The Graham Plan of 1935: An Aborted Crusade to De-emphasize College Athletics

North Carolina Office of Archives and History

The Graham Plan of 1935: An Aborted Crusade to De-emphasize College AthleticsAuthor(s): Richard StoneSource: The North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 64, No. 3 (JULY 1987), pp. 274-293Published by: North Carolina Office of Archives and HistoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23518643 .

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The Graham Plan of 1935: An Aborted Crusade to De-emphasize College Athletics

By Richard Stone*

"How in the hell can you beat a team such as that?" was the reaction of

sportswriter A. J. McKevlin to the University of North Carolina's (UNC's) 1935 football squad.1 In his second season at the Chapel Hill campus, Coach Carl Snavely, a dour perfectionist, had fashioned an explosive single-wing attack blending passing and deception with the sheer power of the off-tackle play. Among Snavely's stars were ends Dick Buck and

Andy Bershak, tailback Don Jackson, and wingback Harry Montgomery. Reserve halfback Crowell Little, a darting jackrabbit of a runner, was a

promising sophomore. By mid-November, Snavely's players had over whelmed seven straight opponents. With only Duke and Virginia re

maining to be played, Carolina partisans speculated excitedly over the imminent possibility of an invitation to the 1936 Tournament of Roses in

Pasadena, California. More than rumor underlay the Rose Bowl talk. Three southern univer

sities—Alabama, Georgia Tech, and Tulane—had appeared six times over the last nine years in the classic New Year's Day matchup against the

strongest team of the Pacific Coast region. In the third week of October, UNC's business manager, Charles Woollen, had received through a third

party what appeared to be a feeler from Pasadena.2 Since that time UNC's news director, Bob Madry, had swamped newspapers across the nation with releases about the Tar Heels. Then on Friday, November 15, 1935, a newsreel camera crew shot publicity footage of the team in a Kenan Stadium workout. Madry hoped and expected that the film would run in countless theaters across the nation during the week between

*Dr. Stone is professor, Department of History, Western Kentucky University. 1News and Observer (Raleigh), November 3, 1935, hereinafter cited as News and Observer.

McKevlin, who was sports editor at the time, later became managing editor of the News and Observer.

2John Y. Jordan to Charles Woollen, October 16, 1935, Frank Porter Graham Papers, President's Records, University Archives, University of North Carolina Library at Chapel Hill, hereinafter cited as Graham Papers. In the 1930s the UNC athletic department took an extremely casual approach to archival preservation. Although Dean of Administration Robert B. House normally passed on papers relating to athletics to President Graham, the presidential records do not include any written conditional invitation from the Tournament of Roses Committee. Yet, there was widespread public certainty, then and later, that with a perfect record UNC's team would be invited to the Rose Bowl. In 1935 the tournament committee could afford to await the end of the season before extending even an informal invitation. There were few bowl games at the time, and it would have been unthinkable for any institution to reject the Rose Bowl in favor of a less prestigious event.

THE NORTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL REVIEW



The Graham Plan of 1935 275

In 1935 Frank Porter Graham, president of the consolidated University of North Carolina, launched his campaign against professionalism in college athletics. Photograph of Graham from the files of the Division of Archives and History.

Christmas and New Year's Day. But Max Reed, Coach Snavely's principal assistant, was dubious about the hoopla. Only half in jest, he warned

Madry not to return to Chapel Hill "if we lose tomorrow" to Duke.3 Just twenty-four hours later and eight miles away, UNC's dreamed-of

roses wilted in the drizzle and mud of Duke Stadium. In disbelief some

46,880 spectators—among them enough UNC alumni to comprise the

then-largest-ever gathering of former students—watched as Coach Wallace Wade's Blue Devils, led by halfback Clarence (Ace) Parker, dismantled the Tar Heels by a 25-0 score.4 Robert B. House, dean of administration

(later chancellor) at UNC, confessed to a friend that his emotions had been "so terribly involved and my expectation of victory ... so com

placently sure that the upset made me physically sick. . . ." Perhaps

3Quoted in UNC's Alumni Review, XXIV (November, 1935), 77. From 1930 through the 1982 season, the alumni association mailed to members four-page supplements to the Alumni Review. These supplements covered each regular-season football game and until 1980 were incorporated into the annual volumes of the alumni magazine.

