfpack that is apparent this season,” McDowall wrote. “On the surface only, there is the fact that the Techs cannot win football games, can score very few times, and have little regard for keeping their goal-line and prestige safe from marauders. Whether [Coach Newton] has the ability to produce or not will not alter the present situation a mite until something else — quite a few things, in fact — change with sweeping movement.

1. Lighten the schedule.
2. Receive voluntary contributions from students and alumni, not to be less than $25 per term, and bring the boys to State who go to other Southern schools for better prices.
3. Conduct a large purge of student, faculty and alumni ranks and bounce the incurables—the habitual gripers who would yelp if went State went to the Rose Bowl four times a year.

“Money is the answer, and State spends very little on its boys. If State wants to keep step with the Deacons, the Blue Devils and the Tar Heels, it must beg, borrow or steal the money from students and alumni to finance a team. If not, the folks should be content to stay in a class with Davidson and win just a few games.

“There’s just one answer to the yelpers who are squawking now — put out or shut up.”

Newton was not fired after the season, as some hoped. Instead, he convinced the athletics council to let him hire former Tennessee All-America Babe Wood as an assistant coach, with the promise that Newton would take over as head baseball coach for Charles Doak and run that program without any extra compensation.

He lasted four more seasons, but did not post a winning record. At 46-50 in seven years, Newton was bitterly fired following a 3-6 record in 1943 season and replaced by Beattie Feathers.

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