David Carter redshirted his first year at Western Kentucky in 1972, but an injury in the team’s second game the following year at Austin Peay forced him into action at center.

And there he stayed, and there he thrived.

Carter, who died Saturday at age 67, became a four-year starter for the Hilltoppers and went on to produce a nine-year NFL career. He is remembered by former teammates and coaches at WKU for his dependability and athleticism along the offensive line.

“He was full of confidence, but humility was a big deal with him as well. He just appreciated the opportunity,” Leo Peckenpaugh, WKU’s quarterback from 1970-73 who still holds the program’s record for winning percentage at the position, said in a phone interview with the Daily News. “For his second year there, I’m thinking, ‘How did we get this guy?’ Thank goodness we do as a quarterback because with the center, that’s where it all starts.

“ … David, man, he just was blessed, and he would be the first one to tell you that, because there wasn’t any bad stuff in his package where he thought he was any better than anyone else. He was a tremendous competitor, and to play in the NFL you have to obviously have that. I wasn’t surprised one bit, as far as the David Carter story goes. When I left there and followed his last two years, I said, ‘This guy is going to have a nice pro career,’ because he was just an outstanding player, and an outstanding person as well.”

The 1972 team went 7-3 overall and finished second in the Ohio Valley Conference with a 5-2 record. The following year brought even more success with a team that, according to Peckenpaugh, “had a ton of talent coming back.”

It started with a win at Appalachian State and followed with 11 more wins and no losses leading into the NCAA Division II championship game, where WKU fell to Louisiana Tech 34-0 after a 28-20 victory over Grambling State in the Grantland Rice Bowl semifinal. The team’s 12 wins are still tied for most in a single season in program history.

Carter, after getting inserted into the lineup in the second game, was a big part of that. Despite his youth, he impressed the coaches.

“I was there when he got there as a young pup. I was working with the defensive line at the time and by working with the defensive line, got the opportunity to see him grow, develop and then interact a little bit with him,” said Romeo Crennel, a longtime NFL coach and former WKU player in the late 1960s who served as a graduate assistant and defensive line coach early in Carter’s time as a Hilltopper.

“When young guys come in, they’re full of energy, but they don’t know what they don’t know. He redshirted in ‘72 and, in ‘73 when he got the chance to become the starter – and as I recall, that happened early in the season – I don’t think he missed a snap from that point on. I remember the things that impressed me at that time was I just felt like he was a solid individual. I thought he had toughness, he was dependable and then he was athletic for the position. Sometimes centers are not athletic, but he was athletic.”

The 6-foot-2, 250-pound Vincennes, Ind., native only had one year of game action with Peckenpaugh, but the former quarterback recalls how Carter blended in with the veteran offensive line that he calls his “safety blanket,” and also recalls trusting Carter’s knowledge because he was a “sharp cookie.”

“For a center, David was just athletic as hell. He just had great footwork, he ran well and he was just an excellent student of the game. He had a really good understanding,” Peckenpaugh said. “Back then we weren’t nearly as sophisticated as they are now with the spread offenses and all of the audibling and checks and everything, but with him, he got it.

“He would come back and offer information during the game, too, to me in the huddle. You like to hear from these guys – what’s it looking like on your end? Can we double team? Can we move this tackle or this guy or this guy? He was a real treasure, a guy that had a great understanding of the game and was a very, very good athlete.”

Peckenpaugh calls the 1973 team “without question, the greatest defensive team in program history,” and believes the offense benefitted from that. While the quarterback trusted his knowledge, what stood out most to the defensive line coach at the time was the athleticism.

“I knew that he was smart, but the thing that impressed me more was his athletic ability – being able to out-quick some of our guys and having the strength to deal with our guys because we had some decent defensive linemen at that time, but he could hold his own, he could reach guys, turn them out, can push them off the ball,” Crennel said. “That was the thing that really impressed me the most about him.”

Carter’s success continued after that first year of game action. He helped the team to a 7-3 record in 1974 and an 11-2 mark in 1975. In the latter, WKU finished tied for first in the OVC with a 6-1 mark, and went on again to the Division II championship game, where the Hilltoppers fell to Northern Michigan 16-14.

Earlier in the 1975 season, on Nov. 29, WKU won 14-12 at Northern Iowa in a game that was played in poor conditions, Billy Lindsey, a letterwinner from 1974-76 who finished his final year as the team’s leading receiver, recalls. Carter also served as long snapper in addition to playing center, and Lindsey was the holder.

