Longest Bowl Trip Ever
Wake Forest will play in its fifth bowl game in school history - in Honolulu.
Dec. 14, 1999
By Jay Reddick
1946. 1949. 1979. 1992.
And now, 1999.
Five times in the long history of Wake Forest football, the team has been
rewarded at the end of a
fine season with a trip to a postseason bowl game.
This year, the Deacons will make their longest bowl trip ever, to Honolulu,
Hawaii, for the Aloha
Bowl on Christmas Day.
The Deacs will carry plenty of support staff, coaches and fans with them to
Honolulu. But they
will also have the support of hundreds of alumni who remember what it was
like when they made those
special trips. There's plenty of history to be found in the stories told by
the players who have been there.
The year was 1945. Coach D.C. "Peahead" Walker had piloted the Deacons to
five winning
seasons over the previous six years, but this one was different. After
losing its first three games, this Wake
Forest team had scratched and clawed its way back above .500. A tie game
against South Carolina in
Charlotte on Thanksgiving Day, followed by a victory over Clemson, and
suddenly, the team had a shot
at postseason play.
The organizers of a new event called the Gator Bowl asked the team to be
one of the first
participants. But when the squad heard that the game would be held on New
Year's Day, 1946, in
Jacksonville, Fla., against the same Gamecocks they had fought to a tie just
a couple of weeks earlier,
many of them passed.
"Everyone was tired from having two-a-days (practices) almost every day
since August 15," said
Herb Appenzeller, a backup quarterback on the team. "We knew that a bowl
game would mean no
Christmas break, and a lot of guys were really banged up. Murray Greason,
the athletic director, put it to
a vote whether to accept the bid, and the only guy who said yes lived in
Florida and figured he could get
a couple of days at home out of the deal."
Appenzeller, the former 30-year athletics director at Guilford College who
now works as an
author, editor and public speaker in Greensboro, said a little persuading
was all the team needed to
accept the Gator Bowl offer.
"The operator of the student bookstore spoke to us after the vote, and
convinced a lot of us that it
would be great exposure for the school and for us if we went," Appenzeller
said. "Then, they told us we
could have $100 in expenses for the trip. By then, a lot of guys were
thinking New Year's in Jacksonville
sounded pretty good."
Appenzeller also has fond memories of the game itself. Nick Sacrinty scored
the first touchdown
in the history of the Gator Bowl to give the Deacons a 6-0 lead, and that
lead eventually grew to 26-7
before Appenzeller got the call to come in and finish the Gamecocks off.
"I had been on the bench, and when I was put in, I threw a really good
pass, but a guy named
Dutch Bramson intercepted it and ran it back 90 yards for a touchdown,"
Appenzeller said. "I had to give
the people some excitement, you know? It's still the longest interception
return in Gator Bowl history."
And in fact, Appenzeller said that play helped him get the job at
Guilford - in a roundabout
way.
"I had interviewed at Guilford several times (in 1956), but finally, when
all was said and done,
Dr. (Clyde) Milner (the college's president), called me back and said that
they wanted somebody with
more of a name, somebody who had been recognized in the national media. So I
told him I had the
longest interception in Gator Bowl history, and that day, I was hired.
"It wasn't until years later that somebody found out I had thrown the
interception, not caught
it."
The 26-14 win over South Carolina would be the Deacs' only bowl win for
another 46 years, but
there were more successes along the way.
The 1948 squad had a bit of a different feel to it. The team had maintained
a high level of
consistency, going 6-4 in both seasons after the Gator Bowl win, and the '48
team was one of Walker's
most experienced and oldest, thanks to the time some had spent in the
military during World War II.
Still, when an invitation to the Dixie Bowl in Birmingham, Ala., came, it
was a great honor for the
Deacs.
"We had a great time on the train rides to and from Birmingham," said Ed
Butler, an end on the
team. "It was a much older team than most college teams you see nowadays,
and that made it more fun
for all of us.
"We had a meeting of both teams, us and Baylor, when we first got to town,
and they gave us
these little gold football pendants with the American flag on one side and
the Confederate flag on the
other," Butler said. "I still have mine."
The game ended in a 20-7 victory for the Bears in what was then called the
"Battle of the
Baptists," but Butler said he doesn't remember much about the game. His
memories are more of the
season, the trip and the honor of being selected to play in a bowl.
"We had a great time," said Butler, who was a teacher and high school
administrator for 41 years
before retiring in 1991. "It's one of the greatest things I got out of Wake
Forest - that and my wife."
