"Joe Pate has been recruiting high-school football players for 30 years in the Deep South, mainly in his home state of Alabama. He knows the country roads and small towns as well as the back of a Waffle House menu, and he can say for sure that no stretch of highway treated him better than Interstate 65 in the fall and winter of 2000.

A North Carolina State assistant coach at the time, Pate signed two recruits that would change the face of his program - a quarterback-wide receiver tandem that tormented ACC defenses for four years. Sunday, they are rivals in the AFC divisional playoffs.

The old coach signed Jerricho Cotchery from Phillips High School in Birmingham and Philip Rivers of Athens High, 90 miles north in Athens, Ala.

"We were fortunate with those guys, considering what they went on to accomplish," Pate says by phone. "Believe me, it doesn't always happen that way."

The Birmingham-area Class of 2000 also produced Kerry Rhodes, from Lanier High. He went to Louisville with the hope of playing quarterback, but he was switched to safety.

Call them the 'Bama Boys. Ten years after high-school graduation, it will be Rhodes and Cotchery versus Rivers in the Jets-Chargers showdown, with a berth in the AFC championship game at stake.

"That was a great class," says Cotchery, noting that Cardinals linebacker Karlos Dansby also was a local star that year. "We still talk about all those high-school playoff games, even basketball."

Cotchery, Rivers and Rhodes all faced each other in basketball, with Rhodes recalling a holiday tournament in which his school beat Rivers' team. Rhodes said he faced Cotchery twice in basketball, actually guarding him in those games.

"I got him bad," Rhodes says with a smile.

The most memorable football matchup occurred in the November, 1999, when Cotchery lost to Rivers in the state 5A-6A playoffs. In its preview of the game, the Birmingham News featured Rivers and Cotchery, two-way stars. Rivers rallied his team from an early deficit, and it still burns Cotchery to this day.

"I've got to get me some get-back," he says."