Connect with us

Published

3 years ago

on

2:50 PM ET

The 1993 Daytona 500, run 30 years ago today, is first and foremost a love story.

Yes, it was the Dale and Dale Show. Yes, it was the victory that sparked Dale Jarrett’s climb toward the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Yes, it was the first Cup Series win for second-year team owner Joe Gibbs, also a future Hall of Famer, who has since added 199 more of them. Yes, it was all of that and more. But yes, it was also a love story. After all, it did happen on Valentine’s Day.

To fully appreciate that day, we must put it within the context of the era. This Daytona 500 was the first race run after the retirement of Richard Petty. It marked only the second career start for a kid named Jeff Gordon, hailing from California and driving a rainbow-covered car he might as well have just landed from another planet. His boss, Rick Hendrick, was respected throughout the garage, but he also had yet to win a series championship. This was still the world of Junior Johnson, Darrell Waltrip and above all else, Dale Earnhardt. Alan Kulwicki and Davey Allison were still alive, the defending series champion and the defending Daytona 500 champion. People still believed that having a multicar team would never work.

Gibbs had just retired as Washington’s head coach, his final game on the sideline (for then, at least) had taken place only six weeks earlier, a loss in the first round of the NFL playoffs. The year before, he won his third Super Bowl ring as a head coach. A lifelong hot-rod enthusiast, Gibbs was making his foray into the NASCAR world with the assistance of Hendrick. Among his very first hires was an up-and-coming crew chief named Jimmy Makar, and it was Makar who suggested hiring his brother-in-law as their driver.

“Joe always said what a dummy I was because he didn’t even have an employee, we agreed together to hire Jimmy Makar,” confesses Norm Miller, then the CEO of Interstate Batteries, who had signed on to sponsor the No. 18 Chevy. Their primary corporate color was green. To old-school NASCAR racers, a green car was viewed as being almost as lucky as a black cat walking under a ladder in a room full of broken mirrors. “But Joe is a winner. I don’t know if you know this, but he won a racquetball national championship. And just as we’d signed on, he won a Super Bowl. So, I figured, ‘Well, if racing doesn’t work out, we got to enjoy some football and other stuff. Let’s just take a chance and see what happens.’ Jimmy, he wanted to take a chance on Dale Jarrett.”

The 36-year-old North Carolinian owned one career victory, earned in a nail-biter at Michigan International Speedway with the Wood Brothers in ’91. Even with that trophy, he was still viewed in the garage as little more than a journeyman racer, the well-liked son of an all-time great.

“I was certainly under no illusions that I was in demand, or that people were fighting over hiring me,” Jarrett explained with a laugh last fall. “But I also was taught at a very young age that even when others might not bet on me, then I should still have the confidence to bet on myself. I learned that from my parents, though I don’t think they ever thought those lessons would apply to me becoming a race car driver.”

Ah yes, Mom and Dad. And that brings us to our love story.

Ned Jarrett first met Martha Ruth Bowman at a small town dance in the 1950s. Ned was the son of a sawmill owner, and as a kid, he would sit at the local general store and eavesdrop on the local farmers as they excitedly chattered about a racetrack that was being plowed into a hillside in nearby Hickory. They bragged about how they were going to take their vehicle over to the oval and prove just how fast it was. Little Ned was immediately enamored. When his father took him to brand-new Hickory Motor Speedway, it marked the beginning of a lifelong obsession with stock car racing.

Ned and Martha married on Feb. 18, 1956, and the early years of their marriage were punctuated by Ned’s success in NASCAR’s Sportsman Division, the precursor to today’s Xfinity Series. His chief rival and best racing pal was Ralph Earnhardt. Martha Jarrett and Earnhardt’s wife, also named Martha, became inseparable.

The Jarretts and Earnhardts travelled together, ate together, helped each other through numerous pregnancies, and even hosted baby showers for each other. At one of those showers, Ned drove Martha to the event but refused to go inside. A few days earlier, Ralph had put the bumper to Ned on the final lap to take away a sure victory, and Ned refused to look Earnhardt in the eye. The shower was being thrown for Ned’s second child, a boy they would name Dale. The Earnhardts had a 5-year-old boy of their own in tow, also named Dale.

The reality of the racing life was that Martha Jarrett enjoyed her friends, but she hated Ned putting his life on the line multiple nights per week. That anxiety only increased when Ned moved up to the Grand National Series, what we now know as the Cup Series, where the racetracks were bigger, the cars were faster and deaths were entirely too common. This was the 1960s.

During the ’64 World 600 at Charlotte, Ned burned his hands pulling Fireball Roberts out of the inferno that ultimately killed his friend. Dale and older brother Glenn were watching from the infield. The following season, Jarrett suffered a broken back at Greenville-Pickens Speedway, asking the ambulance driver to turn off the siren and take it slow to the hospital when he looked out the window from his stretcher and saw Martha was following, behind the wheel of the family station wagon with the kids.

