Midnite Madness: Photos of 2025 TCU-North Carolina Football Game Trip

North Carolina ... "to be rather than to seem"

Photos by Tom C. "Midnite" Burke

(photos above and below) North Carolina, whose state motto is "to be rather than to seem," has a long legacy in tobacco manufacturing and farming. North Carolina remains the leading U.S. state in tobacco production, though its historical role as the largest economic driver has diminished since its 2004 buyout program and increased federal regulation. The state has a high rate of tobacco use and low funding for prevention programs. The state is the 28th-largest and ninth-most populous of the United States. The Research Triangle area of the state consists of the major cities of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, which, respectively, are home to North Carolina State University, Duke University and the University of North Carolina.

(photos above and below) In addition to being known for tobacco, North Carolina is known for its signature type of BBQ -- pulled and chopped pork with vinegar sauce. Folks have been making a pilgrimage to Clyde Cooper's BBQ in downtown Raleigh since it opened its doors in 1938.

(photos above and below) Moores Creek National Battlefield, located near Currie, North Carolina, is the site of the first decisive Patriot victory of the American Revolution. The Battle of Moores Creek Bridge, fought on February 27, 1776, not only became the first decisive victory of the war, but also allowed North Carolina to become the first colony to allow its delegates to vote for independence from Great Britain.

Monuments throughout the national park commemorate significant events and people of the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge, won by the Patriots on February 27, 1776, and leading to North Carolina becoming the first colony to allow its delegates to vote for independence from Great Britain, a fact that is noted on a version of North Carolina's vehicular license plates (photo below).

History, as expressed through art, is on display at the North Carolina Museum of Art, located in Raleigh. The museum opened in 1956 as the first major museum collection in the country to be formed by state legislation and funding. The museum encompasses a collection that spans more than 5,000 years of artistic work from antiquity to the present.

Featured in the North Carolina Museum of Art are works by Thomas Hart Benton (above) and works by Georgia O'Keeffe (below).

Works of art by Claude Monet (above) and Pablo Picasso (below) are featured in the North Carolina Museum of Art.

In Durham, you can enjoy a meal and blues music at the Blue Note Grill (above) and a drive along Coach K Highway (below). "Coach K," of course, is the nickname of legendary Duke head basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski, who served as the Blue Devils' coach from 1980 to 2022, during which Duke won five national titles, made 13 Final Four appearances, and won 15 Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) tournament championships and 13 ACC regular season titles.

(photos above and below) The Durham Bulls are the Triple-A minor-league affiliate of Major League Baseball's Tampa Bay Rays. The Bulls were founded in 1902 as the Durham Tobacconists. The team became the Durham Bulls in December of 1912. The Bulls were immortalized by the film "Bull Durham," which premiered in mid-1988 and starred Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Trey Wilson and Robert Wuhl.

Duke University is located in Durham. Duke University is a private research university that was founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838. The school moved to Durham in 1892. There are about 7,000 undergraduate students at the school. Duke's football team plays in Wallace Wade Stadium (photo above). Wade was a football player and coach and a college athletics administrator. He was Duke’s head football coach from 1931-1941 and from 1946 to 1950. His 1938 Duke team had an unscored-upon regular season, giving up its only points in the final minute of the 1939 Rose Bowl. Wade won six Southern Conference football titles with Duke. The Blue Devils compete in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), of which they are a charter member.

(photos above and below) The historic Sarah P. Duke Gardens, which got its start in 1934, consist of approximately 55 acres of landscaped and wooded areas at Duke University. There are five miles of allées, walks, and pathways throughout the gardens. The gardens are a memorial to Sarah Pearson Angier Duke, mother of Mary Duke Biddle and wife of Benjamin N. Duke, one of Duke University's benefactors.

(photos above and below) Duke Gardens is an unique feature of life at Duke−a living laboratory for research, a refuge of well-being and the setting for many campus moments. The Duke Gardens are used for classes, programs and research, and provide seasonal work-study, volunteer and internship opportunities.

(photos above and below) Founded in 1966 on the campus of Duke, the Duke Lemur Center is a non-invasive research center housing over 200 lemurs and bush babies across 13 species. The Center, which is the only university-based facility in the world devoted to the study of strepsirrhine primates, houses the most diverse population of lemurs outside of their native Madagascar and is a world leader in the study, care, and protection of lemurs. Lemurs are wet-nosed primates of the superfamily Lemuroidea, divided into 8 families and consisting of 15 genera and around 100 existing species.

