Remembering this impactful, former NC State coach

Tim Peeler is the foremost NC State sports historian and he joins us on the Adam Gold Show in a, I guess a solemn occasion. Dick Sheridan, maybe the best football coach in NC State history, present head coach notwithstanding. Dave Doran's done a very good job, but talk to me about Sheridan and what he meant to NC State. He didn't coach very long. Only coached for seven years for the Wolfpack. So it is a solemn thing to recognize his passing, but it's also a joyous thing to be able to remember what he did for NC State football back in, when he got here in 1986. NC State had not gone to a bowl game since 78.

It won the 1979 ACC championship, but did not go to the postseason. And then Willis Casey, the athletics director, who had a very good eye for finding coaches, whiffed on three people to be NC State's football coach. He wanted Pat Dye from East Carolina when Bo Ryan left. He then wanted a couple of other guys, including John Cooper, to come here.

He wanted Dick Sheridan, missed him the first time he tried to get him to come here in 1982. And then finally he was able to hire him in 1985, right after Sheridan took Furman to the 1-double-A championship game where they lost to Georgia Southern. But Sheridan instilled a new kind of excitement in football at the time.

There was that, you know, starburst of excitement during the Lou Holtz years when the Buckeyes were here, Ted Brown was here, but it didn't last very long either. Dick Sheridan came here and began a sustained success in football for NC State that included six wins in seven years over North Carolina, 23-5-1 record against in-state teams at that time, a couple of chances to win the ACC title, which have been very rare for NC State since 1979. And so he just brought back an excitement and a competence and an integrity to NC State football. Not that he didn't have that, but those were the foundational principles of Sheridan's program.

Tim Peeler is joining us here on the Adam Gold Show. So the two things that immediately jump to me are explain the circumstances around his departure because back-to-back nine-win seasons doesn't generally belie somebody who shouldn't have continued coaching. So June 29, 1983, we got word that there was some kind of press conference going on at NC State.

I was down in South Carolina at the time, but I'd heard about it down there. And all of a sudden they called a press conference and Coach Sheridan resigned. He had some health issues at the time. There were some other underlying issues at the time, including his close relationship with Jim Valvano, who had been let go as Athletics Director and Basketball Coach.

Some lingering issues about knowing that the NCAA issues with basketball were going to delay both the building of what we now call PNC Arena and the improvements to Carter-Finley Stadium. A lot of those things went to his decision to resign under some health issues that included, you know, the chronic illness colitis at the time. And, you know, he said he was stepping away from football and he did. He never coached another game after they played Florida in the Gator Bowl at the end of the 1992 season. He retired to South Carolina. He was fortunately down there during a huge real estate boom doing both personal and commercial properties.

So he did well for himself, but stepping away from football was a big deal. Yeah, I mean, because that's what really gets me is that he was obviously a wonderful coach. He was good at Furman before he ever got, and Furman produced some pretty good coaches. If I'm not mistaken, that's where we got Bobby Ross from.

And I think Frank Beamer also came from down there. But the truth is, is that he was a wonderful coach and he was in his early 50s. In his early 50s, you know, he got a later start than you might have thought being down at Furman. He was there for a couple of years as an assistant coach and became the head coach in 1978. But, you know, he was in his 40s when he got here and sort of a late start for a Division I coach in some regards, especially if you look at Lou Holtz, who got here really, really young. But Dick Sheridan was a person of intense personal integrity, intense personal beliefs in what is right, what is wrong, all of those things.

And he just was not somebody who was going to change his mind about what he believed in. And sometimes that's what made him a really great coach and why he was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame. But it also made him a little bit unique in the annals of college coaching. Real quick correction of myself, Frank Beamer was at the Citadel as an assistant, not Furman, so I got my Southern Conference Schools kind of backwards there.

But let me ask you about, I know just as a preview, we are going to talk next week about the best era of NC State Football. Is the Sheridan era that for sustained, I don't know if excellence is the right word, but for sustained, you know, winning? I mean, there was only one losing season in his tenure at NC State.

That's absolutely right. His second year when he stopped using Tom Reed's players and had to recruit his own system, and Dick Sheridan recruited differently than every other coach in the country at that time, it took a little bit of transition time. But he took the players he inherited and had a great season in 1986, had to step back a little bit in 87 because of a couple of things. But that session afterwards, when you start talking about the 88 season and 89, the things that they did during that time, beating Iowa in the Peach Bowl in 88, just doing some some great things, especially in establishing itself as the program to beat in the state of North Carolina. In his seven years, Dick Sheridan was 23-5-1 against in-state teams. That's a pretty remarkable accomplishment in a state that had as much competition as it did and still does for Division One football. And, you know, everybody likes to talk about the 6-1 record against North Carolina when Mack Brown was just establishing himself as the head coach there before he started on his upward trajectory of building a program.

But in the early days, he had a difficult time facing Dick Sheridan coach teams. Yeah, by the way, that was also the best Duke era because Steve Spurrier, they were co-ACC champion during that run as well. Correction number two for me, Bobby Ross also was at Citadel, not Furman. Clearly, I have no idea what I'm talking about today, but it is a Friday. That's quite all right.

But Greenville and Charleston are the best two things you could possibly imagine about covering the Southern Conference, which I did for about five years. That's a very, very good point. All right, Tim Peeler, I will see you Monday. I thank you very much. Sad day for NC State University, the football community, but also just the community because I know he meant a great deal to everyone. I thank you much and I will talk to you on Monday. Sounds great. Thanks, Adam. Tim will be in studio with us, by the way, on Monday. We'll talk more football, just about what that era was, and it was a great era of NC State football.