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Chick Ludwig covers the Cincinnati Bengals. He also writes about his other passions: college football, basketball and golf.Home > Blogs > Chick Ludwig At Large > Archives > 2008 > July > 19 > Entry
Camp memories: Smoke & fire in 1971
BILL WALSH’S CRY:
‘SPEAK TO ME VIRGIL!’
===LUDWIG AT LARGE salutes ex-Bengals quarterback Virgil Carter, who paid a surprise visit to training camp in 2007. Now 62, Carter owns an insurance company in LaVerne, Calif., 25 miles east of Los Angeles. His firm writes malpractice insurance for 1,500 chiropractors in California.===
Alone in his third-floor dormitory room at Wilmington College in 1971, Bengals quarterback Virgil Carter was awakened by smoke and fire at midnight.
Teammates had sprinkled gunpowder onto aluminum foil, lit it and slid it under Carter’s door. Worse, they had wedged pennies in the doorjamb so Carter couldn’t get out. It’s called getting “pennyed in.”
“When that gunpowder flashes and you’re in a deep sleep and then you see this smoke, the first thing you think is the place has blown up,” Carter told LUDWIG AT LARGE. “And then you start realizing, no, that’s not the problem. The problem is I can’t get out and I have to go to the bathroom.
“There I am, three floors up, it’s the middle of the night, you don’t have your clothes on and you’re hanging out the window gasping for air and needing to go to the latrine. More so than the smoke, it was the need to use the rest room that was prevented.”
Eventually, after what Carter called “a good 30 to 40 minutes,” assistant coach Bill Walsh came to his rescue.
“Bill came running up,” center Bob Johnson said. “He didn’t realize Virgil was pennyed in, and he starts pounding on the door because there was all this smoke. He was saying, ‘Virgil, Virgil, are you in there? Speak to me Virgil!’
“Finally, they got him un-pennyed and Virgil crawled back in the window. I’m sure it was semi-dangerous. Of course, we all thought it was hysterical watching Bill pound on that door thinking that his starting quarterback was passed out from smoke inhalation.”
Carter, who had joined the team in 1970 via trade from Buffalo, wasn’t upset.
“Oh, no,” he said. “It was just part of training camp distractions. The fact that they would pick me, and I wasn’t a rookie, boded well that they accepted me.”
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By Chick Ludwig
July 19, 2008 12:42 PM | Link to this
Carter is the only Bengals QB to rush for 100 yards in a game. He gained 110 on nine carries in a 14-10 victory over Cleveland in the first Bengals-Browns game at Riverfront Stadium on Nov. 15, 1970. Carter unleashed a 73-yard run, but got hit from behind and fumbled the ball away.