"•Detailed coverage of the 1935 UNC-Duke game may be found in the Alumni Review, XXIV (November, 1935), 77-80, and in all major state newspapers for November 17,1935.

VOL UME LXIV, NUMBER 3, JUL Y, 1987



276 Richard Stone

The successful season enjoyed by the 1935 Tar Heel football team intensified Graham's fears of abuses in collegiate athletics. Shown above is the University of North Carolina

(UNC) team running a play during an October, 1934, game at Kenan Stadium. The squad was coached by Carl N. Snavely (adjacent page), a dour perfectionist, who had fashioned an

explosive single-wing attack blending passing and powerful off-tackle running. The

emergence of the university as a major football power in 1935 reinforced Graham's apprehen sion that affluent and sports-minded UNC alumni would corrupt the school's athletic

department. Photographs from the North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina

Library at Chapel Hill.

sharing House's sentiments were three persons in a Ford V-8 that slowly made its way out of the Duke parking lot after the game. At the wheel was Marian Drane Graham. Her passengers were Coach Snavely and her

husband, Frank Porter Graham, president of the three-campus consoli dated University of North Carolina.5

Frank Graham's disappointment of the moment must have been balanced by relief that the whole matter of the Rose Bowl bid was now moot. Although Graham often spoke at pep rallies and was an enthusiastic

spectator at athletic events, he apparently had resolved already to oppose any invitation from Pasadena. Just six days after the debacle at Duke, Graham launched a public crusade to purify intercollegiate athletics of what he regarded as widespread and rampant professionalism. The cam

paign, declares his biographer Warren Ashby, brought to Graham "the

5Robert B. House to Haywood Parker, November 25, 1935, Graham Papers. The consoli dated University of North Carolina consisted of the institution at Chapel Hill, the North Carolina College for Women (present-day University of North Carolina at Greensboro), and North Carolina State College (present-day North Carolina State University at Raleigh).





greatest hostility he had known to that time and . . . his first major defeat" as president of the university.6 Ashby has told the story of the so-called Graham Plan from his subject's perspective as educational leader and outspoken southern advocate of progressive economic, social, and political reforms. In contrast, this article will emphasize the relation

ship of Graham's crusade to the UNC football program. Graham launched his campaign amid a general, nationwide movement

against abuses in college athletics. In 1929 and in 1931 the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching had published studies that denounced as a cancerous blight upon intercollegiate sports the recruiting

6Warren Ashby, Frank Porter Graham: A Southern Liberal (Winston-Salem: John F.

Blair, 1980), 131, hereinafter cited as Ashby, Frank Porter Graham. In December, 1935, Graham wrote to Jonathan Daniels that his proposals for reform had been prepared "long in advance of the Duke game." See Frank P. Graham to Jonathan Daniels, December 30, 1935, Graham Papers. However, a first draft of the proposals, dated November 5, 1935, did not specifically prohibit Rose Bowl participation. See Reform Proposals, November 5, 1935, Graham Papers, hereinafter cited as Reform Proposals, November 5,1935. Whether Graham could have prevented UNC from accepting a Rose Bowl invitation is uncertain. In an informal conversation with the author in November, 1984, former chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson speculated that the university trustees would have wanted to accept such an offer

despite Graham's objections. In fact, the trustees did overrule Graham on another football issue after the 1944 season. Author's conversation with J. Carlyle Sitterson, former chan cellor of UNC at Chapel Hill, November, 1984 (notes on conversation in possession of

author).