“We lived in neighborhoods where people had what you would call normal jobs, lawyers and salesmen, things like that,” Dale Jarrett recalled of his childhood. “Everything that we did as a family was very normal. We went to church every Sunday, Mom made sure me, my older brother and my younger sister were where we needed to be. The only part of it that wasn’t like everyone else was that Dad was racing at Daytona and Darlington. And he was good at it.”

Ned Jarrett wasn’t simply good. He was the best. He backed up his two Sportsman titles with Grand National championships in 1961 and ’65. He earned 50 wins, then second only to Lee Petty on NASCAR’s all-time victories list. The only victory that eluded him was Daytona.

“I can remember seeing him drive by in the lead right at the end of the 1963 Daytona 500,” Dale remembered. “He went right by us where we watched from the infield, but then ran out of gas.”

Instead, his signature win came two years later, a Southern 500 victory at Darlington by a stunning 14-lap margin and essentially clinching the ’65 title. The images of his sleek, dark blue No. 11 Ford Galaxie streaking around the Track Too Tough To Tame are iconic to this day, as are the photos of Ned and Martha’s embrace and kiss in Victory Lane.

Then, he retired.

“Ford was pulling out of NASCAR and that seemed like the right time to exit with them,” Ned recalled in 2021. “Plus, I had made a promise to Martha.”

That promise was that if and when he won a second Grand National championship, he would hang up his helmet. He did. Martha was so relieved. Her nerves would no longer be frayed from having to watch a loved one hurtle around ovals at 150 mph.

Ned tried to be a coffee salesman. That didn’t work, so he helped manage his father’s lumber business. Then he became the promoter of Hickory Motor Speedway and Metrolina Speedway in Charlotte. Martha sold tickets and ran the front office while the kids sold programs and hot dogs. She settled into motherhood, watching Dale become a three-sport athlete, so good that he received offers to attend college as a quarterback and a full scholarship to South Carolina to play golf. Older brother Glenn went to UNC as a catcher. Younger sister Patti met Makar.

Ned kept his racing bug fed first through his short tracks and then via a broadcasting career that moved from public address announcing at Hickory to MRN Radio to the TV booths of ESPN and CBS Sports. Glenn ended up on TV, too, as a pit reporter.

Life was good. It was safe.

“Then I kind of went and threw a wrench into that, didn’t I?” Dale admits. “I didn’t go to college to play golf. I decided, at 20 years old, that I wanted to be a racecar driver. I don’t think my mom was super happy about that. But she also never tried to stop me.”

Dale battled his way through the short tracks of the Carolinas and then became a charter member of the NASCAR Busch Series, the revised version of Ned’s Sportsman Division. He won a handful of races and by the late-1980s was a midpack Cup Series driver. Over his first 168 starts, he earned the one win and seven top-5 finishes. But he also scored only one DNF. He was a smart racer. Still, no one saw coming what happened on Feb. 14, 1993.

No one except for the Jarretts.

“I remember when we got to the garage for Speedweeks there at Daytona, we had been assigned garage No. 11, Dad’s number,” remembered Dale. “We had been so fast in testing during January, I remember calling Dad and saying, ‘Dad, I really think we can win this thing.'”

When CBS held its Daytona 500 production meetings and producer Bob Stenner asked his broadcasters what they expected to happen on Sunday, Ned told the room to keep an eye on his son.

“I told them, this is not me playing favorites, this is based on what I had seen and if they had really been paying attention to what they had seen, that Dale was really fast,” Ned explained nearly 30 years later. What he didn’t know that day was that Stenner later went to Ken Squier and Neil Bonnett, who were in the broadcast booth with Jarrett, and told them that if Dale Jarrett was in the lead or had a chance to win on the final lap that they should be quiet and let his father do the talking.

Sure enough, as the leaders crossed the start-finish line with two laps remaining, the green No. 18 Chevy carried enough momentum off the fourth turn to slide by Gordon into second place behind, of course, the black No. 3 Chevy Lumina of the other Dale. Earnhardt was at the height of his almost-mythical struggle to win NASCAR’s biggest race.

As Dale Jarrett moved into second, the CBS cameras showed Martha, her head thrown into her hands, unable to watch. She was sitting in a passenger van, seeking some solitude to ease her nerves. Those old feelings were back. The anxiety from decades earlier, only now it wasn’t watching her husband at some dirt track on a Wednesday night. This was her little boy, in the Great American Race. CBS had a TV monitor set up for her. Now they had a camera pointed at her.

From the booth, speaking to his wife but also to the millions watching at home, Ned said, “Hold on, Martha, he’s going to be OK, dear…”

Over the last round of pit stops, most everyone in the field had taken only two new tires, including Earnhardt. Makar, however, had decided to give Jarrett four. As a result, Earnhardt’s car was slipping and sliding, on the constant edge of being out of control. Jarrett’s ride looked like it was on rails as he rode up to back of the other Dale’s machine and used the push of the air to shake his opponent loose.

