The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/790572
86 ■ THE WOLFPACKER BY TIM PEELER F or the first three-quarters of a century of NC State football, coaches rarely ever ventured into the deep south for recruits, particularly after nine schools broke away from the Southern Conference to form the Southeastern Conference in 1933. The Wolfpack's earliest coaches relied on homegrown talent, especially in lean financial times, and the school's most suc- cessful coach, Earle Edwards, pulled his best recruits from his strongholds in Penn- sylvania and the Midwest, built upon his years as an assistant at his alma mater, Penn State, and Michigan State. Lou Holtz and Bo Rein expanded that base to Tidewater Virginia and Ohio through the 1970s and '80s, areas that both Monte Kiffin and Tom Reed continued to cultivate throughout their short tenures leading the program. It really wasn't until Dick Sheridan came along, however, that the Wolfpack got a toehold into the deep south, and one of the people most responsible for that was Joe Pate, who was an assistant coach for NC State football and then an assistant athlet- ics director until his retirement 10 years ago this year. Sheridan hired the Alabama-born Pate as his first defensive coordinator when he took over the program in 1986. The two were Southern Conference foes when Sher- idan was head coach at Furman and Pate was an assistant at Tennessee-Chattanooga. "It was a great fit for me to come here with Coach Sheridan," said the 71-year-old Pate. "He was a very detailed person, and brought a lot excellent football coaches with him from Furman, like Robbie Caldwell, Steve Robertson, Jeff Snipes and Ted Cain. It was just a really good group to work with. "We managed to have some success." Pate's tenuous knowledge of NC State dated back though to 1964, when he was a high school senior in Ashford, Ala., already accepted into the University of Alabama. He attended every Crimson Tide home game, so he was in the stands on Oct. 11, 1964, when Edwards' 12th-ranked Wolfpack in- vaded Denny Stadium to face quarterback Joe Namath and head coach Bear Bryant in a matchup of the eventual champions of the Atlantic Coast and Southeastern conferences. Edwards frequently traveled to the Gulf Coast states for road games. They had played in Tuscaloosa in 1961 and in Mobile to play Mississippi Southern (now Southern Miss). Pate saw a career-defining moment for Namath that afternoon, as he suffered a knee injury against the Wolfpack defense that kept him out of Vietnam and plagued him throughout his professional career as the brash-talking quarterback of the New York Jets. The Tide easily won that day and was later declared the national champions for the season, despite losing to Texas in the Orange Bowl with a hobbled Namath under center in the first college bowl game ever played in prime time. Little did Pate know that he would end up having a profound influence on the for- tunes of the Crimson Tide's opponent that early October afternoon. After he graduated from Alabama, Pate became a high school coach in the north- ern part of his home state for more than a decade, before becoming a college assistant and recruiting the state for seven years. He made an immediate impact on Sheri- dan's first recruiting class by bringing in defensive lineman Kenny Fondren of Hart- ford, Ala. Sheridan's second class included three Alabama natives who eventually be- came starters for the Wolfpack: All-ACC cornerback Fernandus "Snake" Vinson and safety James Foshee of Montgomery and linebacker Lee Knight of Huntsville. "It was just natural for me to recruit that area," said Pate, who still lives in the Ra- leigh area. "NC State always had a good reputation in the state, academically and as a good place to go. I just knew a lot of the coaches, especially ones whose opinions I valued, not only on their players but on other peoples' players at other schools. "The first really, really good player we got from there was Fernandus Vinson. Au- burn had offered him, but he and his mom wanted him to go out of state, and once he came it became easier to bring others. Most years we could get one or two players from down there." Pate left NC State for seven years to be part of Jack Crow's staff at Arkansas, but returned to Raleigh under head coach ■ PACK PAST In 2000, An Assistant Coach From Alabama Made A Monumental Impact On Signing Day While an assistant coach at NC State, Joe Pate was most famous for signing record-setting and long-time NFL veterans quarterback Philip Rivers and receiver Jerricho Cotchery. PHOTO COURTESY NC STATE MEDIA RELATIONS