Extra Points: '63 Team Turns 50
October 24, 2013 | Football, Featured Writers, Lee Pace
by Lee Pace, GoHeels.com
CHAPEL HILL -- It had been 13 years since Carolina had been to a bowl game, that the 1950 Cotton Bowl with a team led by Charlie Justice and Art Weiner. It had been ten years since the launch of the Atlantic Coast Conference, and the Tar Heels had yet to win the league title in football. It had been four years since the death of coach Jim Tatum had rocked the world of Carolina football, sending the Tar Heels into a tailspin of 16 wins and 24 losses over the first four years of coach Jim Hickey's tenure.
The good news, proclaimed The Charlotte Observer on the eve of the 1963 football season, was that the Tar Heels had 18 returning lettermen.
The bad news, the newspaper continued, was that they were the same players who went 3-7 the year before. "But we knew we could play, even if no one else did," says Gene Sigmon, a senior tackle and one of the team's captains. "What you had was the last of Tatum's recruits and the first of Hickey's recruiting classes. It was awesome. We had some guys who could really play and we had some great coaches. Five of us were seniors and had been redshirted and we had a determination to go out as winners."
"We were tired of losing," adds Joe Robinson, another fifth-year senior and an end. "We'd had enough. We had a mindset that we were going to get it done. Like any good program, we had to learn how to win. It was about time to show what we were worth."
The 8-2 regular season and 35-0 pounding of Air Force in the Gator Bowl represented the high-water mark of the eight-year Hickey era. He was a native of Springdale, Pa., and a 1942 graduate of William & Mary College and first worked with Tatum in 1956, when Tatum moved from Maryland back to his alma mater in Chapel Hill. At 5-foot-10 and 170 pounds, Hickey was called "Little Jim" on the staff while Tatum was known as "Big Jim," standing some six inches and 80 pounds larger than Hickey.
Soon after Tatum died of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever in July 1959, Hickey was given the head coaching job and a three-year contract. There's no question there was some adjustment to be made in the coaches' personalities—Tatum jovial and gregarious and Hickey more calm, collected, introspective and businesslike. Hickey was described in one press release as a "perfectionist rather than a thrill-seeker." One player said the words to label the head coach were "consistent and steady."
Carolina could manage no better than 5-5, 3-7, 5-5 and 3-7 records during Hickey's first four seasons, but by year five all the pieces were in place. He had an outstanding coaching staff. Bud Carson, a Carolina defensive back in the early 1950s, directed the defense and was running zone blitzes long before Dom Capers popularized them in the NFL. Vito Raggazo and Joe Mark were the key offensive assistants. Bob Thalman was another assistant coach before going on to the head coaching job at VMI. Chapel Hill native Emmett Cheek played on Carl Snavely's great Tar Heel teams in the 1940s, worked for Tatum at Maryland and was the key administrator and scout on the staff.
"Vito Ragazzo was ahead of his time in the passing game and was doing things no one else was doing," Sigmon says. "Coach Hickey took the staff to Green Bay and they learned the Packers' Pro-I set and we installed that in spring practice. Then on defense, Bud Carson was a genius. He was the most intense person. He lived and breathed football."
Carson left Carolina after the 1964 season to go to Georgia Tech and then to the pros. He was the innovative architect of Pittsburgh's "Steel Curtain" defense while serving as the Steelers' defensive coordinator from 1972-77. He shaped a defense led by Joe Greene, Jack Ham and Jack Lambert into one of the best in NFL history. Years later, Carson remembered the 1960 Tar Heel team beating Notre Dame 12-7 and the 1961 squad nudging Tennessee 22-21 with providing a foundation to the success in 1963.
"We were struggling to find ourselves in those days," Carson said in 2002. "We were just an average football team, trying to get over the hump. Those games gave our players some confidence they'd lacked. It was difficult building a program at that time. The General College seemed to be flunking out half of the football team every time you turned around. Academically, it was very tough at Carolina. We didn't have the tutoring staffs and counseling support they have today.
"Those wins were the building blocks. We had the great year in '63, then for whatever reason couldn't sustain it."
Two of the Tar Heels' best players went on to lengthy careers in the NFL—eventual Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee Chris Hanburger as a head-hunting linebacker for the Washington Redskins and Ken Willard as a powerful running back for the San Francisco 49ers.