They flashed under the white flag nose-to-nose, Jarrett on the inside. As Jarrett led the pack onto the backstretch, Stenner’s voice crackled in the earpieces of the three men in the broadcast booth.

“Take it, Ned.”

“Come on, Dale! Go, baby, go! All right, come on. I know he’s got it to the floorboard. He can’t do any more. Come on, hang it to the inside, don’t let him get to the inside of you coming around this turn … here he comes, Earnhardt … it’s the Dale and Dale show as they come off of Turn 4 … you know who I’m pulling for, it’s Dale Jarrett … bring her to the inside, Dale, don’t let him get down there…”

As Ned said it, Dale did it.

“Ever since that day, people have asked me if Dale could hear me, like I was in his headset like a spotter or a crew chief would be,” Ned explained. “When I tell them that he didn’t, I don’t think they believe me. He just knew what to do. He certainly has never needed my coaching at Daytona, I can tell you that.”

“He’s going to make it! Dale Jarrett is going to win the Daytona 500! All right!”

CBS once again cut to the exasperated woman in the van. The mother who used to make sandwiches on the tailgate of her station wagon for her kids during races. The wife who tore tickets. The heartbroken friend who attended the funerals of her friends’ husbands who had died in the same races that her husband had run. She threw her hands above her head, then went down into a position of prayerful thanks.

“Look at Martha, oh dear!”

CBS pit report David Hobbs sprinted out to the van from the pits. As the cameraman reached out and congratulated her, the quiet woman said, “Thank you,” as tears streamed down her face.

“Oh, that poor girl, she needs help!”

In Victory Lane, Dale was handed an earpiece so that Ned could talk to him on live TV.

“I tell you, your mama was watching, and you can’t believe the way she broke down when this race was over,” Ned said. “Of course, you had to expect that. Proud of you.”

“You came so close, I believe it was in ’63 when you ran out of fuel,” Dale replied. “I thought we’d get this one for the whole family.”

Everything was still so new for Gibbs and Miller they didn’t realize they were supposed to stay for a post-victory news conference. Miller and his family went back to their beach condo. Gibbs went across International Speedway Boulevard to eat at Steak and Shake. That’s why the entire Joe Gibbs Racing team still goes there after every Daytona 500 win. So far, they’ve done it four times.

The Jarretts spent their evening in the racetrack infield. Because that’s what they’d always done. The following weekend at Rockingham, Ned found Earnhardt and apologized for showing so much favoritism over the final lap of the Daytona 500 broadcast. The Intimidator thanked him, but said there was no need, explaining, “I’m a father, too.”

Ned retired from broadcasting more than a decade later and was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2011. Dale won 32 races in all, became a broadcaster himself in 2009, and went into the Hall of Fame five years later.

During a visit to Ned and Martha’s home in Newton, North Carolina, in 2018, Martha expressed relief that her six grandchildren chose to excel in a lot of different sports, but none became full-time racers — although the oldest, Jason, did try before becoming a spotter.

“I miss my friends at the racetrack,” she admitted. “But I don’t miss being a nervous wreck all the time.”

On Feb. 6, 2023, Martha Jarrett passed away at the age of 91. Today is Ned’s first Valentine’s Day without his beloved in nearly seven decades. But as sad as that might be, as sad it will always be until he takes his place by her side once again, this day will also never fail to bring a smile to his face. Or ours. A family’s most memorable moment together, also one of the greatest moments in NASCAR’s 75-year history.

Related Topics:
Continue Reading

Sports

GameDay Kickoff: Expectations for Jeremiah Smith, LSU-Clemson and more ahead of Week 1

Published

9 hours ago

on

August 28, 2025

By

GameDay Kickoff: Expectations for Jeremiah Smith, LSU-Clemson and more ahead of Week 1

Aug 28, 2025, 07:00 AM ET

Week 1 is finally here and there’s plenty to know about ahead of this weekend. Top 25 matchups will be played, and many freshmen will have the chance to show if they can shine under the bright lights for the first time.

All eyes will be on No. 1 Texas-No. 3 Ohio State as the Longhorns travel to the Horseshoe Saturday. What can we expect to see from Texas quarterback Arch Manning and Ohio State wide receiver Jeremiah Smith in Week 1? No. 9 LSU travels to No. 4 Clemson in a tough road matchup to start off the season. While Brian Kelly and LSU have yet to win a Week 1 matchup the past three seasons, will this be the game that changes that? As we look forward to a jam-packed weekend, we take a look back at some of the best quotes of the offseason.

Our reporters break down what to know entering Week 1.

Jump to:
Expectations for Arch and Jeremiah
LSU-Clemson | Freshmen to watch
Offseason quotes

Texas-Ohio State preview

What do we need to see from Arch Manning Week 1?

