Tim Peeler: Remembering the electric stretch of the NC State-Duke rivalry in the 1980s

In the 100-year history of the football series between NC State and Duke, there has never been a three-game span like the one in the late 1980s, culminating in the smash-up contest at Wallace Wade Stadium in 1989.

The collision of two powerful offenses in the 45-36 Duke victory came after the Wolfpack’s three-bus pileup in construction traffic on Interstate-40 by the Raleigh-Durham International Airport.

What happened was this: between the two airport exits, as traffic narrowed to one lane, a car cut off the first bus, causing the driver to slam on the brakes. The second bus was able to stop in time to avoid a bump-up, but the third bus was not, smashing into the second bus, which then slammed into the first bus and shattered the windshield on the second.

The second and third bus were unfit to travel the rest of the way to the stadium, so about 40 first- and second-teamers and all coaches piled into the first bus. Some of the team specialists and cheerleaders hitched rides with fans headed to the game. Sophomore kicker Damon Hartman’s parents picked up the student video crew and gave them a lift the rest of the way.

“It was a crazy scene,” Hartman said.

The first bus made it to the stadium, then turned around to go back to the scene of the accident to get remaining members of the team, along with another bus from the charter company. However, the traffic jam created by the pileup turned the 20-minute trip into a 75-minute ordeal.

Only about half the team was on the field for pregame warmups, though reserve players eventually made it to the field before kickoff. Warmups were a disorganized mess, a particularly frustrating distraction for a control aficionado like Dick Sheridan.

The collision was quite a jolt for Wolfpack quarterback Shane Montgomery, who had sat out of practice all week because of a concussion he suffered the week before in the first quarter of a loss to Sheridan-nemesis Virginia.

“The second bus drilled us pretty hard,” said Montgomery, who is in his first season as the offensive coordinator at Dartmouth in the Ivy League. “It was like getting whiplash. The driver hit the brakes really hard.

“It was scary.”

It might have been the best thing to happen to for a player who had his bell rung the previous week.

“That was good for me because I didn’t have any contact during the week,” Montgomery said. “I figured if I could handle a collision with a bus, I’d be fine getting hit in the game.”

Any doubts about Montgomery’s ability to compete in the game ended in the first quarter as the Wolfpack scored 10 points following two fumble recoveries, including a 93-yard drive that featured a 35-yard pass from Montgomery to Al Byrd and a 57-yard run by Anthony Barbour.

The events of the day took their toll in the second quarter, as the Pack’s nationally ranked defense gave up three touchdown passes to Duke QB Dave Brown, a 37-yarder to Keith Ewell and 35- and 16-yarders to eventual ACC Player of the Year Clarkston Hines, whose 2 touchdown receptions set the NCAA career record.

As Montgomery and Brown picked apart the opposing secondaries, NC State’s defensive coaches, who were all riding on the second bus, picked shards of shattered glass out of their hair and clothes throughout the game.

Playing from behind in the second half, the Wolfpack took to the air, calling 38 consecutive pass plays to end the game. Montgomery had a record-setting performance, throwing an NCAA-, ACC- and school-record 73 passes that afternoon.

In the end, Montgomery completed too many passes — 37 to his teammates and five to the Blue Devils. One of those was a back-breaking 64-yard pick six by Wyatt Smith in the third quarter that gave the Blue Devils a 35-20 lead.

“I threw too many interceptions and they were hard to overcome,” recalled Montgomery, who threw a 65-yard touchdown pass to Tyler Lawrence in the fourth quarter that narrowed the score, but he wasn’t able to add more points.

In a season that was interrupted by the effects of Hurricane Hugo, the Blue Devils went on to earn a share of the ACC Championship with Virginia and qualify for their first bowl game since 1962. It ended the regular season with a 41-0 whipping of North Carolina in Chapel Hill to win record its seventh consecutive victory.

NC State, after a 6-0 start to the season, finished by losing five of its last six games, including a 17-10 setback against Arizona in the now-defunct Copper Bowl.

The loss to Duke evened the three-game series between Sheridan and Blue Devil coach Steve Spurrier at 1-1-1. In the two previous games, NC State won 47-45 at Wallace Wade Stadium in 1987 and the two teams tied 43-43 at Carter-Finley, which goes down as the highest-scoring tie in NCAA football history.

In those three games, the teams combined for 163 first downs, 3,208 yards of total offense and 2,447 passing yards.

“With Coach Spurrier, they were very good on offense,” Montgomery said. “We got behind in all of those games, so we just ended up throwing more than we anticipated. We felt like we needed to match them.

“Those games were just shootouts.”

And, in the last game, a collision of record-smashing proportions.

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