VOLUME LXIV, NUMBER 3, JULY, 1987



278 Richard Stone

and subsidizing of student athletes, especially football players. The reports urged that university presidents take upon themselves the implementation of much-needed reforms. In Graham's view a bad situation had, if any thing, become worse since the publication of the reports. Recently, the amateur principle had been "thrown overboard" by the thirteen institu tions that were members of the neighboring Southeastern Conference, which had begun awarding athletic scholarships without equivocation.7 Closer to home, the emergence of Duke under Wallace Wade and UNC under Snavely as major football powers reinforced Graham's apprehen sions that affluent and sports-minded UNC alumni could become a cor

rupting influence in Carolina's athletic department. Graham made his concerns known in a general way early in the

autumn of 1935 to the consolidated university's 100-member board of trustees. He drafted a preliminary version of his specific reform proposals on November 5. Graham wanted nothing less drastic than an absolute ban on recruiting of any kind by coaches and physical education per sonnel. There should be no preferential treatment of athletes in the

awarding of any scholarships, loans, or part-time jobs under the control of a university. Each athlete would declare both verbally and "in writing formally upon his honor his eligibility or ineligibility under each separate regulation."8 Had Graham's ideas been adopted throughout the nation, they would undeniably have placed college athletics on a purely amateur basis.

Graham's proposals became public knowledge once he unveiled them on Friday, November 23, at a meeting in Washington, D.C., of the National Association of State Universities. As chairman of the committee on student life, Graham secured the endorsement first of that committee and then of the entire association of an eleven-point athletic-reform

platform. Then at Richmond, Virginia, on Friday, December 13, Graham presented

the same proposals to the presidents of the member institutions of the Southern Athletic Conference, to which North Carolina State College and UNC then belonged. Graham pressed his colleagues to respond to the National Association of State Universities by adopting what, by then, had become widely known as the Graham Plan. Once the Southern Conference had led the way, Graham maintained, universities and con ferences across America would follow its lead.

At follow-up Southern Conference meetings on January 11 and February 8, 1936, seven of Graham's proposals passed by votes of 6 to 4, the narrowest possible margin. As president of the consolidated university, Graham himself determined the two votes in favor from North Carolina State and UNC. Also behind him were the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Washington and Lee University, and the Universities of Virginia and

'Frank P. Graham to J. T. Dowd, January 31,1936, Graham Papers. 8Reform Proposals, November 5,1935.





Maryland.9 Opposed were the Virginia Military Institute, Clemson

College, Duke University, and the University of South Carolina.10 In its adopted form the Graham Plan forbade students to receive in

their capacities as athletes either direct or indirect aid. They were to furnish detailed statements of all the amounts and sources of their income aside from those upon which they were "naturally dependent for

support." Students on academic probation and freshmen were ineligible for competition. Faculty and administrators of athletic and physical education departments were not to participate in the awarding of scholar

ships. Nor were those officials to receive payment themselves "for any athletic purpose" unless such wages were established by the executive heads or boards of control at the institutions where they were employed. Such administrators and faculty also were to "accept an obligation of honor actively to exert their influence to discourage any unfair recruiting by alumni, students or other persons." Each student athlete would attest in writing to his own eligibility. All athletic accounts were to be audited

regularly and made available for public scrutiny.11 Finally, institutions in violation of conference rules were, upon a majority vote, to be dropped from the conference for at least two years. Tabled were proposals to grant academic tenure to coaches and to ban Christmas, spring, and postseason tournaments, practices, and games. The new regulations were not to take

effect until September 1, 1936.12 Graham's initial success was fleeting. In December, 1936, the conference

modified its prohibition against preferential treatment for athletes by

9Ashby, Frank Porter Graham, 131-136; News and Observer, January 12, 24, February 5,

6, 8, 1936. In retrospect, Graham's support from Harry Clifton (Curly) Byrd, president of the

University of Maryland, was surprising inasmuch as Byrd was a former football coach.

After World War II he became an uncompromising advocate of big-time football. Bruce A.

Corrie, The Atlantic Coast Conference, 1953-1978: Silver Anniversary (Durham: Carolina

Academic Press, 1978), 57,182, hereinafter cited as Corrie, The Atlantic Coast Conference. 10News and Observer, February 5, 6, 8, 1936. It appeared that Graham would obtain

additional support for his program after Davidson and Wake Forest colleges, the College of William and Mary, the University of Richmond, Furman University, and The Citadel were

invited on February 7, 1936, to join the Southern Conference. All became members on

September 1, 1936, the day that the Graham Plan took effect. None was ever to rank as a

major football power, although Wake Forest became a "spoiler" under Coach Douglas C.