We can expect Manning to take some deep shots, especially to receiver Ryan Wingo, who Manning has raved about all offseason. The Longhorns weren’t great at stretching the field last season with Quinn Ewers, but whenever Manning got in, he looked to make big plays. Texas’ offensive staffers said this spring they keep reminding Manning that he just needs to keep the offense moving forward and to take the easy throws when he can, especially while breaking in four new starters on the offensive line. Similarly, Manning, who has open-field speed, has been reminded by everyone — including his grandfather, Archie, who liked to run around a little bit — to get down or get out of bounds, and not to drop his shoulder and try to run anyone over. Manning doesn’t have to be “superhuman” or “do anything that is extraordinary,” Steve Sarkisian said on Monday. But a solid performance on the road at No. 3 Ohio State to open the season would set the Longhorns on a national championship trajectory. — Dave Wilson

What can we expect from Jeremiah Smith in his sophomore debut?

Smith noted during Big Ten media days last month that with a year of experience behind him, he expects to play even faster this season. That’s a scary proposition for the rest of college football, considering Smith put together one of the greatest true freshman seasons in college football history, capped with his game-clinching reception that lifted Ohio State to a national championship. The Longhorns were one of the only teams to keep Smith in check last year, holding him to just one catch for three yards. Of course, the attention on Smith allowed Carnell Tate and Emeka Egbuka to thrive, combining for 12 receptions in the 28-14 Buckeyes win. Still, Smith said he has been waiting for this opportunity to face Texas again. How new quarterback Julian Sayin performs could dictate the quality of Smith’s opportunities. Either way, Smith is primed to put on a show on the big Week 1 stage. — Jake Trotter

What each team needs to capitalize on to win

LSU: Four starters from last year’s starting offensive line were selected in the 2025 NFL draft, but that doesn’t mean LSU was elite up front. The Tigers ranked last in the SEC in rushing offense and mustered just 1.5 yards before contact on dropbacks, ahead of only Vanderbilt. This year’s unit will need to improve dramatically on that clip if LSU wants to contend for a playoff berth and that starts with the opener against Clemson. Clemson’s defensive front, manned by Peter Woods and T.J. Parker, is stout, and new coordinator Tom Allen will have his sights set on making LSU one-dimensional. The key to getting the ground game going will be a youth movement in the backfield led by Caden Durham and five-star freshman Harlem Berry. — David Hale

Clemson: As Hale mentioned, Clemson needs to dominate up front — as much as that sounds like a cliché. LSU coach Brian Kelly said he planned to rotate as many as eight offensive linemen in the opener, which is a nod to team depth, but may not be conducive in the type of environment they will be playing in. Clemson is eager to show that it has vastly improved in its front seven under new defensive coordinator Tom Allen, who brings a far more aggressive approach with his scheme. That aggressiveness was missing a year ago, as Clemson struggled to stop the run and consistently get after the quarterback with its best pass rushers. Clemson ranked No. 85 against the run a season ago while Penn State, where Allen coached, ranked No. 9. The same can be said on offense, where a veteran offensive line must help Clemson get the ground game going. Cade Klubnik was more effective as a passer last season because the Tigers had balance in their ground game. Converted receiver Adam Randall gets the nod at running back, and true freshman Gideon Davidson is expected to play. — Andrea Adelson

Five freshmen to watch in Week 1

Bryce Underwood, QB, Michigan, No. 1 in 2025 ESPN 300

Underwood shook the recruiting world with his late-cycle flip from LSU to the in-state Wolverines last November. Ten months later, ESPN’s top 2025 recruit is set to be the program’s Week 1 starter when No. 14 Michigan hosts New Mexico on Saturday.

Underwood’s elite arm talent, pocket awareness and mobility has impressed the Wolverines’ coaching staff since he arrived on campus in January, as has his accelerated knowledge of the game. The young quarterback will get his first chance to flash that talent alongside fellow Michigan newcomers in running back Justice Haynes (Alabama transfer) and wide receiver Donaven McCulley (Indiana) in Week 1 before Underwood and the Wolverines stare down a much stiffer challenge against an experienced, Brent Venables-led Oklahoma defense on Sept. 6.

Elijah Griffin, DT, Georgia, No. 3 in 2025 ESPN 300

For the first time since 2021, the Bulldogs landed the state of Georgia’s top-ranked prospect in the 2025 cycle, and Griffin already appears poised to be a Day 1 contributor for the No. 5 Bulldogs.

Like many of the elite defensive line talents before him at Georgia, Griffin possesses top-end traits — speed, physicality and SEC-ready size at 6-foot-4, 310 pounds — that have had onlookers drawing comparisons to former Bulldog Jalen Carter throughout the spring and summer. Griffin’s maturity and ability to pick up the defense has also stood out as he vies for snaps along a revamped Georgia defensive line that returns multiple starters from a year ago. Whether or not he starts against Marshall on Saturday, Griffin is expected to play early and often in a significant role within coordinator Glenn Schumann’s defense this fall.

Dakorien Moore, WR, Oregon, No. 4 in 2025 ESPN 300

Moore has been one of the nation’s most productive high school playmakers in recent seasons, and his elite speed and playmaking talent are expected to earn him early opportunities this fall as he steps into an unsettled Ducks wide receiver group.

