Special K, The Space Cowboy, the Ram Man |
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Raleigh _ What a guy!
I just confirmed that Michael Ray Voight, the Space Cowboy, is coming to
the Hill this Saturday. I
think he's been inspired by having one of the Dooley boys hold the
reigns, John "the Beast" Bunting.
I'm loving the fact
that Bunting is reviving Carolina Football, and an interest among former
players from the days that Dooley lead these great warriors.
We all know the great contributions and
inspired play by the Space
Cowboy. To his credit, he's still
pounding it out years later. Recently he was named to the ACC's
50th Anniversary Team - some of the greatest players to grace the field
in our league. [see bottom of page]
Seems like Mike and his wife, Dixie, are
planning a number of trips to Chapel Hill this season. This is great news for Carolina.
And great news for
Carolina fans who would like a chance to speak with him. Our
tailgate crowd always has a post-game party - win or lose - in the large
Dean Dome lot. Word is that Mike and Dixie will join us after the
Miami (O) game. Come down and say hello to the Space Cowboy!
P.S. Yo Spano [Bill
Span ' 77], I haven't forgotten to ask him that question!
For your pleasure, I found this 2-part
article on the Net...
Part I
No player in the history of North Carolina football, with the
exception of Charlie Justice, better symbolized his era than did Mike
Voight.
Voight came along in the mid-1970s, when America's involvement in
Vietnam was all but over but hardly forgotten. Student protests were
replaced by partying at The Shack, Kirkpatrick's, Clarence's Bar &
Grill, He's Not Here and other watering holes, most of which are only
memories now.
It was a time of letting go, a self-indulgent time that saw organized
streaking on UNC's campus and nude, late-night volleyball games at South
Campus dorms.
Flying high above the scene was Michael Ray Voight, the Space Cowboy,
one of the greatest running backs in North Carolina and ACC history.
His numbers are eye-opening even today, perhaps more so today because
the Tar Heels haven't had a 1,000-yard rusher since Jonathan Linton in
1997. Voight had three consecutive 1,000 seasons, and the second- and
third best single-season totals in school history, trailing only College
Football Hall of Famer Don McCauley.
Voight also has the second- and third-most rushing attempts in UNC
history, trailing only McCauley.
His 3,971 yards rank second to Amos Lawrence's school-best 4,391. And
Voight's 254 career points, off 42 touchdowns and one two-point
conversion, rank him third in that category.
During his playing days in Chapel Hill from 1973-76, Voight was one
of those athletes everyone thought of just as another guy, even if he
might have been a tad off-center. He was extraordinarily popular, the
rebel in a conservative sport.
His hair hung beneath his helmet, unless he'd cropped into a Mohawk.
He was a good-time guy in a good-time era in Chapel Hill.
He was the Space Cowboy, courtesy of a song by the Steve Miller Band.
"I used to play this song, 'Fly Like An Eagle,' all the
time," Voight said. "I didn't have much money back then, so I
didn't have many albums. I'd crank that song up when I got up to take a
shower in the morning. It was just a way of getting myself in a zone.
"In the end zone, I used to turn toward the opposing team's
cheering section and tip my wings toward them."
Voight's suitemates, Brian Smith and Bernie Menapace, got tired of
hearing "Fly Like An Eagle" and dubbed him the Space Cowboy
after another song on the album.
"At least it beat Buffy," Voight said of the nickname.
"I didn't care what people called me.
"I actually had a nickname that I'd had since I was 4 years old
-- the Delinquent. I was always getting into something, always late,
kind of like the White Rabbit, always missing the boat. My mother used
to ride around the neighborhood and holler out the car window to the
neighbors, 'You seen my delinquent?'
"Used to embarrass the hell out of me."
Voight's tendency to run late didn't improve by his college days.
"Reporters would want to talk to me after the game, and I'd say,
'I got 10 minutes and I got a party to go to. My girlfriend at the time
was in dental school, and she was always having parties. I was always
pretty much late."
Voight could also pose a problem for head coach Bill Dooley.
