By R.L. Bynum
When Carolina welcomes No. 3 Notre Dame to Kenan Stadium on Saturday, I will be thinking about the day in 1975 when I stood behind Paul Hornung and Lindsey Nelson at the top of the old press box as a kid without a ticket, a credential or an invitation.
That was 51 years ago, and the press box was never part of the plan. The plan was only to get into the stadium, because the powerhouse Irish, ranked No. 15, were visiting Kenan Stadium for the first time since 1960, and I didn’t have a ticket. That wasn’t going to stop me.
A couple of years earlier, I worked in a trailer selling hot dogs inside the stadium during Carolina games. It was a pretty good deal: I got there early in the morning, made $10 (which seemed like a lot at the time) and could watch most of the second half on many days. The job also taught me something useful: back then, they didn’t lock the gates until late in the morning.
On a typically perfect fall day in Chapel Hill, with temperatures in the high 70s, I rode a town bus to campus from my Franklin Street house, just down from Brady’s Restaurant (near where the Siena Hotel now stands). I made the trip early, figuring I could sneak in before the gates were locked and the ticket-takers were in place, and the plan worked perfectly.
With hours to kill, I walked around the stadium and hoped nobody would send me back outside. As I explored, I noticed that the entrance to the west side of the old press box on the south side of the stadium was open and that nobody was blocking it, so I figured, what the heck, and walked in to look around.
I felt more at home than I probably should have. I went to every Chapel Hill High football game with my dad, home and away, because he took film (yes, back then it was film) of the games for the Tigers’ coaching staff, and I sat with him at the top of the press box or on a roof. This press box was bigger and higher, but the routine was familiar.
I eventually ended up near the top, and amazingly nobody asked what I was doing there, apparently because everybody assumed I was with somebody else. I took in the scene while I could, expecting someone to run me off at any moment, and no one ever did.
The best seat in the house
I spent the entire game standing behind the old Notre Dame television broadcast team of Hornung and Nelson. They were recording a syndicated broadcast to be shown nationwide on Sunday morning, and because all of the action didn’t fit into the broadcast window, Americans often heard a familiar phrase on those mornings: “We now move to further action in the same series of plays.”
Staying quiet and not reacting was difficult, especially when UNC amazingly took a second-half lead. Even so, standing behind a broadcasting legend and a Hall of Fame football player and hearing their calls live, which I usually heard on TV Sunday mornings, was incredible.
After a scoreless first half, the Tar Heels took a 14–0 lead and still led the mighty Irish entering the fourth quarter. I could hardly believe I was getting away with watching a potential upset from the top of the old, cramped press box.
The quarterback nobody knew
With a little more than five minutes left and Notre Dame trailing 14–6, the Irish replaced their starting quarterback. I wasn’t familiar with the backup. By the time he finished engineering a crazy comeback and a 21–14 Irish victory, with more than 100 passing yards in only a few minutes on the field, I had made a note of his name.
He turned out to have a fairly decent career: Joe Montana.
Montana created a wild ending to this adventure (Bob Holliday goes into more detail about the game here), and I saw it all from the old Kenan Stadium press box, standing behind a couple of legends. With the game tied at 14, UNC kicker Tom Biddle missed a 41-yard field-goal attempt with 1:19 left, leaving plenty of time for Montana, even though the Irish drive started at their 20.
Montana connected on a short pass to Ted Burgmeier, who also hadn’t started the game, and Burgmeier sprinted past UNC defensive back Jeff Caldwell and down the left sideline on an 80-yard scoring play with 1:03 left. On the game’s final play, a UNC pass into the end zone fell incomplete.
Saturday will be only the Irish’s fifth visit to Kenan Stadium since that day in 1975, which didn’t produce a Carolina win.
But it was a personal victory for one Chapel Hill kid.