Missing top 2024 pass catchers Tez Johnson (NFL), Traeshon Holden (NFL) and Evan Stewart (injury), No. 7 Oregon is screaming for fresh downfield producers in 2025. The Ducks have plenty of experienced options between Florida State transfer Malik Benson and returners Justius Lowe, Gary Bryant Jr. and Kyler Kasper, but none offer the brand of electricity Moore presents. One of ESPN’s highest-rated wide receiver prospects since 2006, Moore should be an asset for first-year starting quarterback Dante Moore as soon as Oregon takes the field against Montana State on Saturday.

Demetres Samuel Jr., DB/WR, Syracuse, No. 223 in 2025 ESPN 300

Samuel reclassified into the 2025 class to enter college a year early. At just 17 years old, the 6-1, 195-pound freshman is set to feature prominently for the Orange this fall starting with Syracuse’s Week 1 matchup with No. 24 Tennessee on Saturday in Atlanta.

A speedy tackler from Palm Bay, Florida, Samuel has legit two-way potential, and the Orange intends to make the most of it in 2025. Syracuse coach Fran Brown announced earlier this month that Samuel will start at cornerback against Tennessee while also taking snaps at wide receiver, where the Orange are replacing their top two pass catchers from a year ago. With Travis Hunter in the NFL, Samuel stands as one of the most intriguing two-way talents across college football.

Jayvan Boggs, WR, Florida State, No. 284 in 2025 ESPN 300

Boggs joins the Seminoles after hauling in 99 receptions for 2,133 yards and 24 touchdowns in a wildly productive senior season at Florida’s Cocoa High School last fall. Listed as a starter in Florida State’s Week 1 depth chart, he has an opportunity to pick up where he left off in 2025.

Boggs combines a thick build with sudden route running and knack for yards after the catch. Alongside transfers Gavin Blackwell (North Carolina), Duce Robinson (USC) and Squirrel White (Tennessee), he’s positioned to emerge as a reliable downfield option from the jump within a new group of Seminoles pass catchers around Boston College transfer quarterback Tommy Castellanos, starting with Florida State’s Week 1 meeting with No. 8 Alabama (3:30 p.m. ET, ABC). — Eli Lederman

Notable offseason quotes

“I depend on Depends. … I’m making a joke out of it, but it is real. It is real. It is real. If you see a port-a-potty on the sideline, it is real, I’m just telling you. You’re going to see one at practice, on the sideline [in games].” — Colorado coach Deion Sanders, joking about his cancer recovery.

“But since we’re in Vegas, it seems like the right time to say it, our theme for this team is double down.” — Oregon coach Dan Lanning, on expectations coming off last year’s undefeated regular season.

“We figured we would just adopt SEC scheduling philosophy, you know? Some people don’t like it. I’m more focused on those nine conference games. Not only do we want to play nine conference games, OK, and have the [revised] playoff format [with automatic qualifiers], we want to have play-in games to decide who plays in those playoffs.” — Indiana coach Curt Cignetti on criticism of the Hoosiers’ light nonconference schedule.

“The recent NCAA ruling to not punish players that weren’t involved is correct. However, this ruling also proves that the NCAA as an enforcement arm no longer exists.” — Former Ohio State coach Urban Meyer, on the sanctions against rival Michigan.

“They don’t have Nick Saban to save them. I just don’t see them stopping me.” — Florida State QB Tommy Castellanos to On3 in June about the opener vs. Alabama.

“I’m 21 so I can do shots at a bar.” — Texas quarterback Arch Manning, joking after being asked about how he has to carry himself in public.

“They can have their opinion. We’re going to handle all that on Aug. 30.” — Clemson DE T.J. Parker on the battle over the stadium nickname “Death Valley” between Clemson and LSU.

“I still have the [Catholics versus Convicts] shirt. I do. It’s well documented that’s as intense if not the most intense rivalry that at that time it felt like the national championship went through South Bend or Coral Gables. Intensity was high, physicality, the edge that game was played with was next level.” — Miami coach Mario Cristobal on the Notre Dame rivalry. Cristobal played in the game and will now coach in it as Miami opens vs the Irish.

“Be delusional … It means no cap on the jar, no limitations, dreaming big. With the College Football Playoff where it is, as Indiana showed last year, anybody can get there. If we’re delusional enough to know we can do that, we can get there … Take the cap off the jar. Limitless.” — Minnesota coach P.J. Fleck, speaking at Big Ten media days.

Continue Reading

Sports

East Carolina-NC State and other under-the-radar rivalries really pack a punch

Published

9 hours ago

on

August 28, 2025

By

East Carolina-NC State and other under-the-radar rivalries really pack a punch

  • Ryan McGeeAug 28, 2025, 07:00 AM ET

    Close

    • Senior writer for ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com
    • 2-time Sports Emmy winner
    • 2010, 2014 NMPA Writer of the Year

Let’s start with a personal memory, shall we?