"I tested his patience," he said. "A lot of us did. We
called him Daddy Dooley. Look at what he was working with. God bless him
for what he did for us."
Once he got on the football field, Voight was the consummate
professional, even though he wasn't getting paid to play.
"I liked to make myself think that I was working about three
feet off the ground where nobody could get me. Hell, if you're getting
hit 40 or 50 times a game, you'd better be in some kind of zone. I was
so focused on the game that I wasn't too worried about getting hit.
"Our playbook wasn't much: Voight right, Voight left, Voight up
the middle, punt."
He's not joking, either. In his four years, Voight had 826 carries.
His final season, he carried 315 times, including a school-record tying
47 in a one point win over Duke in the 1976 season finale.
In that game, Voight scored the winning points with a two-point
conversion as the Tar Heels nipped the Blue Devils 39-38 to finish the
regular season 9-2 and earn a bid to the Peach Bowl.
"Everybody was talking about how I'd won that Duke game,"
Voight said. "But nobody mentioned that it was Billy Johnson who
scored the touchdown. And it was on a pass to the fullback. Dooley would
run the ball all afternoon, then give 'em the old whoop-de-do."
As for Johnson, a powerful blocking back known as The Horse, Voight
said he was blessed to have him knocking down tacklers.
"Anybody that weighed 260 pounds, I loved having him in front of
me. Billy Johnson had the best set of hips I ever had in front of
me."
It had been at the start of the '76 season that Voight did something
that would play a part in his neglected status for a number of years as
one of the all-time greats at Carolina.
Dick Crum, then coaching at Miami of Ohio, brought his team to Chapel
Hill for the opening game of the 1976 season. Crum was viewed at the
time as one of the brightest coaches in the game, and his Miami squad
was predicted to be a good one.
The game was tight throughout, and the Tar Heels eventually won on a
trick play, the "Swinging Gate." While Bernie Menapace, the
quarterback, walked toward the sideline as if to talk to the coaches,
the ball was snapped to Mel Collins who raced in for the touchdown. The
Heels won 14-10.
During the game, Voight said, Miami players, particularly one
linebacker, were playing dirty.
"He was thumbing me in the throat, spitting in my face, trying
to throw me off my game. I'm thinking, 'You're not going to throw me off
my game; you're going to piss me off.'
"The I heard Crum on the sidelines yelling, 'Get Voight's ass!'
So I went to the huddle and told Bernie, 'Call 49.' That was a sweep. I
broke one off, faked that linebacker out of his jock, and when I went
past I flipped Crum the bird.
"I wanted to run that play again and take into the sidelines,
just to see how much he really wanted to play."
After beating Duke in the final regular-season game, the Heels
received a bid to play in the Peach Bowl on New Year's Eve against
Kentucky.
Two days before the game, Voight injured his ankle when he stepped in
a shot-put hole going out for a pass in practice. Ironically, Voight had
caught only four passes all season. Without its main offensive weapon,
Carolina fell to Kentucky 21-0.
Doug Paschal filled in for Voight and managed 41 yards. The key play,
or at least an omen of what was in store for the Tar Heels, came on
UNC's opening drive. Quarterback Matt Kupec hooked up with split end
Walker Lee for a 50-yard touchdown, but Carolina was called for an
offside penalty and the play came back.
"Voight was the sparkplug that made everything work,"
teammate Bill Span said. "When you took him out of the equation, we
sucked. We would have won that game if Mike had played. It was unusual
for a Dooley team to have a guy you couldn't replace."
And that was the end of Voight's college career. He would be replaced
at tailback the following season by another great back, Amos Lawrence.
As he awaited the spring NFL Draft, the future had to look bright for
the Space Cowboy.
Part II
So whatever happened to No. 44?
According to Mike Voight, it’s simple: “Murphy’s Law always
lived with Michael Ray.”
In 1976, Voight had been drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals in the
third round of the NFL draft, but he didn’t make it to the regular
season with them.
“Cincinnati had a couple of hometown heroes, like Archie Griffin,
on the team and a whole array of running backs,” Voight said. “What
they wanted to do was hold me until the last possible day, slide me
through waivers and then get me back on the team. Houston picked me up
within 45 minutes.”
