University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Athletic Communications Office.

Intercollegiate athletics at the University of North Carolina began in 1884, when the first intercollegiate baseball game was played. Baseball and football were the most popular sports for many years, but after World War II, basketball eclipsed baseball. As the number of teams and the interest in them increased, so did the administrative operation of athletics. In 1947 the first director of sports publicity was hired. Later the Sports Information Office was established. The name of the office went through several permutations before becoming the Athletic Communications Office sometime after 2000. Records consist of materials created by and collected by the Athletic Communications Office, previously the Sports Information Office, pertaining chiefly to intercollegiate sports at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Materials include press releases, newspapers clippings, game programs, game statistics, media guides, brief histories, photographs, and scrapbooks. Sports represented include baseball, men's and women's basketball, boxing, cross-country running, field hockey, football, men's and women's golf, men's and women's gymnastics, hockey, men's and women's lacrosse, rowing, men's and women's soccer, softball, swimming and diving, men's and women's tennis, track and field, volleyball, and wrestling. However, there is much more material relating to men's basketball and football than to any of the.

From the description of Records of the Athletic Communications Office, 1890-2010. WorldCat record id: 238817096

There were no organized sports at the university during antebellum times. The most popular outdoor game then was bandy, or shinny, which was something like field hockey and was played with long, curved sticks and a hard ball. Following the Civil War, baseball began to catch on; and in 1867 there was, briefly, a team. When the university reopened in 1875 (it was closed from 1871 to 1875), the Board of Trustees ordered that the eastern edge of the campus be reserved for athletic fields. Again bandy was very popular, but by the late 1880s baseball and football had largely replaced it.

In 1876 students organized the Athletic Association and set up an outdoor gymnasium. At about the same time a field was cleared for baseball and football just south of the present Playmakers Theatre. The Athletic Association then organized class teams in baseball and football and sponsored intramural games. In the spring of 1884 it sponsored a field day, which included a one-hundred-yard dash and a five-mile race. Also in 1884 Professor Venable built the first tennis court near his home, and in the fall of that year, the University Lawn Tennis Association was established. The students' enthusiasm for athletics led President Battle to campaign for an indoor gymnasium, and he convinced a group of alumni to underwrite the construction. The building was completed in 1885 and was located just past the western edge of campus, opposite present-day Swain Hall. The faculty and administration of the university encouraged athletics, viewing it as beneficial to physical and mental health and to esprit de corps. They credited athletics for the relative peace of the campus compared to the unrest of the antebellum period.

At first the students regarded their athletic games as exercise and recreation. Gradually their interest in competition, not only among themselves but with other schools, increased--and with it, their desire to have the best teams. Their first intercollegiate contest was a baseball game against Bingham Miliitary School in the spring of 1884; they lost ignominiously, as President Battle put it. The university's first intercollegiate football game was against Wake Forest College on 18 October 1888. Football teams at that time consisted of as many men as were willing to play, and spectators were apt to engage in the action as well. The earliest intercollegiate matches were arranged by the students, and some ended in disorders. In September 1889 the university's faculty resolved that the foot-ball team and other athletic clubs be allowed to play only on the regular grounds of the various colleges and not on any city ground. In February 1890, the Board of Trustees, on the advice of the faculty, banned all intercollegiate games. In December 1890, when students asked for the ban to be lifted, the faculty appointed a committee to consider the matter; this was the genesis of the faculty's standing committee on athletics. Subsequently the faculty recommended to the trustees that the ban be lifted and that an advisory committee composed of a faculty menber, an undergraduate student, and a graduate student be created to supervise intercollegiate contests.

As interest in intercollegiate competition grew, so did interest in individual and intramural athletics. In the fall of 1889, members of the campus YMCA asked to be allowed to run the gymnasium. They proposed charging fees for its use and hiring a trainer. Their request was granted by the Board of Trustees, and thus began a program of instruction in physical education that would eventually become compulsory and would lead to the establishment of the Department of Physical Education in 1935. In 1895, when the first gymnasium was being converted to a dining hall, its athletic equipment was moved to old Memorial Hall, where the program of instruction continued until the completion of Bynum Gymnasium in 1905. During the 1899-1900 school year, the gym instructor introduced the game of basketball. In 1911 basketball became an intercollegiate sport, and its team was known as the White Phantoms.

Meanwhile the faculty and administration struggled to regulate intercollegiate competition, especially in football. The central issue was the eligibility of players. Southern schools were infamous for their lack of standards, and northern sports writers disparaged southern teams. In 1900, at President Venable's urging, the university joined the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association but withdrew just two years later, in part because none of its closest rivals had joined and in part because alumni opposed the association's new one-year eligibility rule. The university then established its own rules, which were nearly the same as the association's except for eligibility. The university's rule was No student shall be eligible for an athletic team in the University of North Carolina unless he has registered on or before October 12th. By 1908-1909 the rules had been strengthened, and the faculty committee on athletics was responsible for certifying eligibility, one of the requirements for which was a prior enrollment of five months.

At that time the university's chief rival in football was the University of Virginia, which won the majority of the games played between 1900 and 1914. In December 1912, after a 66-0 loss to Virginia, the Alumni Athletic Council of the Alumni Association asked for and received from President Venable a greater role in athletic matters. The council participated in the hiring of G. T. Trenchard, who had played for Princeton University, as football coach in February 1913. Trenchard immediately began pushing for the liberalization of the five-month eligibility rule. He and members of the council tried to circumvent the faculty and administration by lobbying directly with the Board of Trustees. In June 1913 the trustees passed a resolution that allowed attendance in the Summer Law School to count as part of the five-month requirement. The faculty was irate. In the fall a game with the North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (now North Carolina State University) was scheduled; games with A & M had been suspended since 1906. When Trenchard learned that A & M, which had no five-month rule, had brought in some new players, he canceled the game. A great deal of argument ensued in the press.

