Share
CHAPEL HILL Few, if any, North Carolina football players had ever heard of Joe Montana before Oct.11, 1975. Since that humid, heart-wrenching, historic day, he's been awfully hard to forget.
Before Montana's “Chicken Soup” rally at the Cotton Bowl in 1979 or “The Catch” at Candlestick in 1982, a 19-year-old unknown led The Comeback at Kenan – when he jogged onto the field with 6 minutes, 4 seconds left and led Notre Dame to two touchdowns and a 21-14 victory.
No one knew it at the time, but the sophomore who didn't even start the next game for the Fighting Irish would go on to lead 35 more fourth-quarter comebacks (four in college, 31 in the NFL), win four Super Bowl rings and become one of the game's greatest quarterbacks.
And it all began here, where the No.22 Tar Heels will face the Fighting Irish again on Saturday, 33 years later to the day.
Said Bill Paschall, UNC's starting quarterback that season: “I wish the other guy, their starting quarterback, had done a little better – just enough so they didn't have to put a new guy in. If they hadn't put Montana in, I believe we would have won that game.”
There's plenty of reason to think so. Through 31/2 quarters, the Tar Heels – 2-2, but three-touchdown underdogs to the No. 15 Irish – “had played them like crazy,” said Bill Perdue, a junior defensive end that year.
“We had beaten them every which way – on offense, on defense.”
Several Notre Dame players remember they were so bothered by the heat and humidity that they struggled to play in the second half.
Meanwhile, UNC's Mike Voight had already rushed for a touchdown, Mel Collins had caught a touchdown from Paschall, and the nattily dressed capacity crowd, which paid the jacked-up price of $10 per ticket, was excited by the Irish's first trip to Chapel Hill since 1960.
UNC was leading 14-6, and Irish starter Rick Slager had thrown three straight incomplete passes, when coach Dan Devine opted to make a change behind center.
When a tall, skinny guy wearing No. 3 ran onto the field, reporters in the press box and players on the field scrambled to figure out who he was.
“You'd never heard of him, because he got off to a bad start with coach Devine,” said Dan Kelleher, a junior split end for the Irish that season.
“I'm not saying he was a bad practice guy; he always did what had to be done … but maybe not always exactly the way coach wanted it.”
Montana could not be reached for an interview.
As a freshman in 1974, Montana – a three-sport athlete from Monongahela, Pa., who had turned down a basketball scholarship at N.C. State – ranked as low as seventh on the depth chart.
On his first series, he completed two passes – a 10-yarder to Ted Burgmeier and a 39-yarder to Kelleher – to set up a 2-yard touchdown run by halfback Al Hunter, a native of Greenville, N.C.. A 2-point conversion pass to tight end Doug Buth tied the score at 14 with 5:11 left.
Like his 16 seasons in the NFL would show, Montana wasn't particularly fast and he didn't have a cannon for an arm, but he had an instinct for getting the ball down the field.
“If (Garry) Kasparov was a chess genius, Montana was a visual, defense-reading genius,” Kelleher said. “I don't think there's another guy who could walk up to the line of scrimmage and not know where the ball was going until he saw the movement of the linebacker or safety or corner, and then he knew right where it was going to go.”
“Everybody liked to say Joe didn't have a strong arm, but he knew how to put it where you needed to catch it.”
That was embodied on that warm autumn day in 1975, too.
After UNC missed a 41-yard field goal attempt, Montana took the field, threw his only incompletion, and with 1:04 left, found Burgmeier about 7 yards upfield. The end then raced 80 yards down the left sideline for a touchdown.
The extra point gave Notre Dame the decisive 21-14 lead with 58 seconds left; Montana finished 3-for-4 with 129 passing yards.
It was the only touchdown of Burgmeier's career. He was moved to defense after that.
The Irish went on to finish that season 8-3, and Saturday will mark their first return to UNC since.
“No, I'd never heard of Joe Montana before the game,” said then-UNC coach Bill Dooley, who had two Catholic priests on the sideline that day for extra luck. “But I've gotten to know him since. And I remember him telling me how his coaches didn't start him the next game, either.”
The following weekend, Montana came off the bench in the fourth quarter again, leading the Irish to a three-touchdown, come-from-behind victory against Air Force.
The “Joe Cool” born in Chapel Hill was not a fluke. And The Comeback at Kenan became one for the books.
“Obviously, I rather would not have been a part of that history,” said Perdue, who now owns several companies in Asheville.
“But it does come up in conversation from time to time; you'll be talking about the greatest quarterbacks ever, and that will lead to Joe Montana, and I'll say, ‘He brought them back against my North Carolina team when I was a junior.' I'll never forget it.”
Montana, who went on to become a three-time Super Bowl MVP and NFL Hall of Famer, has made sure of it.
