But since that humid, heart-wrenching, historic day, he's been awfully hard to forget.

Before Montana's "Chicken Soup" rally at the Cotton Bowl in 1979 or "The Catch" at Candlestick in 1982, a 19-year-old unknown led "The Comeback" at Kenan -- when he jogged onto the field with 6:04 left and led Notre Dame to two touchdowns and a 21-14 victory.

No one knew it at the time, but the sophomore who didn't even start the next game for the Fighting Irish would go on to lead 35 more fourth-quarter comebacks (four in college, 31 in the NFL), win four Super Bowl rings and become one of the game's greatest quarterbacks.

And it all began here, where the No. 22 Tar Heels will face the Fighting Irish again on Saturday, 33 years to the day later.

Said Bill Paschall, UNC's starting quarterback that season: "I wish the other guy, their starting quarterback, had done a little better -- just enough so they didn't have to put a new guy in. If they hadn't put Montana in, I believe we would have won that game."

A festive atmosphere

There's plenty of reason to think so.

Through 3 1/2 quarters, the Tar Heels -- 2-2, but three-touchdown underdogs to the No. 15 Irish -- "had played them like crazy,'' said Bill Perdue, a junior defensive end that year. "We had beaten them every which way -- on offense, on defense."

Several Notre Dame players remembered in interviews for this story that they were so bothered by the heat and humidity that they struggled to play in the second half.

Meanwhile, UNC's Mike Voight had already rushed for a touchdown, Mel Collins had caught a touchdown from Paschall, and the nattily dressed capacity crowd -- which paid the jacked-up price of $10 per ticket -- was excited by the Irish's first trip to Chapel Hill since 1960.

"It was an impressive atmosphere,'' said Merv Johnson, Notre Dame's offensive coordinator at the time and now the director of football operations at Oklahoma. "I remember a lot of women in the more expensive seats were wearing hats -- kind of like the Kentucky Derby. ... And UNC had the game under control; it seemed like we couldn't get anything going."

Indeed, UNC was leading 14-6, and Irish starting quarterback Rick Slager had thrown three straight incomplete passes, when Irish head coach Dan Devine opted to finally make a change behind center.

When a tall, skinny guy wearing No. 3 ran onto the field, reporters in the press box and players on the field scrambled to figure out who it was.

"You'd never heard of him, because he got off to a bad start with Coach Devine,'' said Dan Kelleher, a junior split end for the Irish that season. "I'm not saying he was a bad practice guy, he always did what had to be done ... but maybe not always exactly the way Coach wanted it."

As a freshman in 1974, Montana -- a three-sport athlete from Monongahela, Pa., who had turned down a basketball scholarship at N.C. State -- ranked as low as seventh on the depth chart.

His teammates enjoyed his fun-loving wit, but "he was the type of guy who didn't slit his wrists in practice after a mistake, he didn't let them eat him up, so the head coach sometimes thought he wasn't taking things serious enough,'' Johnson said.

Then he laughed: "But we found out after a while that that demeanor worked pretty well."

Montana could not be reached for an interview.

Grandmaster Montana

On his first series at Kenan Stadium, Montana completed two passes -- a 10-yarder to Ted Burgmeier and a 39-yarder to Kelleher -- to set up a 2-yard touchdown run by halfback Al Hunter, a native of Greenville. A 2-point conversion pass to tight end Doug Buth tied the score at 14-14 with 5:11 left.

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