President E. K. Graham took a firm stand. He insisted that the faculty and administration, not the Alumni Athletic Council, should control athletics. In January 1914 the trustees concurred with him. In 1915 the University of North Carolina, along with the University of Virginia, the University of South Carolina, and the University of Tennessee, established the Southern Athletic Conference of State Universities. When Trenchard's contract expired in 1916, the university let him go and hired Thomas J. Campbell as football coach and director of athletics. In the fall of 1916 the University of North Carolina and the University of Virginia tightened their athletic regulations, and both adopted a one-year eligibility rule.

The designation of Campbell as director of athletics signaled the university's realization that it needed not just committees but an actual administrator to be responsible for the operational details of its athletic program. It was the duty of the director to assure that instruction and facilities were adequate for the participation of all students in athletic activities. Campbell's tenure was interrupted by World War I, but in 1921 the university hired William K. Fetzer as director of athletics and football coach. Fetzer's brother Robert became assistant director and track coach. When William resigned in 1926, Robert A. Fetzer became director of athletics and served in that capacity for more than twenty years.

The Fetzer years were relatively unmarred by scandal and controversy. Nevertheless, by the 1930s, Consolidated University President Frank Porter Graham had become concerned about the influence of money in intercollegiate athletics. In 1935 he proposed his Graham Plan, which called for: no special financial aid for athletes; no special remuneration for athletic staff except from their colleges; faculty control of athletics; the auditing and publishing of athletic accounts; limited recruitment; and no postseason games. Faculty supported the plan, as did six of the ten members of the Southern Intercollegiate Conference (organized in 1921). However, there was fierce opposition from other constituencies, and the trustees would not endorse the plan. The University of Virginia threatened to withdraw from the Southern Conference over the issue. Eventually Graham had to accept that his plan would not be adopted.

Also in 1935, the university established the Department of Physical Education with Oliver K. Cornwell as chair. In 1937 the Department of Physical Education and the athletics program directed by Robert Fetzer were combined to form the Department of Physical Education and Athletics. Cornwell, as professor of physical education, was still considered chair of the physical education component of the new department, but Fetzer was chair of the combined department as well as director of athletics. There was some separation of funds between the components of the department. The salaries of the physical education faculty came from state funds, while those of the coaches came from Athletic Association funds. The Athletic Association, while it remained a student organization, was also a quasi-administrative office. Because it received student athletic fees and proceeds from ticket sales, it needed a professional business manager. The first person to provide managerial services to the Athletic Association was Charles T. Woollen, the university business manager. Later the association's business manager was part of the office of the director of athletics. Another individual who worked closely with the office of the director of athletics was the director of sports publicity. This position was created about 1947; it was technically part of the university's News Bureau at first, but it was funded by the Athletic Association. Eventually the Sports Information Office was established within the Department of Athletics.

In 1952, when Robert Fetzer retired, administration of the Department of Physical Education and Athletics was modified in an effort to strengthen faculty control over athletics. Oliver K. Cornwell then became chair of the combined department while Charles P. Erickson, Fetzer's successor, was merely director of athletics. The combined department ended in 1954-1955, when, due to events described below, the director of athletics began reporting directly to the chancellor. The intercollegiate athletics component of the old department became the Department of Athletics; but the names Department of Athletics and Athletic Association were sometimes used interchangeably, creating confusion.

University teams had been winning in basketball since the 1920s, but it was not until after World War II that enthusiasm for basketball reached a fever pitch. In 1953 seven schools, including the University of North Carolina, withdrew from the Southern Athletic Conference and formed the Atlantic Coast Conference; they were joined by the University of Virginia in 1955. Shortly after the formation of the Atlantic Coast Conference, the National Collegiate Athletic Association censured North Carolina State College's basketball and football programs for violation of rules regarding recruitment. Consolidated University President Gordon Gray issued a statement in February 1954 stipulating that intercollegiate athletics at the University in Chapel Hill and North Carolina State College in Raleigh shall be administered and their budgets controlled, under the authority delegated by the Board of Trustees, by the Chancellors, with the approval of the President, in the same manner that other departments of our institutions are administered and controlled.

The University of North Carolina's basketball team, coached by Frank McGuire, went on to win the National Collegiate Athletic Association championship in 1957 (North Carolina State College was still on probation at the time). Then, in January 1961, the National Collegiate Athletic Association put Chapel Hill's basketball program on a year's probation for recruitment violations. Just two months later news of the Dixie Classic scandal broke. The Dixie Classic tournament had been played over the Christmas holidays since the mid-1950s by the basketball teams of the University of North Carolina and North Carolina State College. In 1961 the chancellors learned that players on both teams had accepted bribes from gamblers in exchange for shaving points during the tournament. Several students were dismissed, and stricter rules were put in place. Frank McGuire left the university and Dean Smith became basketball coach. The success of Dean Smith's teams, both on the court and in the classroom, was considered indicative of a well-run program.

During the 1960s and 1970s intercollegiate football and basketball grew into multi-million-dollar businesses. By the seventies, the university had thirteen men's and thirteen women's intercollegiate teams. The period was relatively free of scandal and controversy.

From the guide to the Athletic Communications Office of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Records, 1890-2010, (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. University Archives.)