(Peahead) Walker in the 1940s. The inclusion of such institutions in the conference suggested that at least some of the older members anticipated competing at a de-emphasized level

against a schedule composed largely of neighboring institutions operating under similar

restraints. Corrie, The Atlantic Coast Conference, 22-23, 204.

"Various aspects of Graham's 1935 athletic-reform program continue to resurface. For

example, on May 21, 1986, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) urged that

college athletic programs undergo annual independent audits, and that the programs themselves conduct self-studies every five years as a means of identifying and addressing

problems internally. In any case, both the UNC athletic department and the North Carolina

Educational Foundation, Inc., an alumni booster organization, are currently subject to

independent audit. Intercollegiate Athletics in Fifteen Member Institutions of the University

of North Carolina: Report of the Special Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics (Chapel Hill:

University of North Carolina Board of Governors, 1985), 11, hereinafter cited as Report of

the Special Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics.

12"Recommendations of the Presidents of Six Member Institutions of the Southern Con

ference for Consideration at the Next Meeting of the Southern Conference," n.d., Graham

Papers.

VOLUME LXIV, NUMBER 3, JUL Y, 1987



280 Richard Stone

henceforth allowing the sports potential of students to be considered by the faculty committees responsible for awarding scholarships, loans, and

jobs.13 And in December, 1937, the conference rescinded its rule against athletic scholarships so long as they were funded and managed by off

campus contributors. In short, the Graham Plan was doomed only four months after it was implemented, and it was laid to rest just a year later.

By his sixth year as university president, Frank Graham had emerged as a controversial figure. Well before 1935, he had gained much attention for his self-appointed and outspoken public advocacy of the various democratic and progressive reforms needed to bring North Carolina and the South fully into the world of the twentieth century. Even in the 1930s Graham was widely known to hold enlightened views in the field of race relations. Moreover, shortly before assuming the university's presidency in 1930, Graham injected himself into one of the most passion-engendering crises in the history of his state when, after authorities violently sup pressed a 1929 strike at a textile mill in Gastonia, he solicited widespread support for a prolabor "bill of rights" resolution. Admittedly, one of the strike's principal leaders was a communist. But that mattered less to Graham than the gross miscarriage of justice that he believed had taken

place when a court convicted fifteen strike leaders of various crimes but

acquitted five strikebreakers. On campus, Graham's principles and warm personality struck a

responsive chord among most of the UNC faculty and students. Even those conservative North Carolinians who found Graham's political and social ideas repugnant frequently were soothed by his cordial and un

assuming manner. Although lax about routine administrative concerns, Graham uncompromisingly defended academic freedom. And during an era of economic malaise, he was an eloquent spokesman for all levels of public and private education. The depression would not last forever, Graham insisted, and even in hard times the state must invest seed capital in its future.14

"The University of Virginia successfully proposed in December, 1936, that the word "primarily" be inserted into the clause prohibiting the awarding of scholarships "because of athletic ability." It was Virginia's contention thereafter that the university had abided by the Graham Plan to the letter. Indeed, Virginia's athletic director, Captain Norton Pritchett, had written Graham numerous and lengthy letters of support. But certain other institutions that had originally voted in favor of the plan had not strictly complied with its provisions, placing the Cavalier team at a disadvantage. Many of Virginia's alumni bitterly resented their university's 61-0 and 59-14 losses to Carolina in 1935 and 1936 and wondered out loud whether Graham's own institution was taking unfair advantage of theirs. After World War II, Virginia defied the NCAA by refusing to ratify its so-called Sanity Code—which attempted to link aid to athletes to actual need and to work performed—on the ground that the university would faithfully fulfill any commitment it made, whereas its rivals could not be counted upon to do so. See Ed Danforth, "The South vs. the Sanity Code," Sport, IV (November, 1949), 80.

