The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
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26 ■ THE WOLFPACKER 50 1966 2016 Bostian was talked out of dropping foot- ball, but he also knew the program needed a new leader to establish a tradition that could not be accomplished at Riddick Sta- dium. He found that person in former Penn State player and assistant Earle Edwards, who was hired for the 1954 season, just after the Wolfpack began play in the ACC. As the offensive coordinator, he had just helped Michigan State win the 1953 na- tional championship, and he was certain he could build a winner in Raleigh, even though State had just one bowl appearance in its first six decades of play and just eight winning seasons since joining the Southern Conference in 1921. Riddick was not conducive to building a successful program. It had been built in piecemeal fashion not far from the school's original structure, Holladay Hall. It served as the home for football, baseball and track until they all found a better place to compete. From the day it opened as the New Athletic Field in 1907 until the concrete grandstands were completed in 1939 — with each completed section coming from senior class donations — Riddick was a work in slow progress. Almost as soon as Riddick was finished, it began to fall into disrepair and obsoles- cence, so much so that Edwards and his team never played more than four home games a year in the 20,000-seat facility with poor lights, no permanent locker rooms and an afterthought open-air press box. At one point, the annual game against North Carolina was permanently moved to Chapel Hill, with the two rivals taking turns in alternating seasons as the home team. "I don't want to be overly critical," said Bill Hensley, NC State's sports information director from 1955-60. "But it was a very poor facility. It just wasn't something befit- ting a Division I football program." From 1948-65, the Wolfpack never played more games at home than it did on the road. Edwards regularly scheduled road games against teams that would offer guarantees of up to $25,000 to help pay the football program's operating expenses and build momentum for a new stadium. Despite the lack of home-field advan- tage, Edwards led his team to ACC titles in 1957, '63, '64 and '65 while playing in Riddick. Edwards is still the winningest coach in NC State football history, even though he has an overall 77-88-8 career record. Even more than success on the field, Edwards wanted a home his program could take pride in. PLANNING A NEW PLACE In 1962, a feasibility report was finally commissioned with local engineering and architectural firm L.E. Wooten Company to study the possibilities for replacing Rid- dick. On Dec. 14, 1964, Edwards joined university dignitaries, athletics department officials and the rest of the football staff with some heavy equipment in the center of a 75-acre plot of land next to the fair- grounds. It was old family farmland, first owned by Raleigh founder Joel Lane and sold in tracts by the hundreds of acres to several generations of Wake County land- owners. Twice the land was converted to military training grounds, for thousands of Confed- erate soldiers at Camp Mangum during the Civil War and even more U.S. Army troops at Camp Polk during World War I. It was leased by the Army as the nation's only tank training facility, but was abandoned when the war abruptly ended on Nov. 11, 1919. On Jan. 1, 1920, the state of North Caro- lina prison system took over the land and subdivided it between NC State, Meredith College and the state fairgrounds. For years, NC State's agriculture department and the prison used the land to grow alfalfa hay and barley. Originally, based on Wooten's plans, the stadium would have been done in time for the 1964 season, but first financing needed to be finalized. A seven-member commit- tee, chaired by Raleigh businessman Walker Martin, was formed. It included E.N. Rich- ards, Cliff Benson, James Poyner and Micou Carter-Finley Stadium opened in 1966 and remained largely unchanged until 1999, when a $100 million renovation plan started becoming a reality. FILE PHOTO