North Carolina State University is located in Raleigh. North Carolina State University is a public land-grant research university. Founded in 1887, the school is part of the University of North Carolina system. It is the largest university in the Carolinas, with about 40,000 students.

NC State's Wolfpack athletic teams compete in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). NC State is one of the seven founding members of the ACC.

NC State's football team plays in Carter–Finley Stadium, which opened in October of 1966. The stadium originally was named Carter Stadium, in honor of Harry C. and Wilbert J. "Nick" Carter, both graduates of the university. They were major contributors to the original building of the stadium. The name of Albert E. Finley, another major contributor to the university, was added in September 1979. Carter–Finley Stadium, which has a seating capacity of nearly 57,000, has the smallest clearance between the stands and the sidelines of any stadium in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). Season tickets for Wolfpack football have been sold out for nine consecutive years. TowneBank Center overlooks Carter-Finley Stadium. The 117,000 square foot facility has 51 luxury suites. The Center has 1,000 outdoor seats that face the field on game day. The Dail Club Level encompasses the first floor and provides a social atmosphere on game days. The Chancellor’s Suite provides 2,900 square feet of luxury game-watching. There also is the Media Suite and Foundation Suite.

NC State's basketball team plays its home games in the Lenovo Center, which also is home for the National Hockey League's (NHL) Carolina Hurricanes. The arena seats 18,700 for ice hockey and 19,500 for basketball, including 61 suites, 13 luxury boxes and 2,045 club level seats. The building has three concourses and a 500-seat restaurant. The arena was named the Lenovo Center on September 12, 2024. Lenovo is a Chinese technology company, whose American headquarters are based in Morrisville, which is near Raleigh. Lenovo purchased the center's naming rights for 10 years. Lenovo has acquired portions of IBM, first their PC business in 2005 and then their x86 server business in 2014. The PC business acquisition in 2005 made Lenovo a global leader in personal computers and included the ThinkPad brand. In 2014, Lenovo purchased IBM's x86 server business, expanding Lenovo's enterprise hardware and services.

(photos above and below) Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is home to the University of North Carolina and its new head football coach, Bill Belichick, who made a name for himself as a longtime coach in the National Football League. Chapel Hill and North Carolina were giddy for months about their new resident, but much of his glitter was gone after TCU spoiled Belichick's collegiate coaching debut by routing the Tar Heels 48-14 on Labor Day.

Kenan Memorial Stadium is home to the University of North Carolina football team, which competes in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), of which the university is a founding member. The stadium opened in 1927 and seats nearly 51,000 people. Kenan Stadium was originally named after William Rand Kenan Jr.'s parents, William Rand Kenan Sr. and Mary Hargrave Kenan, with the donation made in their memory. However, a plaque with these names was covered by the University of North Carolina in 2018 to acknowledge that William Rand Kenan Sr. was the commander of a white supremacist paramilitary group that attacked and killed Black people in Wilmington, North Carolina, in the 1898 Wilmington Massacre. The stadium's dedication was subsequently changed to honor the donor, William Rand Kenan Jr., who was a prominent industrialist.

The Wilmington insurrection of 1898, also known as the Wilmington massacre of 1898 or the Wilmington coup of 1898, was a municipal-level coup d'état and a massacre that was carried out by white supremacists in Wilmington, North Carolina, United States, on Thursday, November 10, 1898. At least 14 Black people were killed (estimates of the actual toll run from 60 to more than 300). In 1860, just before the American Civil War, Wilmington was North Carolina's largest city, with a population of nearly 10,000, most of whom were Black. Today, Wilmington is a port city with a population of about 120,000. It’s known as a gateway to Cape Fear Coast beaches like Wrightsville, with its strong surf, and Carolina, with its long boardwalk. The Battleship North Carolina is moored on the Cape Fear River. Artifacts on the ship explore WWII naval combat history. Wilmington also is the home of the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW). The Seahawks are a non-football member of NCAA Division 1 and are members of the Coastal Athletic Association.

Wrightsville Beach is a town in New Hanover County, North Carolina, just east of Wilmington. The town consists of a four-mile-long beach island, an interior island called Harbor Island, and a mainland. It served as a filming location of the TV show “Dawson’s Creek.” The movie “Weekend at Bernie’s” also partially was filmed in Wrightsville Beach. In 1883, the Carolina Yacht Club was founded in Wrightsville by seven local men. It is the seventh oldest Yacht Club in America.