The Wolfpacker

July 2014 - Football Preview

The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports

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148 ■ THE WOLFPACKER BY TIM PEELER W endell Murphy vividly remembers the first time he went to a big-time college sporting event. The sheltered farm boy from Rose Hill, N.C., piled into a car full of fellow freshmen for a trip to Chapel Hill's Kenan Stadium, where NC State's football team always had to play the Tar Heels because its own Riddick Stadium was too small and outdated. Murphy walked wide-eyed into the sta- dium, an unknowledgeable sporting rube not too far off from Andy Griffith's character in "What it Was Was Football," based on the comedian's own first trip to UNC's campus. "We didn't have a football team at my high school, so I didn't know much about the game," Murphy said. "I didn't know the rules, and I didn't know what they were trying to do — I didn't know anything. "But I could read the scoreboard, and it said NC State 26, UNC 6. I was hooked on football immediately." Truth be told, Murphy has been hooked on sports since he first found the New York Yan- kees broadcasts on his family's radio, staying up as late as he could every night to listen to his boyhood heroes. He was a Bronx Bomber fan before he was 10. He fell in love with basketball as a teenager, but he was a slight young fellow with no chance of making his high school team. So he talked his way into being the team scorekeeper and traveled to every game with a scorebook under his arm. When he got to NC State — a place he had seen only when his school bus passed the campus on its way to his annual trip to the State Fair — he became a vocal fan, cheering on the school's first ACC football champion- ship in 1957 and the last of Everett Case's 10 conference basketball titles in 1959. "When I was a student, we picked up our tickets two or three days before ballgames," Murphy said. "I was always the first one in line. I always had front row, center court seats on the east side of the building. The team benches were on the west side. I wanted to be on the other side so I could see what was going on." But here's the simple truth that even he readily admits: Wendell H. Murphy is one of the least athletic people you will ever meet. He never played organized sports, not even Little League baseball. So it came as quite a ■ PACK PAST Wendell Murphy Has Had A Huge Impact On NC State And Wolfpack Sports Murphy, shown here with his son Dell, made one of his first big contributions to NC State athletics with this Wolfpack helmet cart, and his generos- ity has continued over a span of decades. PHOTO COURTESY NC STATE MEDIA RELATIONS 148-151.Pack Past.indd 148 6/27/14 10:16 AM

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