(On Auburn’s last two possessions, Carlos Bradley recovered a fumble near the Auburn goal line, and Larry Ingram (’81) intercepted a pass near the goal line.) The defense is the story of that game. The second half, the defense played the way they did the week before (against North Carolina) and shut them out. We had moved the ball pretty well, but had some turnovers late in the half. We weren’t going to give up we were going to fight. When he reiterated that, we knew what he meant. That was part of his MO as we were rebuilding, to get us to believe. John probably told us that 20 to 25 times that season. What was going through your mind in the second half? Down 38-20 at halftime, Coach Mackovic tells the team, “Never, never, never, never, never, never give up.” James McDougald scores three touchdowns in the second half and the defense holds the high-powered Tiger offense scoreless in the second half to give Wake a stunning 42-38 upset. The Auburn game is considered by many as the greatest football game in Wake Forest history. I’ve tried to use what he taught me for the last 35 years in raising my sons. Before I can say anything, he said, ‘Jay, there’s nothing wrong with your thumb, that was a mental mistake.’ I wasn’t going to tell him that I couldn’t play. I walk over to the sidelines thinking about what I’m going to say to him (Mackovic). I start (the game) and the first pass I throw gets picked off and returned 60 yards for a touchdown. During the pregame workouts, I walked over to my dad – he had driven down to see me play – and I said ‘I can’t play, I can’t grip the football.’ (But) I took the first snap in pregame practice and it knocked the pain right out of me. 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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