With more opportunities to play with the Oilers, Voight became a
regular on special teams as a rookie.
“We didn’t even get a playbook; we had to learn everything from
scouting reports. My job was to protect Billy ‘White Shoes’
Johnson,” Voight said of the Oilers famous kickoff and punt returner.
“I was supposed to get in front of Billy and take care of the most
dangerous man.
“The year before, they’d used only one return man. When I got
there, they put me with Billy. If they kicked away from him, I could
gain maybe 20 or 30 yards. If they kicked it to him, all it took was one
good block and Billy was gone for a touchdown.”
Voight’s NFL career ended before it he ever got a chance to show
much of the talent that had allowed him to be a dominating player for
the Tar Heels.
On a rainy night driving back to eastern Virginia, Voight skidded
into a two-ton dumptruck on Highway 58, a stretch of road known as
“Suicide Strip” because of the number of accidents that have
occurred on it.
“There was nowhere to pull over on that road, which is why it was
so dangerous,” Voight said. “I was just trying to get to Emporia and
pull off and let the storm blow over.”
He never made it to Emporia.
Voight’s injuries were so serious that he had to have an artificial
hip. His playing career was over.
“I usually just tell people that I was the guy that helped make
Earl Campbell rich and Billy Johnson famous. Earl took my spot on the
roster. He also got my Skoal commerical and Coors commercial,” Voight
said, laughing. “Earl was the Skoal Brother; I was going to be the
Carolina Double-Dipper.”
After the 1977 season, the Bill Dooley era ended at North Carolina
when Dooley left to become head coach and athletic director at Virginia
Tech.
Carolina’s search for a new head coach brought Dick Crum to Chapel
Hill.
“When Crum came in, his main goal was to erase every memory, every
good thing people thought about Mike Voight,” said Bill Span, one of
Voight’s teammates. “He removed every picture of Voight from the
field house.”
Crum’s anger was connected to an incident the year before, when
Voight made an unwelcome gesture at Crum during a Carolina game against
Crum’s Miami of Ohio team.
Crum’s vengeance included removing posters of Voight for being the
ACC Player of the Year in 1976 and ’77. Only three other players,
McCauley, NC State’s Roman Gabriel and Clemson’s Steve Fuller, have
been voted the league’s top player in consecutive seasons.
“You had to go in a dusty closet and find films to know that I had
even played at Carolina,” Voight said.
After a 5-6 season in ‘78, Crum was a success for the next five
years, winning four straight bowl games and the ACC championship in
1980. His early successes featured many players recruited by Dooley.
But Crum eventually steered the Tar Heel program into mediocrity and
was replaced by Mack Brown.
Voight found he was welcome in the football program again when Brown
came onboard. In 1994, his number 44 was one of those honored by being
placed on the facade of Kenan Stadium.
Voight, who says he tries to attend “two football games and three
basketball games” each year in Chapel Hill, has been pleased with the
job John Bunting, another of Dooley’s boys, has done with the Tar
Heels.
“He wants to revitalize our fan system,” Voight said of Bunting.
“He wants the Carolina family to come back into existence, not just
the athletes, but the mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters.
“I like that. The saying that it takes a whole village to raise a
child is true. Nobody gets there by themselves.”
Voight would have liked to gotten into football coaching, but the
injury to his hip prevented that. It was years before Voight could walk
much at all. Long periods of standing and pacing sidelines were
impossible.
“I had thought that I would liked to have studied under Dooley,”
Voight said. “I would have loved to have worked on the sidelines with
him.”
The difficulties with his hip kept him from seeing much of Chapel
Hill, too.
“It was hard enough walking on the flat land up here,” Voight
said of the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. “I couldn’t do much with
the hills of Chapel Hill.”
In one those surprising twists of fate, it has been another sport
Voight played -- track -- that has become important in his life these
days.
Voight was one of the few Dooley football players to have competed in
two sports while at Carolina.
“When I came to Carolina,” Voight said, “I thought of myself as
a track person who played football. That was part of my deal with Dooley
-- that I could compete in track.
