NCCU's Rison and Duke's White have history reaching back to their early football days

By BRYAN STRICKLAND

bstrickland@heraldsun.com; 419-6671

DURHAM -- N.C. Central football coach Mose Rison considers himself an optimist, but still he had to wonder if NCCU and Duke would ever face each other on the football field.

His doubts dissipated the day that Duke hired Kevin White as its athletic director 16 months ago.

"I said when Kevin arrived, 'Now there's a possibility we can play this football game,' " said Rison, whose Eagles will make the short trip to Wallace Wade Stadium on Saturday at 7 p.m. "I didn't know it was going to happen this soon."

Before Rison came to NCCU as offensive coordinator in 2006, neither he nor White had any real connection with Durham. But they had been connected with each other for more than 30 years, ever since Rison was a running back at Central Michigan University and White was an assistant track coach there (his wife, Jane, was head women's coach).

"I can remember it like it was yesterday -- it was the mid-1970s -- becoming connected with Mose," White said. "He was a great running back. I coached a lot of the guys he played with, and Mose would come track meets to watch his teammates run.

"My wife was from Flint, and Mose was from Flint, and we got to know Mose and eventually [his wife] Marilynn. We became great friends."

White said he saw Rison as a "very prideful, highly task-oriented, highly focused and earnest student-athlete." So when White left Central Michigan for his first athletic director job, at Mt. Morris High School near Flint, White offered Rison his first football coaching job.

White hired Rison as an assistant at Mt. Morris, which just happened to be Marilynn Rison's alma mater.

"We used to go to his house every Friday night after football games and have pizza and soda," Mose Rison said. "It is indeed a very good friendship and a long friendship."

They sustained the relationship over the years as both families did what most families in college athletics do -- they moved from place to place. Since those early years, they hadn't lived in the same state, much less the same city, until White left Notre Dame for Duke.

"When he got the job at Duke, knowing that I was here was something that really got him excited," Rison said. "He knew that he was going to be able to call me and we'd be able to get together as friends again."

Saturday, they'll get together as friendly foes. Though the long-time relationship between Rison and White and the budding one between Rison and Duke coach David Cutcliffe (see sidebar) no doubt helped make the matchup a reality, White credits Duke deputy athletic director Stan Wilcox as well as a little luck for actually allowing the game to happen.

"Stan was the broker of the game -- he and [NCCU athletic director] Ingrid [Wicker-McCree] put it together," White said. "When I arrived in June of 2008, we had a hole in our football schedule. We looked around the country and looked at the best options that were available to us. A year out, there typically aren't multiple options.

"Then in the last analysis we unearthed the fact that our sister institution across town also had a hole in their schedule. Stan went to work and did a deal."

There's no guarantee when or if the schools will meet again -- though they are in discussions -- but it's clear that White and Rison will continue to meet up and that partially as a result, the schools will as well.

"We're trying to forge a larger relationship," White said, pointing to a joint recreation, intramural and club sports committee as an example. "I think it's served as an impetus to broaden the relationship, and I think both institutions are equally excited about that."