A farewell ode to an athlete dying old. Chapel Hill. September 1948. The University of Texas was in town. Men in cowboy boots and expensive wide-brimmed stetsons had strutted Franklin Street for two days, betting outrageous sums on the high-flying Longhorns, who had clobbered Carolina the previous September in Austin. Truly the eyes of Texas were upon them.

By Saturday night the strut was gone. The high-rollers were wiring home for money. Several hung around Chapel Hill for days afterwards -- they had bet the ranch.

A kid by the name of Charlie Justice was greatly responsible for their fiasco. He had run around, through and over the top-ranked Longhorns to the tune of 34-7. I remember, as clearly as yesterday, that I almost passed out in the stands from the sheer excitement of my first game as a Carolina student spectator.

Those were the "good ole days" of college football, in more ways than one. The recent death of Charlie Justice unloosed a torrent of memories within me.

Like the time LSU watered its field the night before the game, handicapping the fleet-footed Justice and breaking Carolina's 13-game winning streak.

There was the Carolina train my buddy Malcolm Stout and I rode to New York to see the Heels play juggernaut Notre Dame. The New York Daily News' halftime special edition, with the banner: Carolina 6-Notre Dame 0.

Carolina faced its Goliath without the slingshot of its David, on the bench with a leg injury. Goliath eventually crushed the upstart. It was a long train ride home.

College football was more than a sport; it was a major social event. Women dressed to the nines for a game: high heels, fur coats, hose and hats in 80-degree heat. Before "tailgating" was invented, there were picnics in Kenan's woods, always with a contest between the fans and the yellow jackets as to who got the food.

Loudspeakers blared the pop-hit "All the Way Choo-Choo," along with classmate Andy Griffith's recording of "What It Was Was Football," which launched Griffith's career in big-time entertainment.

The monologue by Griffith -- a country bumpkin addicted to "Big Orange dranks" inadvertently swept up with the crowd into Kenan Stadium -- defined football as "some kindly of a contest where they see which bunchful of them men can take that pumpkin and run from one end of that cow pasture to the other without gettin' knocked down or steppin' in somethin'."

Back then football was a sport, not a brawl. Players were drug-free and crime-free, and played both offense and defense.

Charlie Justice was America's epitome of sportsmanship and clean living, gracing the covers of several national sports and news magazines. He glittered when he walked, but not in the strutting way Richard Cory glittered in Edwin Arlington Robinson's poem. He was shy, modest to a fault, relegating the garlands of praise and accolades to the work of such teammates as Art Weiner, Ted Hazelwood and lesser stalwarts.

A.E. Housman in "To An Athlete Dying Young," said:

Smart lad, to slip betimes away

From fields where glory does not stay

...

Now you will not swell the rout

Of lads that wore their honours out.

Unlike Housman's athlete, Charlie Justice, 79, did not die young. Nevertheless, he never wore his honor out. He retained it through the years with uncommon grace. Surely when the portals above swung wide for him on Oct. 17, the heavenly carillon chimed "Hark the Sound."

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