The kid weighed 105 pounds the day he reported to Boyden coach Bill Ludwig in 1947.
They put him at center, but the tiniest shoulder pads available were still a poor fit for his scrawny frame. The pads slid down over his face whenever he lowered his head to snap the ball.
So they made Jerry Barger a fullback. The rest is history.
He never got very big.
In his prime, he was 5-foot-10, 170 pounds. He never had a sprinter’s speed or a rocket arm. Yet he was smart enough and slick enough to lead Duke to a 28-12-3 record in his four years. He was on the field 60 minutes, kicking and returning kicks as well as going both ways at quarterback and safety.
At Duke, he was backed up two seasons by Sonny Jurgensen, the same Jurgensen who threw 255 TD passes in the NFL.
“Still my claim to fame,” Barger said with a laugh.
Barger, now 77, was ACC Player of the Year in 1954, but he remains humble.
“Well, I remember trying to play basketball in the days when Duke had Dick Groat,” Barger said. “I played in one freshman game. They told me it might be best for me to concentrate on football.”
Even now, Barger has a hard time explaining what he had that others didn’t.
“I know I was at the right place at the right time a lot, and I always had a very competitive nature,” he said. “The biggest thing probably was those great coaches I had at Boyden and Duke.”
Boyden coaches Ludwig, Joe Ferebee, Derwood Huneycutt and M.L. Barnes were tough-minded men who had just fought World War II when Barger arrived.
“We got a military-style discipline and learned fundamentals,” Barger said. “We were mighty blessed to have men like that teaching us.”
Barger was good at baseball and basketball, but it was in football that he starred. He was Ludwig’s fullback until his final year. Then he switched to tailback, the key position in the single-wing offense.
In 1949, Barger scored a TD that beat Charlotte Central 6-0. That was the first score in the venue now known as Ludwig Stadium.
All-Southern and an All-American in his final season, Barger was a North Carolina fan because Charlie “Choo Choo” Justice’s magical career was unfolding in Chapel Hill. Most of Salisbury followed the Tar Heels.
“Justice was my idol,” Barger said.
After he helped North Carolina romp in the 1950 Shrine Bowl, Barger was in demand. But he was an old senior who had graduated after the first semester and was nearly 19. With bullets flying in Korea, He was draft material.
Duke provided an alternative to Korea ó immediate enrollment in an Air Force ROTC program that would postpone his military obligation. When the calendar turned to 1951, the UNC fan was a Blue Devil.
Duke’s new coach was Bill Murray, and Murray’s forte was the complex Split-T offense. Barger was now a quarterback and started learning plays. Freshmen would be eligible with Korea draining manpower.
In the fall of 1951, it was right place, right time.
“We had two senior quarterbacks, but one breaks his ankle and one hurts his knee before our first game down at South Carolina,” Barger said. “I was so young, nervous, totally unprepared, but we had good boys on that team. Undersized boys, but good ones. Sometimes, you fool yourself. I ran the option, threw a few passes.”
One pass was the first official TD throw of his life, and Duke beat the Gamecocks 34-6. Duke was in the Southern Conference then, and Barger was the league’s Freshman of the Week.
The TD toss was Barger’s only one of 1951. He threw only 64 times that year, but he directed Murray’s offense precisely. Duke was 5-4-1 and finished by beating UNC. That’s the game in which Barger was injured.
“I didn’t get a bruise all season until the end of the Carolina game,” Barger said. “A lineman tackled me and crushed my knee. They took me from the field straight to the hospital.”
He’d torn cartilage, potentially a career-ending scenario in 1951, but Dr. Lenox Baker, who had worked on Babe Ruth, operated. Then Barger rehabbed by riding a bike.
In 1952, Barger was back on the field. He hurt the other knee, but he never missed a game. He set a school record for interceptions. He picked off six passes in 1953 and seven more in 1954, and it’s not like teams were airing it out.
Twice, Barger was named national back of the week by wire services. In 1953, the same year Barger married former Boyden drum majorette Claudette Shaw, Duke beat Purdue on a bootleg run by Barger with 37 seconds left.
In 1954, Barger was honored after Duke erased a 20-0 deficit in the fourth quarter to beat Georgia Tech.
The ACC was born in 1953. Duke won the first two titles. Barger, twice All-ACC, showed the way.
The last regular-season game of his career against UNC was memorable. He intercepted three passes.
“I was 4-0 against my good friends over in Chapel Hill,” Barger said.
Not long after that game, a telegram from the Charlotte Observer let Barger know he was their Carolinas Player of the Year and would be honored at at a banquet. A few weeks later, a phone call informed him the banquet was cancelled. No one was coming. There wasn’t much interest in honoring a Duke guy.
“Charlotte was a Carolina town,” Barger said. “And they’d already given that award the year before to my teammate Bob Burrows.”
Beating the Tar Heels put Duke in the Orange Bowl, and Barger directed a rout of Nebraska in his final college game.
After the Orange Bowl and a two-pick performance in the Senior Bowl all-star game, Barger was drafted in the 23rd round by the Chicago Bears,
“George Halas called me, and I asked him what the Bears were offering,” Barger said. “He said they’d give me $5,400 for 10 games, just like all the other rookies.”
Barger would have reported, but it was time to fulfill his military duty. In early February of 1955, he was sworn into the Air Force as a second lieutenant.
He served mostly a player/coach for the team at Shaw Air Force Base, near Sumter, S.C., and service ball was at its peak level.
“The NFL wasn’t that good then because they weren’t paying much,” Barger said. “I honestly believe our Air Force team may have made the NFL playoffs. Every service team was loaded with great college players. We played a team with two Heisman winners in the same backfield. We beat (Green Bay QB) Bart Starr’s Air Force team.”
Barger was contacted by the Denver Broncos when the AFL was forming in 1959, but he was a 27-year-old family man by then and declined.
Barger’s last competitive game was in December of 1956, when Shaw AFB played against the army team representing, Fort Jackson, S.C. Ludwig made the trip to watch Barger play his last game. That speaks volumes about how special Barger was.
Duke agreed he was special. In 1996, Barger entered the school’s athletic Hall of Fame. He was inducted alongside basketball legends Mike Gminski and Johnny Dawkins.