BY JOHN MCCANN

jmccann@heraldsun.com; 419-6601

DURHAM -- Sure, the band's great.

Why, Sound Machine puts on a mighty halftime show at N.C. Central University football games.

But don't get it twisted. Greensboro's Ronald Gantt doesn't show up just for the live music, as good as it is. No, he's all about the X's and O's. And that's whether NCCU football is up or down. If the Eagles are on the line of scrimmage, he's there.

"I have a love for HBCU sports," Gantt said. "NCCU has always been my No. 1 thing."

Gantt started following the Eagles in the mid-1960s when his older brother was on the team. Then he arrived on campus in 1969, and football was on the upswing while he was there.

After graduating in 1973, Gantt resided in places including Winston-Salem and Charlotte as well as Virginia and Kentucky. And during some of those years, the man had season tickets for NCCU football games. Even when he lived in Louisville, Ky., Gantt had season tickets to watch the NCCU boys play football.

"For me, it's about the football," said Gantt, who these days is doing some work as a substitute schoolteacher. "I am a die-hard college football fan."

Between 2004-07, Gantt said he didn't miss a single NCCU football game -- that's whether the squad was playing in Durham or on the road. He's been to all of the games this year and has his ticket for today's historic contest at Wallace Wade Stadium where the Eagles will button their chin straps and knock heads against the Duke Blue Devils.

Norma Petway plans to be at Wallace Wade this evening. She works for NCCU as the director of student professional development in the school's College of Behavioral and Social Sciences. But Petway used to be NCCU's director of alumni relations, so the lady's seen up close that her fellow alums are so severely infected with school spirit that they ooze Eagle pride.

"We just got it bad," Petway said.

This is how bad they have it: NCCU went to Baltimore last year to play Morgan State University, NCCU sports-information director Kyle Serba said. And visiting NCCU had more fans at the game than Morgan State. Which wasn't the only time that sort of thing has happened, Serba said.

This year when NCCU traveled to Virginia to play Hampton University, there were more Eagles than Pirates, Petway said.

"We had more fans than they did," said Petway, who, too, has been to all three NCCU football games this season.

Yet NCCU is not a perennial pigskin powerhouse. So what gives?

"First of all, they love the university," Petway said about the fans. She is a 1977 NCCU graduate and has been a season-ticket holder for years.

But the loyalty to NCCU football also has to do with the in-state rivalry with N.C. A&T State University, Petway claimed. Whether NCCU is playing good football or bad, it's all about representing against A&T, and that just sort of spills over into all of the other games, she explained.

"For me, it's about the football. But there's always that social piece, as well," Petway said.