“That same year we played Northern Iowa out there in Cedar Falls before they had their dome, and it came a flood Thanksgiving weekend – there was ice and snow on the sides of the field where they raked it off or shoveled it off – and it had all melted into the middle and it was just like a mud bowl,” Lindsey said. “They had to put a towel on top of the ball and under the ball to keep it from floating off.

“We beat them 14-12 and made both our extra points and he was the snapper and I was the holder. It was right on the money every time. I don’t know how anybody could snap it the way he did, but he did. He was just one of them guys when it’s crunch time, you wanted to be with him.”

The following year, Carter was named captain and earned Associated Press Second Team All-American honors. He was also named WKU Athlete of the Year in 1976-77. In total, the Hilltoppers went 34-11-1 during his time playing.

Carter was later inducted into the WKU Athletics Hall of Fame in 1996 and to the Hilltopper Football All-Century Team prior to the 2018 season. He was also named to the OVC 40th Anniversary Team in 1988 and the Half Century Team in 1998. Carter was a inducted as a member of the Kentucky Pro Football Hall of Fame for the Class of 2019 and Crennel joined him for the ceremony.

“Dave was a good, solid individual, you could depend on him, you could count on him and I think that showed up while we were there at Western,” Crennel said. “ … The All-Century team, which was voted on a couple years ago – I know he was a candidate and got elected to the all-century team and in my mind, that’s a great accomplishment for him.

“He’s done some good things in his life and it’s just unfortunate that he’s passed and he’s not with us anymore, but he’s in our hearts and we’ll remember him forever.”

At WKU, Carter also proved his athleticism by playing baseball. The catcher and designated hitter played in the spring of ‘74 and ‘75, posting a .329 batting average with 29 runs scored, 34 runs batted in and four home runs. In 1974, he set a school record with eight doubles while also leading the team with 24 runs batted in.

But it was football in his next stage of life after WKU.

Carter was selected 165th overall in the sixth round of the 1977 NFL Draft by the Houston Oilers. At the time, he was the second-highest NFL draft selection from WKU following the AFL-NFL merger. He played nine years in the league, seeing action in 121 games with 42 starts. He played most of his career in Houston, but finished his career in New Orleans for the final 11 games in 1984 and 1985. Of those selected in the 1977 draft, he appeared in the 43rd-most games.

For those that played with Carter in Bowling Green, the memories go beyond the gridiron, however.

“He was a really good friend and a good dude and a great football player,” Peckenpaugh said. “If you didn’t know he played football, you would never know he was that kind of guy because he was so humble.”

Lindsey recalls his “real funny personality” and that he “could do a heckuva Ed Sullivan imitation.” Lindsey says they played intramural sports and, on bus rides, they’d play a game going through the alphabet and naming a professional baseball player whose last name started with each letter, among other games.

“We played a lot of games together all the time – it was usually me and a bunch of those linemen, so it looked like four mammoths and a mole hill when we played,” Lindsey said. “ … He was one of those kind of guys that after you got to know him and stuff, he was just a really good guy.”

For Crennel, who is entering his 38th year working in the NFL and his seventh with Houston where he now serves as a senior adviser for football performance, more of his memories have come recently. Crennel says that as soon as he got to Houston, he met up with former Hilltopper Lonnie Schuster and Carter for dinner at Piatto Ristorante. Carter introduced Crennel to the owner and Crennel says it’s still one of his wife, Rosemary’s, favorite restaurants.

While Crennel says some physical ailments limited him later in life, he believes Carter still had a good place in Houston because of his career and that he was well-liked, like he was during his playing days by teammates.

“He was a solid individual. I think players and coaches felt that way about him off the field as well as on the field,” Crennel said. “In our business, you have to be dependable and I think players and coaches depended on him, knew he was going to show up, knew he was going to do his job and I think that’s been evidenced in his career because he got drafted, went to the Oilers and played nine years in the pro game and that’s a lifetime when you talk about nine years in the pro game. He was a dependable guy, you could count on him and I think everybody kind of liked him.”

Carter and his wife, Beth, had three sons – Brett, Clay and Tyler.

“He was a really good guy,” Lindsey said. “He was a big guy with a big heart.”{&end}