Saturday, Sept. 10, 1983. Night had fallen and traffic was moving slowly as our aircraft carrier Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale was sitting in line attempting to leave Raleigh’s Carter-Finley Stadium. My mother had a white-knuckled grip on the polished wooden steering wheel. I was riding shotgun, dressed head-to-toe in North Carolina State red and white. My little brother was in the backseat, donned in East Carolina purple and gold. He loved the Pirates because our father was an alum and had pitched for the East Carolina Teachers College baseball team back in the day. But I loved the Wolfpack because we were living in Raleigh in the Jimmy Valvano era and, did I mention it was 1983?

ECU had just defeated State for the first time in six years and did so by stopping the Pack on fourth down deep in Pirates territory in the waning seconds, preserving a 22-16 victory in front of 57,700 fans, at the time the largest crowd to ever witness a college football game in the state of North Carolina.

My brother was very happy. I was not. Mom, flying solo because Dad was away officiating another game in another town, had to physically separate us as we walked through the gravel parking lot to the car. Now we all watched as no one was bothering to separate a pair of bourbon-soaked gentlemen throwing hands in that same parking lot right beside our car. They were also dressed in opposing colors. When the guy in red had enough, he got back into his car and power-locked the doors. So the guy in purple walked around behind the car, ripped the license plate off with his bare hands and threw it like a frisbee into the dark pine trees that lined the lot.

“Just so you know, that’s what you two looked like walking to the car,” Mom said to us, our preteen faces still flushed. “If you’re still doing that when you’re their age, don’t come home.”

My brother mouthed silently at me from the backseat: “Go Pirates.”

I responded in kind, perhaps even with a middle finger extended: “Go Pack.”

Army-Navy, the Iron Bowl, The Game, the Big Game and more Cups than you would find at a Bed Bath & Beyond going out of business sale. College football, far more any other sport, is built atop a foundation of rivalries. But while we as a helmeted nation tend to focus on the biggest brand-name showdowns — the ones that determine conference titles, steer national championship pushes and have long held down prime network time slots on late November weekends — they aren’t always the most fun or even the most furiously fought football fracases on the calendar.

That’s why my personal favorite rivalries are the ones that set fire to their particular corner of the map with a crazed college football intensity but are games that people who live outside that immediate area might not fully understand or appreciate.

The contests when towns, counties, particular pages of state atlases and individual homes are divided by laundry. When autumn Saturday evenings aren’t just a football game, but rather a fistfight at a family reunion. And who doesn’t want to watch that?

It’s Akron and Kent State, stars of the Bottom 10 Cinematic Universe, located only 10 miles apart, who have a snafu in the snow every November over the possession of a Wagon Wheel. It’s North Dakota State vs. South Dakota State, Bison vs. Jackrabbits, in a contest that almost always has huge FCS national title implications and also almost always ends with postgame finger-pointing that will last for the next 364 days. It’s basically the entire Sun Belt Conference, where divisions still exist, teams still ride buses to games, bad blood has flowed through reluctantly shared veins of the likes of Georgia Southern vs. App State and where soon-to-be member Louisiana Tech is resuming the Rivalry in Dixie against Southern Miss. Football feuds that reach back through years gone by in lower divisions and long-abandoned small college conferences.

Central Michigan vs. Western Michigan for the Victory Cannon. Kansas vs. Missouri, a rivalry that next weekend will be reinstated as the Border Showdown, formerly called the Border War, a title with roots back to an actual border war between the two territories. Montana vs. Montana State in the Brawl of the Wild. Even the big brand likes of Clemson vs. Georgia, stadiums only 80 miles apart, and the game we just watched in Ireland to open the 2025 season, Iowa State vs. Kansas State, aka Farmageddon.

Why do I so relish these raucous regional rivalries? Because as you are now aware, I grew up right in the middle of one — maybe the best example there is. East Carolina versus North Carolina State, who will meet for the 34th time Thursday at 7 p.m. ET on the ACC Network.

Will the nation be riveted? No. But will my neighborhood of that nation be hotter than a bottle of Texas Pete? Oh, hell yes.

“I call them cookout games because if there is ever an argument at the family cookout, then it’s probably about a game like this one.” That’s how it was once explained to me by Ruffin McNeill, a Lumberton, North Carolina, native and former all-star ECU defender who became the coach at his alma mater in 2010 and led the Pirates to four bowls in six years before he was controversially dismissed. Now Ruff is a special assistant at … wait for it … NC State. “To me, it’s what makes college football the best sport in the world. When you look at your brother or your cousin and you say, ‘You know I love you, but for a few hours this weekend I’m not going to love you as much as I usually do.'”

That’s how a lot of North Carolina families will be rolling Thursday night, especially those who reside between the state capital and the Outer Banks, what we call Down East. From Nags Head to New Bern and Scotland Neck to Smithfield, one giant barrel of red and white and purple and gold, all swirled together in the same living room. And man, do those colors clash.

