CHAPEL HILL-- When he was a youngster, North Carolina football coach Carl Torbush made
regular train trips from Knoxville, Tenn., where his family had moved, back to his old
hometown of East Spencer-- just to play Little League baseball.That was a long way to go just to play ball.
Torbush found out Saturday afternoon at Kenan
Stadium that his Tar Heels have an even longer distance to travel before they can even
think about playing ball with the Florida State Seminoles.
The Tar Heels were finished before they got
started in an early-season showdown with coach Bobby Bowden's No. 1-ranked Seminoles, who
had a 28-0 lead before late-arriving fans had even figured out the location of their
baby-blue seats.
"It was like a nightmare, and we couldn't
wake up," moaned Torbush. "It was just boom, boom, boom and boom, and we were
out of it."
That was four booms if you're counting. And they
rendered the last 53 minutes of the game little more than "garbage time"
for disappointed Tar Heel fans.
The first boom was an impressive 80-yard,
game-opening drive by the Seminoles that Travis Minor finished with a 14-yard saunter into
paydirt.
"We wanted to come out and set ourselves
apart from everyone else," Minor said.
That's putting it mildly.
Moments after Minor's TD, Carolina QBRonald Curry
fumbled on one of his patented scrambles. The Seminoles recovered, and a few seconds
later, Minor was having some major fun in the end zone. That boom made it 14-0 and hit the
mute button on a Carolina cheering section that was in full force on the opening kickoff.
The Seminole avalanche continued when Curry fired
a pass into the waiting arms of safety Sean Key, who took the ball 25 yards past the
stunned Heels for another TD. That play gave the Seminoles 14 points in 13 seconds--
a pretty decent ratio-- and a 21-0 lead.
It was 28-0 after devastating Peter Warrick
zig-zagged a punt return 75 yards through the Tar Heels special-teamers.
No Carolina team had surrendered 28 points in the
first quarter in three decades-- not since the Florida Gators turned the trick on them in
1969. But 28 Seminole points were on the board after 6 minutes, 57 seconds.
Josh McGee kicked a field goal in the second
quarter for the Heels to finally generate some polite applause from the home side, but the
Seminoles answered with yet another touchdown just before halftime on a Chris Weinke pass
to Atrews Bell to make it 35-3.
That play emptied out Kenan Stadium as if someone
had called in a bomb threat.
Half the announced crowd of 60,000 was off
watching the Ryder Cup on TV or mingling on Franklin Street by the time second-half play
got under way.
That second half was basically a 30-minute cure
for anyone's insomnia. Both teams scored on a 1-yard run, both teams played everyone in
uniform and both teams looked sloppy.
But one thing was perfectly clear after that first
fateful handful of minutes. The Seminoles (4-0, 3-0 ACC) are a lot bigger, a lot faster
and a lot deeper than the Tar Heels (1-2, 0-2).
When you play football with Bowden, he holds all
the cards. And to prove it, he played 52 players in the first quarter alone. An
additional 18 Seminoles joined the fun after that.
"We played so many people that I guess we
lost continuity," said Bowden, whose hardest job is divvying up playing time among
his host of prep All-Americas. "Early on, they just couldn't stop us, but we never
could get it really cranking again."
Still, the Seminoles chugged along well enough to
give Bowden his 296th career win, and well enough to sink the Tar Heels to their first 0-2
ACC start in the '90s.
"You can't spot a team like Florida State 28
points and have any kind of chance to come back," said Curry, whose yo-yo day
included three interceptions, five sacks and a fumble. "They were everything I
expected and then some."
n
NOTES: Unbelievably, the Tar Heels trailed 21-0
before they managed a first down. ... Weinke threw two interceptions, but also had 272
passing yards. ... The Seminoles are 32-4 when they are the No.1-ranked team. ... North
Carolina hadn't played a No.1-ranked team since the 'Noles beat them at Kenan in 1993. ...
This was Florida State's first road game. Ironically, the Seminoles stayed in the same
hotel they stayed in when they were upset by N.C. State in Raleigh last year. ...
Florida State has 45 NFL players, and will have quite a few more off its current team. ...
The Tar Heels badly missed injured linebacker Brandon Spoon. ... North Carolina is 0-10-1
against the Seminoles. |
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