14Ashby, Frank Porter Graham, 71-81 and passim. UNC faculty members tended to deplore Graham's managerial methods. Graham was widely reported to have reached decisions in the course of casual conversations on the streets of Chapel Hill. In a 1982 interview, former chancellor William B. Aycock, who admired much about Graham, emphasized that Graham would "do business" anywhere. Author's interview with William B. Aycock, former chancellor of UNC at Chapel Hill, July, 1982 (notes on interview in possession of author).





In 1935, however, the Graham Plan aroused bitter denunciations from

coaches, fans, alumni—and especially from sportswriters. From the moment that he first revealed his program, Graham faced "the hardest and hottest fight that I have ever been in in my life."15 Various critics, he

lamented, "opened up [with] machine guns, and in some cases . . . poison gas. It seems now that every group that has a grievance [against me] is

arising to re-assert the opposition."16 Graham's premonitions were well founded. It appears that had the university's trustees brought his plan to a formal vote at their regularly scheduled meeting on January 31, 1936, they would have rejected it. Later that spring rumors circulated that Graham would lose his office at the board session on May 30. With his

outspoken support for the rights of labor, Graham had offended North

Carolina's all-powerful textile and tobacco interests over the years. Now, it was said, he had alienated countless football enthusiasts among the

university's alumni at a time when the institution had lost already about

40 percent of its normal state appropriation as a result of austere depres sion-era budgets. The liberal journalist Gerald W. Johnson, a North

Carolina native, was sufficiently concerned about Graham's frankness to write in his Baltimore Sun column on March 12, 1936, that he was not

"prepared to assert that integrity and candor are qualities that go to

make ... a good university president. Pliant gentlemen, supple and slick

gentlemen, who know how to lick the boots of rich alumni in an artistic

manner" might be better suited for that particular office.

Nor could Graham count upon the support of the alumni community. In

February, 1936, the alumni secretary circulated a "loaded" questionnaire. Two of its four queries dealt with the Graham Plan. Overwhelmingly— and predictably—alumni respondents professed the belief that student

athletes with "openly disclosed" and "reasonable financial assistance

from alumni or friends of the University" ought to be eligible for competi tion. Moreover, the majority of the alumni respondents insisted that the

UNC athletic council—"composed of three representatives of the faculty, three ... of the student body, and three ... of the alumni, with its acts

subject to veto by the president"—should not be abolished. And certainly, the alumni declared, the "sole authority over athletics at the University of

15Frank P. Graham to Jonathan Daniels, December 30,1935, Graham Papers. 16Frank P. Graham to James Rowland Angelí, president of Cornell University, January

25, 1936, Graham Papers. In his long letter of December 30, 1935, to Jonathan Daniels (see

footnote 15, above), a prominent and sympathetic journalist, Graham expressed concern

that the hotly debated athletic reforms would "bring up against me all the crimes that I

have committed, such as standing up for the freedom of our faculty to think out loud,

recommending the moving of the [UNC] Engineering School to [North Carolina State

College at] Raleigh, standing for the right of [industrial] workers to organize and bargain

collectively, and the right of farmers to organize cooperative societies, and for the simple

right of a University president as a citizen to go on the bond of a former student . . . who

sympathized with . . . strikers and was unjustly thrown in jail. . . For Graham, the

widespread popularity of college athletics presented "a good occasion to combine attacks on

all fronts." The author believes that Graham's athletic-reform proposals were sufficiently

unpopular in their own right to explain most of the opposition, especially if they weakened

the Tar Heel football squad.




282 Richard Stone

North Carolina [should not be] transferred to the president of the Consoli dated University."17

Around the state, various alumni chapters enacted resolutions opposing the new conference regulations proposed by Graham and favoring the traditional role of the athletic council.18 Even the UNC faculty, which at the beginning of 1936 had endorsed the Graham Plan after having been handed the issue by the trustees, reversed itself a year later when the Southern Conference began to change course. But because Graham

possessed prestige, personal magnetism, and strong support among many trustees, he managed to withstand the repercussions generated by his

plan for collegiate athletics. Calls for his removal ceased after the May meeting of the board.19 Graham remained president of the university until the spring of 1949, but he never again placed himself at the head of a

major crusade to purify college athletic practices. The story of the Graham Plan raises three questions. Why did Frank

Graham choose to invest so much of his moral capital in an effort to reform a university program with such strong popular support—but one that was essentially peripheral? Why was the opposition to his plan so vehement? And what impact did the controversy have upon the UNC football program?