“So, I’m from Texas, right? We have a lot of really intense rivalries that mean a lot inside the state of Texas but that people outside of Texas don’t really understand,” USC coach Lincoln Riley said earlier this year. He was East Carolina’s offensive coordinator for five years, 2010 to 2014, coaching under McNeill. “When NC State came to our place in 2010, I remember in pregame, it was already so tense. I said, ‘Oh man, this is how this is?’ Ruff said, ‘Yes, it is. Now imagine what it’s going to be like when we go there. Buckle up.'”

BACK TO THE memory banks.

Jan. 1, 1992. The final Peach Bowl was played in Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. It was a drizzly day, but that didn’t prevent nearly 60,000 people from attending the last college football game played at the home of the Braves, soon to be replaced by the Georgia Dome. Both ECU and NC State were in the Top 25. After nearly two decades of annual contests, they hadn’t played since 1987. Why? Because after another win in Raleigh, Pirates fans stormed NC State’s home field and pillaged the goalposts. By this time Valvano was NCSU’s athletic director and, angered by the damage done to his football stadium, he immediately discontinued the series. So, when it came time for the Peach Bowl to send out its invites, the powers-that-be wisely made phone calls to two schools located only 80 miles apart and only a day’s drive down I-85 to their stadium.

There, in the stands, sitting with my family and surrounded by ECU fans, I began openly gloating about State’s imminent victory. After all, the Pack led by 17 points with less than nine minutes remaining. It was over, right? Wrong. Pirates quarterback Jeff Blake, amid chants of “We … believe!” and a sea of foam yellow buccaneer swords, orchestrated a comeback that made him not merely an East Carolina football legend, but the forever Pirates football deity.

I was so bitter about that day for so long that it pained me the first time I finally interviewed Blake, and he was such a genuinely nice guy.

“Everywhere I go, it’s about the ’92 Peach Bowl,” he said to me for a 2014 story about bowl games. Blake threw for more than 21,000 yards over 14 NFL seasons and is now director of the IMG QB Academy in Florida. “If I had won a Super Bowl ring, it would still be second in [Greenville, NC] to people wanting to see my Peach Bowl watch. At a big school, those moments might not mean so much. For the rest of us, those are the moments.”

ECU vs. NCSU has provided so many of those moments.

That game that Lincoln Riley spoke of in 2010 began with a 21-0 ECU lead in the first quarter, but Wolfpack QB Russell Wilson led a comeback of his own, sending the game into OT. But in that extra frame, Wilson was intercepted to secure the victory for the Pirates. It was a revenge game for their last meeting two years earlier, when it was NC State who celebrated at the end of the series’ first-ever overtime contest.

In 2022, ECU had a chance to tie and win the game late but missed a PAT and field goal as time expired, preserving NCSU’s 1-point win. And, oh yeah, there’s their last meeting, only eight months ago in the Military Bowl, where a sellout crowd in Annapolis got a red-hot game and a bloody ref as the result of a fight at the end of the game, à la those drunk dudes in the parking lot in ’83.

Speaking of, I failed to mention this when I shared that story, but those guys totally knew each other. They looked similar. Had the same nose. One even called the other by name. So, it should come as no surprise that the prize awarded for winning this game is directly based on that kind of kinship. The Victory Barrel, which wasn’t introduced until 2007 but has been retroactively marked to represent every result since the series began in 1970, was rolled out with a backstory about two ultracompetitive brothers who grew up on an Eastern North Carolina farm but attended the two different schools. Eventually, they donated the pork barrel that they had once kept in a barn, whittled with the results of their own hometown competitions, for the schools to keep track of their football games.

“Those games are the ones where you look at the other guy and you know that guy, or you at least recognize that guy, because that guy either lives in your neighborhood, or hell, he might be your brother,” explained Jerry Kill when asked about the intensity of overlooked rivalries. Now he’s a special consultant at Vanderbilt. Prior to that, he was the coach at New Mexico State, one half of the Rio Grande Rivalry versus New Mexico, aka the Game When The Diego Pavia Logo Urination Video (ahem) Leaked, which holds its115th edition later this season. “If you like western movies, you know how it works. This town ain’t big enough for the both of us.”

North Carolina has never been big enough for all its college football teams. Tobacco Road has long belonged to what used to be called the Big Four. Beginning at the western edge of the middle region of the state, aka the Piedmont, with Wake Forest, then moving east into the Triangle, with Duke and UNC in the middle and NC State on the eastern flank. But as Appalachian State began to gather steam, it challenged from the mountains after East Carolina did the same from the coast. Both have always coveted the power conference ACC membership of the Big Four, but both have also proudly owned the little brother chip on their shoulder pads. All while Wake and State have done the same, as they’ve had to watch the nation become obsessed with the Blue Devils and Tar Heels during hoops season.

NC State head coach Dave Doeren, who made headlines this summer at ACC media days when asked about ECU and replied, “I want to beat the s— out of that team,” has never shied away from the perceived “haves vs. have-nots” syndrome when it comes to UNC. See: When he also made headlines in 2022 saying, as paraphrased by a TV crew, that NC State is blue collar and UNC is elitist. On the flipside, ECU coach Blake Harrell recently suggested that his entire roster was making less NIL money than Pack QB CJ Bailey.

