On December 2, 1953, the University of Maryland Terrapins met the University of South Carolina Gamecocks in the first basketball game ever played in the recently formed Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). Maryland, a legitimate contender for the league title, was favored to win and the matchup generated little anticipation or excitement. A “near capacity crowd” of about 3,000 attended the game at South Carolina’s University Field House in Columbia; the cost of a ticket was $1.50 for adults and $.50 for children. The fans watched Maryland pull out a hard-fought 53–49 victory. After South Carolina tied the score at...

John E. Hocutt, the dean of men at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, customarily met individually with all male students near the end of their sophomore year to review their records and evaluate their progress toward graduation. William and Mary was a state-supported institution with an enviable academic reputation. In the spring of 1949, Hocutt, a gruff, no-nonsense administrator, informed a member of the college’s football team that an introductory Spanish course he had passed would not count toward his degree. Hocutt explained that since the student had taken two years of Spanish in high school...

The disclosures of point shaving in college basketball and the violations of academic standards by football coaches at the College of William and Mary were sources of immense concern to presidents of the members of the Southern Conference. Soon after the William and Mary scandal became public knowledge, they held a meeting to consider actions to maintain a healthy balance between academic and athletic goals. The presidents agreed on several measures that they hoped would prevent overemphasis on sports, the most visible and controversial of which was to prohibit participation by Southern Conference football teams in bowl games. This recommendation,...

The approach of the Dixie Classic of 1958, the tenth anniversary of an event that had become a cherished institution among basketball fans in North Carolina, generated even more excitement and anticipation than usual. The tournament, a three-day affair held between Christmas and New Year’s Day, pitted the Big Four schools against powers from other parts of the country. In 1958, the participants included four teams ranked nationally in the top 10. In the Associated Press poll, the University of Cincinnati, led by Oscar Robertson, was second, North Carolina was third, NC State was sixth, and Michigan State, featuring John...

On March 1, 1957, after defeating Duke in Durham, Frank McGuire’s North Carolina Tar Heels finished their regular season schedule unbeaten and ranked number one in the country. But their record did not assure them of a chance to play for the NCAA championship because they still had to win the ACC Tournament. McGuire was outspoken in objecting to the ACC’s method of choosing its NCAA representative. He described it as a “ridiculous” system because “the regular season games in this conference are meaningless.” McGuire’s views were shared by other conference coaches; Maryland’s Bud Millikan called the ACC’s rule on...

Shortly after the NCAA placed the University of North Carolina on probation but before the point-shaving scandal broke, the Tar Heels met the Duke Blue Devils in Durham in an important ACC matchup. Duke, ranked fourth in the nation, came into the game with a record of 7–0 in the conference and 15–1 overall. UNC was ranked fifth nationally with a record of 7–0 in the ACC and 13–2 overall. Chancellor Aycock had already decided that North Carolina would not participate in the conference tournament, which meant that there would be no postseason action of any...

On January 7, 1967,The State, the leading newspaper in South Carolina, ran a headline that would have been inconceivable in the first few years of ACC basketball: “Gamecocks, Tigers Meet in Vital ACC War.” From the founding of the conference in 1953 through 1965, the University of South Carolina and Clemson had consistently ranked among the worst teams in the ACC. Clemson, despite its improvement under Press Maravich, won just 42 of 163 conference games during that period. South Carolina was scarcely better with 46 victories in 164 ACC contests. Only Virginia demonstrated the same level of sustained futility...

On December 1, 1965, twelve years after the first ACC basketball game, another milestone event took place. Billy Jones, a 6’1” guard from Towson, Maryland, became the league’s first black varsity basketball player by appearing briefly for the University of Maryland in a road game against Penn State. Three days later, when Jones came off the bench and scored two points in a rout of Wake Forest at Cole Field House, he became the first black player to participate in a varsity game between two conference schools. In retrospect, Jones’s pioneering performances were critical steps toward shattering the racial barriers...

As the 1969–70 basketball season approached, the University of Virginia Cavaliers appeared in danger of descending from disarray into full-fledged chaos. The previous spring, coach Bill Gibson had survived a disappointing record and the “Boot the Hoot” campaign, but only with a tepid endorsement from Athletic Director Steve Sebo. The prospects for the new season were hardly promising. The top four scorers and top three rebounders from the 1968–69 squad, which had finished with a 10–15 record, were gone. The players who moved up from the freshman team (which was often called the “first-year team” at Virginia)...

The Atlantic Coast Conference was founded in 1953 in significant part to establish academic integrity and enforce academic standards among its members. One eventual result of those goals was that the ACC decided in 1964 that football and basketball prospects had to score at least 800 on the SAT to qualify for an athletic scholarship. In 1966, it extended this policy to athletes who participated, with or without financial aid, in any intercollegiate sport. During the late 1960s, the 800 rule generated what theRaleigh News and Observercalled the “biggest, most controversial, technicality-filled issue in recent league history.” The...