John tells me, ‘Jay you’re playing tomorrow until you tell me otherwise.’ I knew I couldn’t play, but I couldn’t tell him that. Friday night, I had a meeting with the coaches and (backup quarterback) David Weber. The two most important lessons in my life came from John Mackovic the night before and during the game. I didn’t practice the rest of the week and was very doubtful (for the game). What a lot of people don’t know is that I had jammed my thumb in practice on Wednesday. If we’re not physically able, all that pregame talk goes out the window. But at that point, early in the season, you still don’t know. John made sure we saw the newspaper article. Wake pulls the upset, 22-21, after Georgia misses a last-second field goal. A Georgia columnist predicts Georgia would beat “Mackovic’s meatballs” 60 – 0. Wake recovers a fumble late to beat Appalachian State in the season-opener and then travels to 12th-ranked Georgia. We were a good football team that became a great football team great teams find a way to win. Every game, somebody, and it was always a different guy, made a play that enabled us to believe. The more he (Mackovic) instilled that in us, the more we believed. If we were behind in the fourth quarter, we didn’t want to say, ‘Well, here we go again, we can’t pull it off.’ If we were close, we were going to find a way to win. (Head coach) John Mackovic (’65, P ’97) forced us to believe in ourselves. The guys really believed that we could, and they were willing to pay the price. We all had visions of what we had to do, and we had the leaders to get us there. What can we do to change, not so much the culture, but what can we do to get back on the winning track. I can remember that there was a group of guys – Syd Kitson (’81, P ’08, ’09), Mark Lancaster (’80), James McDougald (’80) – who would sit around in our dorm rooms and chat. As you went through preseason practice in the fall of 1979, did you have any idea how good this team was going to be? ![]() You had played very little in your career and had been redshirted in ’78.
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