Pack Mourns Loss of Iconic Former Head Coach Chuck Amato
from www.gopack.com
It took a while before Chuck Amato could be convinced to play football at NC State. It took even longer — more than 20 years — before the university was convinced, in 2000, to hire him as its its head football coach.
For seven seasons (2000-2006), the scrappy two-sport star and two-time NC State graduate from Easton, Pennsylvania, lived his dream, leading his alma mater to the best record (11-3) in school history in 2002, taking the program to five bowl games in his first six seasons and producing iconic players like quarterback Philip Rivers and linebacker Dantonio Burnette, among many others.
Amato, who died early Monday morning at age 80 at his home in Raleigh under hospice care, was an old-school character who spanned multiple decades of NC State athletics: a decorated linebacker and Atlantic Coast Conference champion wrestler in the 1960s, and a Wolfpack assistant for head coaches Earle Edwards, Al Michaels, Lou Holtz and Bo Rein in the 1970s. He went on to serve as a premier coordinator and associate head coach under Florida State’s Bobby Bowden.
Hours after helping Florida State win the 1999 college football national championship, he was hired as head coach of the Wolfpack, a position he had interviewed for on three different occasions. He is the only NC State graduate to lead the program in more than 100 years.