Noting the 1970 Deacons

NOTING THE 1970 DEACONS…

ON THE RUN

The numbers don’t lie. The 1970 Wake Forest football team ran the football. A lot.

With first-team All-ACC performer Larry Russell at the controls of the veer offense, the Deacons ran the ball 75 percent of the time. Russell ran for 649 yards and 10 touchdowns and only threw 109 passes in 10 games.

“I don’t remember Russell ever missing a play,” said assistant coach Oval Jaynes. “He was the toughest kid you’ve ever seen and quick as a hiccup.”

Running back Larry Hopkins led the ground game with just under 1,000 yards and five touchdowns while Ken Garrett and Gary Johnson rotated at the other running back spot.

Larry Hopkins looks for an opening.

“I don’t think anyone ran the ball as much as we did,” said Hopkins, who still holds the school’s single-season rushing record with 1,228 yards in 1971 .

GOING BOWLING, OR NOT

This “trivia” question comes from Don Brown, a linebacker on the 1970 team and the point person for the 50th anniversary reunion:

Q: Name a Power 5 Conference Football Championship

Team that didn’t get invited to play in a bowl game. A: The 1970 Wake Forest Demon Deacons Of course, there were not 40 bowl games back then as there are now.

Brown added there was a rumor that if Wake Forest had beaten nationally ranked Houston in the final regular season game that it would have gone back to the Astrodome for the Bluebonnet Bowl.

By the way, North Carolina, which lost to the ACC champion Deacons and finished tied for second in the league with Duke, did go to a bowl game – the Peach Bowl, where the Tar Heels lost to Arizona State.

DOC COMES ‘TO SEE HIS BOYS PLAY’

Linebacker Ed Bradley was a member of the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl IX and X, and played a key role in the team’s first Super Bowl win over the Minnesota Vikings in New Orleans when Hall-of-Famer Jack Lambert was injured late in the first half.

Bradley, who played on special teams and served as a backup to Lambert during the season, went in to play middle linebacker the rest of way and called the defensive signals.

Ed Bradley

Another former Deacon, offensive lineman Jimmy Clack – who passed away a number of years ago – was also on the team.

“A day or two before the game, I get a knock on my hotel room door, and I opened it up, and who is it? Doc Martin,” Bradley recounted. “He said, ‘I’ve come to see my boys play.’ I called Jimmy and he came down to my room. Doc, unbeknownst to us, got himself a ticket and traveled down to the Super Bowl to watch his boys, Jimmy and Ed. It was really neat and a big surprise.”

SPECIAL DELIVERY

Dr. Larry Hopkins, who was a standout in chemistry (he made the Dean’s List in all four of his semesters at Wake Forest) and as a Deacon running back, has served the local community as a physician since 1983 and is still delivering babies.

How many babies?

“I don’t know,” Dr. Hopkins said. “Chris Paul was telling me his mom told me that I delivered him. I said, ‘Do you know how many babies I’ve delivered?’ I don’t know that. It’s a small world.”

Larry Hopkins

Earlier this year, Dr. Hopkins was the recipient of Wake Forest’s 2020 Medallion of Merit citation for his “compassionate, expert care as a beloved physician, valued role model and teacher for hundreds of students in our Medical School.”

STUDENT-ATHLETES

Hopkins remembers his time at Wake Forest as being unique with the integrating of schools and colleges, and also recalled the academic commitment from the African-American players on the football team.

While Hopkins went into medicine, Steve Bowden – his college roommate, who moved from running back to wide receiver to make room for him in the backfield – started his own law practice in Greensboro in 1984.

“Everyone graduated on time and went to graduate school, medical school, law school or some place,” said Hopkins, whose wife Beth was the school’s first African-American Homecoming queen in 1971. “At the time, we were just integrating the schools. There were no African-American females in my graduating class at Wake.”

IN THE HALL

Five players from the 1970 team are members of the Wake Forest Hall of Fame – quarterback Larry Russell, running back Larry Hopkins, linebacker Ed Bradley, defensive tackle Win Headley and linebacker Ed Stetz.

Considered to be too small to play linebacker in the ACC at less than 6-feet-tall and just over 200 pounds, Stetz had 460 tackles from 1969 to 1971, which remains the most in Wake Forest history. Headley, who earned All-America recognition as a defensive tackle in 1970, was voted the team’s Most Valuable Player in that championship season.

TALKIN’ BASEBALL

Not only was Larry Russell a tremendous quarterback for the football team, he was quite a baseball player as well.

As a freshman left-hander for the Deacons, Russell complied a 5-1 record on the mound and went on to pitch in the Cape Cod League.

“I loved baseball,” said Russell, who came to Wake Forest to play both sports.

However, with the arrival of new head coach Cal Stoll in 1969, Russell was told he could only play football. So that was the end of his abbreviated baseball career.

Russell offered this nugget of information – that he still holds the record for the lowest ERA in Boston’s famed Fenway Park, which isn’t far from where he lives in northeastern Massachusetts.

How’s that? Russell didn’t allow a run in one inning when he was part of sandlot tryouts for players from all across New England.

IRON MEN

All 11 players on defense started every game while the offensive starters were the same for every game except for one change late in the season, according to assistant coach Oval Jaynes. “We didn’t have much depth and had to stay healthy,” he said.