The 1979 Deacons had a likely bowl bid wrapped up earlier in the year than
most. A stirring
victory over No. 13 Auburn on Oct. 27 gave Wake Forest a 7-1 record. The
team had been profiled by
Sports Illustrated earlier in the season, and when the team kept winning,
the Tangerine Bowl came
calling.
"It was a great trip to culminate a great season," said Jay Venuto, the
starting quarterback on that
squad. "At that time, the Tangerine Bowl was one of the most fun bowls to go
to, because the team went
to Disney World and the Ringling Brothers Circus after practices. It was
kind of nice."
Indeed, the Disney-ificiation of that bowl was everywhere. Bowl organizers
sent Goofy to
Winston-Salem to pose with football players, and Disney characters joined
both mascots on the field for
the ceremonial coin toss before the game against LSU on Dec. 22, 1979.
"As a player, it was a very exciting time," said Bill Ard, the starting
center. "It's something that so
few other teams had done at Wake Forest, and that made it special."
Both Ard and Venuto have received lifetime achievement awards in recent
weeks. Venuto was
announced as a new inductee into the Wake Forest Hall of Fame, and Ard,
already a WFU Hall of Famer,
was named to the All-Century Team of the New York Giants, where he played
for eight years.
Ard is a senior vice-president for PaineWebber in northern New Jersey,
where he has season
tickets to Rutgers football and also keeps up with the current Deacons on a
regular basis.
"We had a good season this year," Ard said. "I was shocked to beat Georgia
Tech, and very glad
for the coaches, players and alumni that we'll get to experience another
bowl."
Venuto, a high school football coach in Ithaca, N.Y., has nothing but
praise for current Deacon
coach Jim Caldwell.
"I really admire what Jim Caldwell is doing down there," Venuto said. "He's
a first-class man, he
represents the university well, and he should make people proud to be a
Deacon."
Looking back, Venuto said the 1979 Deacons may have been better than anyone
gave them credit
for at the time, despite the 34-10 Tangerine Bowl loss to LSU.
"We gained so much confidence through the year," Venuto said. "Everyone
looked at Wake
Forest and said we were supposed to lose, but when you look at the fact that
three of the offensive
linemen played at least five years in the NFL, it was a special time and a
special team."
The Deacons' chances at a fourth bowl game didn't seem so great early in
the 1992 season. A 1-3
record was marked by a trio of ACC losses, to North Carolina, Florida State
and Virginia. But Tommy
Mordica, an offensive lineman on that team and the current assistant
director of the Deacon Club, saw
something special even that early.
"We were tied 7-7 with Florida State after one quarter," Mordica said. "We
showed a lot of fight
that day, and they had to use everything they had to beat us. We were
beating Virginia for a while, too,
and the one win we had (10-7 over Appalachian State), Keith West threw this
floater of a pass to John
Henry Mills to win it.
"We just found a way to win somehow, and that's the way it was for the rest
of the year."
Six straight wins allowed the Deacs to send retiring coach Bill Dooley out
on a winning note, with
a trip to the Independence Bowl in Shreveport, La., on New Year's Eve. But
while it was going on, said
Tom Kleinlein, now an academic counselor at Wake Forest, the team didn't
know much about what was
waiting for them at the end.
"We were just focused on winning each week, but when we got to 6-3, and we
knew we had the
opportunity to go somewhere, as a player, it made me extremely excited,"
Kleinlein said.
Everyone who was there or watching on television has their own memories of
that game against
Oregon, from Todd Dixon's great touchdown catch that helped clinch a 39-35
victory, to the players
carrying Dooley off the field, to the temperature at the stadium falling
from the upper 60s to near freezing
in four hours. For Mordica, though, his memories on the field have faded,
but the sweet sense of
accomplishment remains.
"In my little world, I never saw our defense on the field," Mordica said.
"I was getting water, or
discussing strategy, or getting taped up. People will tell me things that
happened that day and I have no
idea what they are talking about. But there's not a moment of that trip that
I would give back. To have
that experience with the guys I'd been in school with for as much as four or
five years, to finally see
everything we'd worked for come together, is something I'll never forget."
Both Mordica and Kleinlein will be in Honolulu for Christmas this year, and
they hope the 1999
Deacons have the same triumphant feelings that they did seven years ago. Win
or lose, though, they
know it'll be a great experience for all involved.
"Looking at it from the administration's side, now," Kleinlein said, "I
knew the kids were good
enough to do this, and they believed they could. To see them succeed the way
they have, it feels really
good. I'm glad they get to reap the rewards of their success."