Hanburger was born at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, graduated from high school in Hampton, Va., and spent two years in military service before enrolling at Carolina in the fall of 1961. The 6-foot, 190-pounder played end on both sides of the ball as a sophomore in 1962 and moved to center/linebacker in 1963, where he earned first-team All-ACC honors as a junior and senior.
"Chris was something else," Robinson says. "He had been in the military before college, so he was more mature than the rest of us, physically and mentally. He knew exactly where he was in life and where he was going. He was a no-nonsense kind of guy, but he enjoyed the camaraderie, the members of the team and playing football. Obviously he was very good at the game."
Willard came to Carolina from Richmond, bringing 16 varsity letters in four sports on his resumé. He was a three-time All-ACC player in football from 1962-64 and made the All-ACC baseball team in 1964; he was tabbed for All-America honors in football in 1964 by Playboy magazine, the College Coaches Association and Parade magazine. At 6-2, 220 pounds, the Carolina media guide in 1963 termed him "a real hoss" and a "keg of dynamite."
The Tar Heels also possessed a gifted end in Bob Lacey, an All-ACC selection coming off a 1962 season in which he caught 44 passes for 688 yards and five touchdowns. Lacey stood 6-3, 210 pounds and had been a formidable decathlon athlete in high school. He would earn All-ACC and All-American designations in 1963. Sadly the lingering effects of a knee injury his senior year doused any hopes of a productive pro football career.
"I've watched Carolina football for 50 years and the two best receivers I've seen are Hakeem Nicks and Bob Lacey," says Sigmon. "Bob was big and lanky and could run like a deer. He was making one-handed catches long before you started seeing them every weekend on TV highlights."
Tackle Frank Gallagher would later play with Detroit and Minnesota in the NFL. Quarterback Junior Edge and guard Jerry Cabe earned All-ACC honors that year. Dave Braine would have a noteworthy career in athletic administration, serving as athletic director at Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech. Sandy Kinney would return to coach the Tar Heels as an assistant under Bill Dooley and would follow Dooley to Virginia Tech and Wake Forest. Robinson went into coaching and athletic administration and was recruiting coordinator at Carolina for two years in the early stages of the Mack Brown era. Sophomore Max Chapman kicked the game-winning field goal to edge Duke 16-14 in the season finale and later went on to a successful career on Wall Street.
Of the 84 players on the roster, 37 were from North Carolina and an equal number were from the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. Interestingly, there was just one player from a state south of North Carolina. "We had solid guys all down the roster," Robinson says. "You can have great leaders, but if you've got a bunch of rotten apples in the barrel, they'll spoil the whole bunch. Everyone on the team had to recognize that it meant something, it was important to be a winner."
"We had a bunch of guys who loved to compete and loved to be around one another," Sigmon adds. "We won the campus intramural basketball championship one year and finished second another. We did everything together off the field and had a bunch of really good athletes."
Carolina opened the season by beating Virginia in Kenan Stadium 11-7, then lost at Michigan State, 31-0. After that, the Tar Heels reeled off five straight wins before falling to Clemson, 11-7. They beat Miami and Duke to end the season. Among the wins was a 31-10 thrashing of NC State in the dedication game for the newly expanded Kenan Memorial Stadium, which now had upper decks and end zone bleacher seating, increasing capacity to 48,000. The Tar Heels and Wolfpack finished tied atop the ACC standings with 6-1 records and were officially deemed "co-champions," though the Tar Heels have always considered themselves the champions by virtue of their lopsided win over the team they tied.
The Tar Heels accepted a Gator Bowl bid and spent a week over Christmas and New Year's ensconced at the opulent Ponce de Leon Hotel in St. Augustine. They intercepted five Air Force passes and recovered two fumbles without losing a turnover themselves and pounded the Falcons, 35-0. Willard ran for 94 yards on 18 carries and scored one touchdown.
The 1963 team will celebrate its golden anniversary this weekend with a dinner Friday night in the Blue Zone and recognition during Saturday's game. Robinson says he expects some 45 members of that team to attend. "We've got a lot of excitement generated over this reunion," Robinson says. "It will be fun to be a team again. It's not about being honored or the notoriety, it's about being with your teammates. Once you're a part of a team, you never lose that esprit de corps."