On Friday night, Northern Durham and Orange will square off at Durham County Stadium, each with undefeated records in the Big 8 Conference.
It will be the first time they’ve faced off with unblemished league marks since 1991.
For the current generation, it’s hard to explain what Northern Durham football once was. The incredible statistics that measure Northern’s dominance over the span of several generations can be reeled off to a mind-numbing degree. They won every PAC-6 Conference Championship from 1984-2001. From 1976-2000, they didn’t lose to another team from Durham County. From 1991-1996, didn’t lose a regular season game.
The numbers only tell a portion of the story. The first time I attended a Northern home game, I expected to pull up to a high school. Instead, I arrived to 10,000 seat Durham County Stadium, which was around 30 years old in the mid-80s. By current standards, a facility that grand might seem oversized for high school football, but it wasn’t back then. Especially during the early-90s, when Northern competed for state championships at a time when the North Carolina High School Athletic Association only awarded four state titles in football. For a player, competing under the lights in front 6,000 fans instantly created a big game atmosphere. And every year, Northern played in several big games, be it against teams from the PAC-6 Conference or in the 4A state playoffs.
In the 90s, when Duke football struggled just to win a game and North Carolina Central was Division II, Northern didn’t just feel like a high school team. They felt like Durham’s team.
Even when Northern wasn’t at home, they traveled like a successful college program. The teams that welcomed the Knights, regardless of whether they were in Henderson or Oxford or Chapel Hill, would see its biggest crowd of the year against the Knights. Part of that was home fans curious to see if their squad could slay the invincible giant. Part of that was Northern supporters.
The parents, coaches and staff carried themselves like it was a college program. In the press box, each member of Northern’s coaching staff, film crew, and radio crew work a Navy blue shirt. Northern’s gold and navy blue were just as synonymous in local circles as the garnet-and-gold of Florida State, which is an apt comparison.
When Florida State joined the ACC in 1991, they turned aside one challenge after another in winning nine consecutive ACC Championships. When Northern won every PAC-6 crown in the 90s, the dirty little secret is they weren’t the most talented team in the league each of those years. Sure, in 1993 when they won the 4A state championship, they lapped the field with players like quarterback Jason Peace, who would go on to play at UNC. Or Steve Carson, who played at Appalachian State or Charles Berry, who played under Mike O’Cain at N.C. State.
In the early 90s, a difficult set of challengers squared off against Northern. Arguably, some of them had more talent than Northern.
In 1990, Orange had quarterback Scott Satterfield, tailback Damon Scott and a solid defense. Hillside had an excellent signal caller named Antonio King, now the coach at Cedar Ridge. Chapel Hill had Bernardo Harris, who would go on to play at UNC and win a Super Bowl with the Baltimore Ravens in 2000.
Each year, the challengers lined up like villains waiting to challenge Batman and Robin in the 1960s. And, just like the Riddler or Catwoman or the Joker, they would all be vanquished.
That’s because Northern didn’t just have talent. They also had head coach Ken Browning, who was so highly respected within coaching circles, he joined Mack Brown’s staff at UNC after winning the state title in 1993. Browning was an assistant for four different UNC coaches and was with the program at its zenith in 1997, when they started 9-0 before losing to eventual national champion Florida State.
In 1994, Gary Merrill replaced Browning and captured nine PAC-6 Championships, but times were changing. Riverside opened on the other end of northern Durham County in 1990, quickly taking some of Northern’s would-be talent.
In 2004, Merrill walked away from coaching after his wife Janet, who was an athletic trainer at Northern, was killed after being struck by a tractor-trailer while jogging in Hurdle Mills. Each of Merrill’s successors learned the hard way that trying to replace a legend was a thankless task.
Eventually, the talent level fell off as Durham County become more balanced. In 2010, while Hillside celebrated a 4A state championship under King, Northern had a winless season. They even lost at East Chapel Hill on a last-second field goal in front of then-UNC coach Butch Davis.
It’s been a long climb back to prosperity for the Knights. In 2013, Orange got its elusive victory over Northern in decisive fashion, 42-15. It was the Panthers first win over the Knights since 1968.
Ironically, the man who has led Northern back to prominence is John Hammett, who was on the staff of J.F. Webb in 1997 under former East Carolina offensive coordinator Don Murray. The Warriors ended Northern 69-game regular season winning streak in 1997 after a remarkable performance by future Duke star Ronnie Hamilton.
Last year, Orange and Northern tied for the Big 8 Championship, but the Panthers won decisively in a head-to-head matchup at Auman Stadium. Orange has beaten Northern four straight times, but now the Knights are undefeated.
In short, Northern has plenty to play for. They haven’t won an outright conference championship since 2003. Northern wants to bring the glory days back, and on Friday night, they could find it.