2009 ACC Football Legends: Willie Burden, NC State

Nov. 3, 2009

One thing has remained constant in the 36 years since Willie Burden set NC State rushing records and played a leading role in one of the most exciting football eras in school history. Burden keeps moving forward, setting new goals and achieving higher levels of success.

Burden is one of this year's Dr Pepper Atlantic Coast Conference Football Championship Game Legends who will be honored at this year's ACC Football Championship Game weekend. The Legends will appear at the ACC Coaches and Awards Luncheon at noon on Friday, Dec. 4, and will be honored at the "ACC Night of Legends" held at the Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay on Friday evening. They will also be recognized during ceremonies at Raymond James Stadium for the 5th Annual Dr Pepper ACC Football Championship, which kicks off at 8 p.m., Dec. 5 on ESPN.

Wolfpack fans remember Willie Burden as the fleet-footed back who became the school’s first 1,000-yard rusher, who earned ACC Player of the Year honors as a senior, who led State to the 1973 ACC Championship and a pair of bowl game victories.

His Georgia Southern University students know him as Dr. Burden, Professor of Recreation and Sports management, an integral part of the faculty for more than 11 years. He previously worked in athletic administration for over a decade, including a stint as athletic director at North Carolina A&T.

That all followed eight years as a player in the Canadian Football League, where he rushed for 6,234 career yards and endeared himself to the Calgary Stampeders’ fan base as one of the league’s all-time stars.

“As I’ve grown and people around me have grown, I’ve made the adjustments to new challenges in life, and they’ve all been very rewarding,” Burden said. “I’ve enjoyed all of them. The one thing that remains constant is that I’ve always been around sports, always been around athletics. That’s the real need I have. I’ve got to be involved in some way.”

Burden grew up a short car ride from the NC State campus in Raleigh, N.C., starring on the gridiron at Enloe High. Though he didn’t necessarily regard himself as a Wolfpack fan, proximity and familiarity counted for a lot as he weighed his college choices.

“NC State would often give the coaches at Enloe tickets and sometimes invite the athletes over to watch the games,’” Burden recalled. “As a young person in the 10th and 11th grade, I used to go over and watch some of the football and basketball games. The Wolfpack kind of grew on me. I guess I was always going to go there, I just didn’t know it.”

With the NCAA having yet to reinstate freshman eligibility, Burden had to wait until the fall of his sophomore year – 1971 – to get his taste of varsity action.

Burden remembers the experience as a mixed blessing as the Wolfpack endured a 3-8 season, its third straight year with a losing record.

“Unfortunately, NC State teams weren’t winning a whole lot of games when I went there,” Burden said. “But the good thing about that was there was an opportunity to play. I was able to do that as a sophomore early on, to gain some experience and learn the college game.”

Burden’s junior year brought a sense of renewal as NC State hired a young coach from William & Mary by the name of Lou Holtz.

“It was a lot of fun,” Burden said. “I remember when we played the spring game and how much enthusiasm the team had, the fans had, that everyone had. He was so positive. He kept saying that positive things were going to happen, and we got good results.”

The one-year turnaround was phenomenal. The Wolfpack finished 8-3-1 overall in 1972, 4-1-1 in the ACC and came within a failed last-second two-point conversion of defeating conference champion North Carolina on the road. The season concluded with NC State thrashing West Virginia by a 49-13 score in the Peach Bowl as Burden ran for 116 yards.

“It was like we were riding a cloud,” Burden said. “It had been a magical season, and then we went rolling into Atlanta, knowing that NC State football had turned the corner. We were fired up, ready to go. I think West Virginia looked down on us a little bit, like we weren’t that good, and we just loaded up on them. That was a special moment.”

Holtz, whose storied coaching career included later stops at Arkansas, Minnesota, Notre Dame and South Carolina, would later downplay his affect on the 1972 team.

“It didn’t matter who the coach was that year,” Holtz said in 1999. “Those guys were sick of losing, and they were going to win regardless.”

Burden, however, begs to differ.

“I think there was definitely something he brought to the program,” Burden said. “I probably changed myself, but I more readily noticed the changes in the other guys on the team, and their performances and their attitudes from one year to the next.”

In Burden’s case, the intensity was stoked by a keen sense of competition. NC State had a stable of talented running backs in Burden, Charley Young, Stan Fritts and Roland Hooks. Dubbed “The Stallions” by local media, they thrived under the veer offense employed by Holtz and his staff.

“It was difficult to earn playing time,” Burden said. “If any one of us had been the single ball-carrier there, we easily could have gotten 1,000 yards behind the great offensive line we had my junior and senior years. But winning solves a lot of your ills. I got to carry the ball a lot my sophomore year, but it wasn’t a lot of fun because we were 3-8.”

The 1973 season saw NC State go unbeaten in ACC play and capture its first conference title since 1968. The Wolfpack finished 9-3 overall, including a convincing win over Kansas in the Liberty Bowl. Burden, who was named the ACC Player of the Year, most remembers his final home game, a 52-13 romp past Wake Forest in which he broke the 1,000-yard barrier.

“Hearing them announce that to the crowd, there was just a huge sense of accomplishment,” Burden said. “Here we were conference champions, and I got over 1,000 yards individually. We’d done everything we set out to do.”

The Detroit Lions selected Burden in the sixth round of the 1974 NFL Draft, but a knee injury he suffered while playing pick-up basketball slowed him during preseason camp. He failed to make the team, but fortune smiled nonetheless. Rogers Lehew, a key figure in molding the Calgary Stampeders’ CFL franchise, had just joined the Lions as assistant general manager.

“Rogers said to me, ‘Hey, wait a minute, I have a job for you. I think you can play up in Calgary,’ ” Burden said. “He was instrumental in hooking me up.”

Burden headed straight to Canada from Detroit.

“It was very strange,” Burden recalled, chuckling at the memory. “I drove through North Dakota and Wyoming and Montana. I had never seen those places before. There was nothing but cows out there. I had bugs all over my windshield, on the hood of my car, on the grill. But I made it there.”

The Stampeders were glad he did. Burden’s knee fully healed, he grew accustomed to CFL rules and he soon became a hero in his new hometown.

“We established a relationship those first few years, and we just built on it from that point forward,” Burden said. “Man, it was great.”

Burden returned to Raleigh earlier this year for induction into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame. His oldest child, Courtney, lives there and works as an accountant.

But Burden and his wife, Velma, feel comfortable in Statesboro, where their oldest son, Willie Jr., is a freshman defensive end at Georgia Southern and younger son Freddie is a high school sophomore and plays offensive tackle.

“We look forward to the football weekends here, both at the high school and college level,” Burden said. “It’s a great place to live, and my sons love it. This is their home, and that makes it my home.”