So how does a kid from Hardin, MT, with no Division One football scholarship offers end up serving as a comedic focal point of the North Carolina football team’s film room session the day after a win at Duke?
Meet Pat Fox and welcome to his unique and fascinating UNC football story.
A rancher in Montana in the mid-1990s put his entire estate in a trust so he could send a Montana high school student a year to a prestigious boarding school in New Hampshire called St Paul’s School. Fox won it as a freshman, and by his senior year a college guidance counselor encouraged him to apply for the Morehead Scholarship at the University North Carolina.
He got it and enrolled at UNC in 1998.
An All-New England football player in high school, Fox said he could have started in the Ivy League had he gone that route. Also a championship wrestler in high school, he was an athlete who loved competition.
So, he sent UNC coach Carl Torbush a highlight reel to see if he could walk on to the tar Heels’ team and was granted a tryout. Not just anyone could try out, but Fox was given that opportunity, put in the work and stayed on the team.
“When I was there, they took two scout team players every week who would work the hardest from the coaches’ viewpoint, and they called them the ‘Ninja of the week,’” Fox recalled. “And on Thursdays after practice, they’d announce the ninja of the week. And the ninja of the week got to travel with the team, so if we were going to Florida State you’d fly down to Doak Campbell Stadium and for a home game stay in the team hotel.
“I got the ninja of the week several times in a row and they just decided ‘If we put Fox on two special teams second teams, he can travel and we don’t have to give him the ninja of the week anymore.’”
Fox was behind Danny Davis on the kick and punt return units. But when Davis pulled his hamstring in a 1998 win at Duke, Fox suddenly found himself in the game.
Upon Davis’ injury, Donnie Thompson, the special teams coach at the time, ran around the sideline looking for Fox hollering for him.
“So, I run out there and it’s punt return and I’m like, holy (expletive),” Fox said. “The ball gets punted and I’m so busy concentrating on my assignment that I’m not really paying attention to this guy who just waylays me.
“This Duke player just blindsides me to the point where my feet came up from underneath me. I’m running full speed and he nails me in the shoulder pads and my feet fly out from under me. The back of my helmet skids across the grass. I collected myself and ran off the field.”
His knee hurt, and the next day during the film session his pride may have been slightly bruised, too. They kept playing Fox’s collision on loop giving the team a huge laugh. Fox’s first Division One football play had become the joke of the day for the Tar Heels.
“We watched it about 20 times and it was good fun,” he said. “I was just stoked because I actually played a down in a Division One football game.”
At 5-foot-11 and 230 pounds, he was a starter on special teams the last two games of that season – a win over N.C. State and the Las Vegas Bowl victory over San Diego State – plus for the entire 1999 season. Fox played in about half of the special teams plays so he figures he was on the field for about 200 plays as a Tar Heel.
He was originally No. 40 but the staff later changed it to No. 24.
Fox only played for two seasons because after his sophomore in 1999 year he lost 60 pounds following jaw surgery just before Christmas. He also fell in love with a girl who has now been his wife for nearly 20 years. He had a lot going on.
“I was just a little bit distracted,” he said. “So, I didn’t continue to play.”
He did end up on the wrestling team for three years as a reserve, earned a letter and even has an ACC championship ring. As much as he enjoyed wrestling, there was something pretty cool bout being a football player in a major program.
“If you’re a wrestler walking around on campus, somebody might say, ‘That guy’s a wrestler, I would have never known that,’” he said, chuckling. “The football players were the (stuff), second only to the basketball players.”
Fox remains friends with some teammates he met at UNC and watches the Tar Heels when they are on TV in Montana. Currently an attorney in Helena, MT, he and his wife have three children.
