CHARLOTTE — Time can play tricks with a memory.
But the things that matter last, even if it takes you a moment to see them, or to realize how much they always mattered. And the things that might not have seemed out of the ordinary become profound when you step back and consider them again.
So for the Carolina Panthers on Jan. 2, 2004 — the privileged few who were there to hear it — they got the first draft of a piece of team history, a moment that no one will ever forget, a moment that became part of something bigger than a football game, even a playoff game.
Sam Mills was already part of the fiber of the Carolina Panthers, long before his words were woven into the fabric they wear each game day.
But before Keep Pounding could become a rallying cry, men had to cry when a man said it for the first time.
A sick man. A strong man, but a very sick man. But a man whose words carried more weight because of who he was and what he meant to all of them.
And even if they didn’t know it in the moment, they were words that changed the course of a franchise.
For the small group — fewer than 100 people total — who heard the words in person for the first time that Friday, the memory has done the same thing that Mills has done over time, even in his passing.
From a humble start, they’ve only gotten more well-known, and bigger, and more powerful. They grew on everyone there that day. And then beyond.
No one necessarily knew what to expect that morning when they went out to the practice fields behind Bank of America Stadium, the day before their home playoff game with Dallas. But as time passed, all who were there were moved by the words — the Cowboys found out the hard way — and a legend was born.
Keep Pounding.
“It was simple, but that was Sam,” former Panthers safety Mike Minter said. “The great speeches aren’t great moments until later.
“Everybody who left the field that day knew.”
And if that moment became legendary immediately, it only grew as the years passed.
“I see it right now,” former running backs coach Jim Skipper said. “I can hear it as clear as me and you talking.”
Like a lot of legends, there are certain aspects of the story that have become mythical over time. Some swore it happened in the locker room or the team hotel the day before the game.
But it was right out there, on the thinning January grass, the green of spring long since yielded, and there was a chill in the air that cut through, even on a mild winter day (the low that morning was 43 degrees). That was largely because the select few people who were there knew the stakes. Mills had been diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of intestinal cancer the previous summer, and was given just a few months to live. The fact he’d be there at all in January wasn’t a given, so any words he said carried weight