“Dooley said ‘You got to make the team.’
Voight, who had been a state high-hurdles champion in high school,
made the team with ease. In fact, he went on to win the 1974 ACC 60-yard
high hurdles as a freshman, with a time of 7.4 seconds.
But trying to play football and run high hurdles proved all but
impossible for Voight after his freshman season.
“Coach Dooley wanted me to play at 250 (pounds); Coach (Joe) Hilton
wanted me at 190 to be a hurdler,” Voight said. “There was no way I
could do that. And I realized that I wasn’t really a reckoning force
in track.”
Voight, who teaches and coaches track at Oscar Smith High School in
Chesapeake, Va., is focusing much of his attention on Rashad Gardner,
one of his track athletes who is ranked fourth in the nation in hurdles.
“I’m hoping to get him into some of the bigger meets,” Voight
said. “I want to make sure that he gets into a good school. We had a
girl a couple of years ago who was nationally ranked, but somehow or
another missed one of her CORE subjects.
“She didn’t get into college, got pregnant, and I don’t think
she will ever get an education now.”
Voight, who recently married Dixie Alexander, a woman he dated while
he was in high school, has had more health problems in addition to his
bad hip.
Doctors discovered that his heart was beating too slowly, about 40-45
beat per minute. The cause, his doctors suspected, went all the way back
to an injury he suffered during Carolina’s 24-21 victory over Florida
in the second game of the 1976 season.
“I was trying to go for a touchdown and got hit by one their
linebackers,” Voight said. “I had about an inch and a-half crack in
my sternum. Bernie (Menapace) and the rest of the guys won that Florida
game.”
UNC’s trainers placed pads around the injury so that Voight could
continue playing that year. He went on to gain 1,407 yards on 315
carries and score 18 touchdowns.
“The doctors think my heart problem was a combination of the injury
in that Florida game and my accident, when the steering column hit my
chest and bruised the underside of my heart,” Voight said.
Pacemakers were installed to raise Voight’s heartbeat to 72 beats
per minutes.
“They told me there was damage to my heart, but I could wait awhile
before having the pacemakers,” Voight said. “I’m working on 50
(years of age), so I figured I might as well go ahead and do it now.
“Now they tell me I have hypertension,” Voight said. “If it
ain’t one thing, it’s another.”
Murphy’s Law again. Despite the loss of a football career by a
terrible car crash and all the physical problems he has endured, Voight
still has a lot of the positive attitude he displayed as a Tar Heel.
For those of us who were privileged to watch him perform on Saturday
afternoons, he remains that brilliant runner who was both elusive and
punishing, a player who had an undying will to win, whose heart carried
him to feats greater even than his substantial talent would have
allowed.
“You know, I’ve always felt like I had a guardian angel on my
shoulder,” Voight said. “Her wings and her gown might be a little
scorched, but she’s still there.”
Still watching out for the Delinquent, the Space Cowboy, Michael Ray
Voight.
Atlantic Coast Conference Media Relations
July 23, 1:17 PM
PINEHURST, N.C. -- The Atlantic Coast Conference 50th Anniversary
Football Team was announced Tuesday by Commissioner John Swofford at the
league's 31st annual Football Kickoff. The 50-member team was voted on
by a 120-member blue-ribbon committee that was selected by the league's
50th Anniversary Committee.
Clemson led all league schools with nine members on the Golden
Anniversary team while Florida State and North Carolina were tied for
second with eight honorees each. NC State had six players selected,
followed by Virginia (5), Maryland (4), Duke (3), Georgia Tech (3), Wake
Forest (3) and South Carolina with one.
....
Mike Voight, North Carolina
(1973-1976)
Was named the ACC Player of the Year in
1975 and 1976 ... is second in Carolina history in scoring and rushing
with 254 points and 3,971 yards, respectively ... still ranks sixth in
rushing yards in the ACC ... had three 1,000-yard seasons and twice was
the top ground-gainer in the ACC ... two-time ACC rushing leader ... in
1976, he scored 110 points and ran for 1,407 yards.
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