In four weeks, Northern Durham and Orange will square off in football for the first time in five years.
The Panthers canceled a home game with Walter Williams in order to renew acquaintances with the Knights. It’s something that likely didn’t made officials in Burlington very happy, but it’s for the benefit of everyone.
Williams gets to schedule an opponent more befitting of its current status as the best program in Alamance County.
Orange gets to renew a rivalry that dates back to the 1960s.
And not a moment too soon.
I’m not sure if it’s possible to fully explain how powerful Northern Durham football was for decades. It wasn’t simply a program. It was a brand name.
It was one word. Northern.
Even casual local sports fans knew what you meant if you said “Northern.”
It was Northern in Durham County. It was Northern in Orange County. It was Northern in Wake County. It was Northern in Granville County. It was probably Northern in Mecklenburg County, because the Knights defeated West Charlotte for the 1993 4A State Championship at Kenan Stadium.
Why were they Northern? Because they won.
18 consecutive conference championships from 1984-to-2001. They didn’t lose against another team from Durham County from 1976-to-2000. They had six consecutive undefeated regular seasons in the 1990s. During my senior year at Orange High School, which was a league rival of Northern’s, Person upset the Knights at Durham County Stadium in 1990. Northern didn’t lose another conference game for ten years. They didn’t lose another regular season game until 1997, falling to Webb in Oxford to end a 65-game regular season winning streak.
It wasn’t just that Northern won, but the paradigm surrounding their success made them larger than life.
The media wasn’t as fragmented in the 1980s and 1990s. If you cared about high school sports, the Durham Herald-Sun was mandatory reading every Saturday morning. At the heart of the front page would be a bright photo from local photographer Bernard Thomas, almost always detailing a Knights victory. Northern’s gold and navy blue uniforms were just as synonymous with success as the pinstripes of the New York Yankees and the Carolina Blue of Dean Smith’s Tar Heels.
When you win like Northern did, it attracts a large following because people need something to invest their faith in. Northern’s didn’t have an on-campus facility for decades, which was just as well The Knights played at Durham County Stadium, capacity 10,000 seats, actually taking several buses to home games. For the most rudimentary contests there would be 4,000-5,000 fans. When a local team was ready to challenge Northern’s seat on the throne, which was the case with Orange a few times, it would be closer to 6,000-7,000.
The man at the center of the Northern dynasty was Ken Browning, head coach from 1976-to-1993. Browning led Northern to the 4A State Championship in 1993, then moved on to join Mack Brown’s staff for the golden years of North Carolina football. It speaks volumes about Browning’s reputation across the state and southeast region that after Brown left for Texas in 1997, he didn’t have to live the standard nomadic college football coaching life. Browning was retained as a Carolina assistant by Carl Torbush, John Bunting, and Butch Davis.
Even after Browning left, Northern maintained its excellence. They won eight consecutive PAC-6 Conference championships under head coach Gary Merrill, who, as of last November, is somehow not in the Northern Durham Sports Hall of Fame.
The balance of power in Durham County football began to shift when Merrill stepped down after his wife Janet, who was a trainer at Northern, was tragically killed while jogging with her dog “Divot” in 2004. Paul Rodio, the father of current Orange shortstop J.P. Rodio, took over as head coach and led Northern to a conference championship. But Rodio’s future was in administration and he left for an assistant principal position at Person High School before retiring.
The Northern dynasty faded, as all sports dynasties do. But there are signs of revival. Northern has its own on-campus facility, named for Browning. While Jordan and Southern Durham have become the top teams in the Bull City, the Knights have started this year 2-0.
Orange’s last meeting with Northern was a surreal 7-6 Panther win during the 2021 spring pandemic season played in front of just a few hundred fans at Durham County Stadium. Next month, they will play again at Auman Stadium.
And not a moment too soon.
