RALEIGH — He doesn’t look 5-foot-8 on the highlight packages.

And it’s still a bit hard to imagine that as a freshman, he was a part-time kick returner the first four games for the varsity and a fulltime running back for the junior varsity. Hard to imagine not because there were college JV teams in the 1970s just after freshman eligibility had been restored, but because Ted Brown is still the only four-time All-ACC pick.

Half a rookie season, pretty much, and he was still as good as there was in the backfield.

Brown was a 100-yard rusher his first start in that fifth game. He went on to set running records that would stand decade after decade, even after the inclusion of Florida State a quarter-century ago, even after the conference had exploded to 14 teams.

Touchdown Ted Brown is back in the spotlight this weekend, though really for many of us he never left. He was as famous a No. 23 as the ACC had — for about five years anyway, until that skinny basketball player from Wilmington buried a shot in New Orleans.

Even still, nobody has worn a 23 on an ACC football field any better.

Clemson’s Travis Etienne, most likely on Saturday, is going to pass Brown and become the all-time leading rusher in the ACC. Etienne is bonafide good if not great. He’s explosive, goes from point to point like lightning, and will soon be earning a lot of money for playing on Sundays.

Brown is credited with 4,602 yards in his illustrious career, and Etienne needs 46 to pass him. We should note that Etienne gets to count all the Tigers’ postseason games in his total, but Brown played in an era when those games didn’t. Why doesn’t the NCAA and ACC update accordingly? Thinking logically with the NCAA never works, and we’ll just leave it at that.

Brown’s two Peach Bowls and a Tangerine Bowl give him 5,001 for his career. And yeah, sure, Etienne should pass that, too.

We hope it keeps Touchdown Ted in the spotlight, too.

“I like to be remembered as a player who did the best he could when he was on the field, and also off the field,” Brown said at his induction as an inaugural member of the N.C. State Hall of Fame. “He gave his all, was a loyal teammate, made sure his teammates got a little better.”

The 1978 All-American did all of that and more.

He ran for better than 1,000 yards three times in an era when teams only played 11 games and relied on the run much more heavily than they do now. His 49 rushing touchdowns was the league standard for 39 years, and his 27 games with 100 yards or more still stands 42 years after he finished sixth in the 1978 Heisman Trophy voting.

“Ted Brown had the best balance of any athlete I’ve ever seen or played with,” said his quarterback, Johnny Evans. “When Ted would cut, it would almost seem like he was sliding, like he was doing a side step or a slide step. He could get one leg knocked out from under him, but he had such great balance, he could continue with his run.”

Or, as his linebacker teammate and future Pittsburgh Steelers Super Bowl champion coach Bill Cowher would say, “You never got a clean shot on Ted Brown.”

Cowher says Brown’s speed was deceptive, the result of strides not long and stature low to the ground.

Coming out of High Point Andrews, only Lou Holtz among Division I coaches offered him a scholarship. Hard to believe but true.

Holtz left to coach the NFL’s Jets after Brown’s freshman season, and the record books got rewritten with the late Bo Rein at the helm. Minnesota made him the 16th overall pick in the NFL Draft, and he played all eight years in Minneapolis running for 4,546 yards.

We didn’t get to see enough of Touchdown Ted at State unless we bought a ticket.

Catch the Tigers this weekend against Boston College. Should be a blowout, should be Etienne getting plenty of yards and further cementing his greatness. It’s a treat, one we weren’t privileged to have when Brown played in the era of no cable TV and no ACC regional football package — much less its own network.

And when the announcers talk about Ted Brown and the stats get flashed on the screen, know that they’re referring to one of the ACC’s all-time greats. Hope they show the clips.

Alan Wooten can be reached at 910-247-9132 or awooten@bladenjournal.com. Twitter: @alanwooten19.