“Whatever you need to motivate yourself, you do it,” Torry Holt said, laughing, prior to his induction into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame in 2022. The former NC State All-America wide receiver grew up in Gibsonville, North Carolina, just off Tobacco Road. He even picked tobacco as a kid. He also went 1-1 versus East Carolina during his four years with the Pack, highlighted by a backbreaking 68-yard TD catch to open the second half in Raleigh in 1997 that paved the way to a 37-24 win. “The important thing for me is that the last time I played them, we won. We lost the first one. But you don’t want to lose the last one. That was the last time I played them and the last time I will ever play them.”

He laughed again. “So … scoreboard.”

ONE MORE FROM the memory bank. It’s all you need to know about ECU vs. NCSU, and it easily applies to all those other underappreciated pigskin passion plays throughout this great college football nation.

It was spring 1997 and I was a young feature producer for ESPN. My primary beat was NASCAR, and I was covering a race at my hometown Rockingham Speedway. That’s when the governor of North Governor, Jim Hunt, who was an NC State graduate and former NCSU student body president, wandered into the media center during a rain delay, making small talk. He said to us, “You guys are with ESPN? Well, I have a story for you. Our state legislature is introducing a bill to try and mandate that East Carolina plays State every year. Y’all ever been to one of those games?”

I told him that, yes, I had, growing up in Raleigh in the 1980s. My camera operator said he had been a Wolfpack athlete, a swimmer. What we know now is that the bill never passed, but it did lead to more frequent Tobacco Road bookings for the Pirates.

That ’97 day in rainy Rockingham, Hunt sighed. “If that bill passes, then y’all know what I’m going to have to do?”

We looked at the governor, quizzically. He winked. Then he joked. At least I think it was a joke.

“We’re going to need to hire a lot more state troopers for Down East. Or wrestling referees.”

Continue Reading

Sports

Deion’s pitch: Pay players NFL-style playoff bonus

Published

10 hours ago

on

August 28, 2025

By

Deion's pitch: Pay players NFL-style playoff bonus

  • Associated Press

Aug 28, 2025, 08:56 AM ET

Leave it to Deion Sanders to come up with an idea for the College Football Playoff that nobody has really mentioned yet: Pay the players for making the tournament, and pay them more when their teams win.

If they do that, then “now it’s equality, now it’s even and every player is making the same amount of money,” the Colorado coach said.

Sanders and former Alabama coach Nick Saban talked to The Associated Press as part of their unveiling of a new Aflac commercial that rolls out this week with a storyboard ripped from today’s headlines: It opens with Sanders complaining: “This game has gotten out of control. All the money. All the unpredictability.”

He is talking about health insurance, of course, and the commissioner he wants to see run it isn’t Saban, but that kooky duck who wears the same powder-blue sportscoat as the two football legends.

It’s an endorsement that Sanders says hits home some two years after his diagnosis with bladder cancer, from which he says he is fully recovered.

“I’ve been walking with my coaches over a mile” after practice, he said ahead of Friday night’s season opener against Georgia Tech. “Exercising, lifting.”

Saban will be back on the set with ESPN in his second year of “retirement” after leaving the Crimson Tide, where he won six national titles. He insists he wants to help college sports find its footing, but not via a commissioner job that was floated last year with his name coming up as the ideal fit.

“I don’t want to be in that briar patch of being a commissioner, but I do want to do everything I can to make it right,” he said.

He and Sanders agreed that there needs to be more structure around the deals players sign. Since July 1, schools have been able to start paying up to $20.5 million each to their athletes over the next year under the House settlement alongside third-party NIL deals that have turned some players into millionaires.

Saban said he believes that forgotten amid all the hype about name, image and likeness deals — deals Sanders says are a joke because “there are only three or four guys who you might know their NIL, and the rest you’re just giving money to” — is what happens to the vast majority of these players after they leave school.

“For years and years and years as coaches, and when we were players, we learned this, we’re trying to create value for our future,” Saban said. “That’s why we’re going to college. It’s not just to see how much money we can make while we’re in college. It’s, how does that impact your future as far as our ability to create value for ourselves?”

Currently, conferences whose schools advance to the 12-team playoff receive $4 million for making the bracket, with payments increasing for every round they win.

Saban said Sanders’ idea about spreading the wealth with an NFL-style playoff bonus structure for players (winners of the Super Bowl got $171,000 last year) sounded like a good idea to him. He also had no love for proposals coming out of the Big Ten that would give that league and the Southeastern Conference multiple automatic bids.

“The NFC East has the Cowboys, Eagles and Giants, they have the biggest fan bases of anyone and they have to play their way in,” Saban said. “Everyone should play their way in. One year, a conference might get five teams in, another it might get three. But there’s no [scenario] in any competitive venue where you get a guaranteed playoff spot.”

Continue Reading

Trending