17Alumni Review, XXIV (April, 1936), 200. Not for another twenty years were the lines of

authority over the UNC athletic department clarified. In the late 1950s Chancellor William B. Aycock ruled that the athletic council's responsibility was to advise the director of athletics on such matters as schedules, budgets, physical plant, and personnel. A faculty athletic committee was to advise the chancellor on larger issues of athletic policy. The three

faculty members on the athletic council also served as members of the faculty athletic committee. In 1961 the chancellor's definitive authority over campus-wide athletic matters was confirmed by the trustees. The director of athletics has continued to report directly to the chancellor, who is, of course, answerable to the system president. Even the subsequent restructuring of the statewide university and its governing boards has in practice had

relatively little impact on an administrative plan for athletics that has been essentially in place for several decades. One professor who served on the two athletic committees, R. Don Higginbotham of the UNC history department, argued in the Chapel Hill Newspaper on January 15, 1984, that long-term service on the committees tends to make the members apologists for athletics. Some new members subsequently have been appointed.

18Samples of such resolutions from the Davidson, Durham, Guilford, and New Hanover county chapters can be found in the Graham Papers. Especially vocal was Foy Roberson, a Durham surgeon who had been UNC's 1905 football captain. He was a longtime alumni representative on the athletic council and served as the unofficial physician of the football team for many years—to the displeasure of doctors in the UNC student health service. In November, 1935, Roberson declared himself to be "amazed and shocked" by the Graham Plan, which he considered to be "ridiculous and absurd." Much earlier, in January, 1927, Roberson had introduced a resolution in the athletic council, which declared, among other points, that "no student should enjoy the benefits of the University's self help system on account of his athletic ability ... all students should be on the same basis. . . Foy Roberson to Frank P. Graham, November 27, 1935; Resolutions, January 18, 1927, Graham Papers.

!9Graham and his supporters diffused opposition within the board of trustees by compiling careful position papers on his administration and personal activities. See "A Statement Concerning the Graham Administration of the University of North Carolina," unsigned, n.d., Graham Papers. See also Charles W. Tillett, Jr., to Frank P. Graham, May 25, 1936, Graham Papers, in which Tillett urged Graham to make recommendations to the board but leave to that body the responsibility for its decisions. The board, argued Tillett, was likely to accept the recommendations because it would go "through exactly the same mental processes" that Graham had in reaching a decision.





For Graham the rectitude of the Graham Plan was beyond doubt. No student athlete had any right to call himself an amateur, as that term was understood "throughout the United States and the British Empire," if he had accepted "any aid, compensatory gift, [or] valuable consideration of any kind on account of his athletic ability or services." Graham felt that anything but amateur football would be "a side show and spectacle without due regard for educational values"20 and that it was dishonorable for a player to compete as an amateur if he did not measure up to the

president's own uncompromising definition of that term.21

During his years as university president, Graham had often intervened

actively in athletic affairs because of his strong belief in the necessity for constant vigilance. He had taken away from coaches the allocation of certain part-time campus jobs for students. He had upheld the athletic council's decision not to renew the contract of Chuck Collins, Snavely's predecessor as coach. Collins, it was true, had suffered through several lean years, but Graham seems to have been dissatisfied with him on

grounds of demeanor and academic philosophy as much as competence.22 During the 1935-1936 academic year the UNC honor code itself came

under great strain. Football players were involved in violations, as were

members of campus honor societies and top-level officers of student

government. As early as October, 1935, a faculty committee dismissed from the university one John Sniscak, the starting right guard, for

concealing his athletic ineligibility.23 Then in January, 1936, university officials uncovered a widespread and highly organized cheating ring. The student council investigated some ninety-eight individuals and suspended forty-eight. Football players were among those implicated, and it appeared that at least one member of the athletic department had known of the

cheating ring as early as the summer of 1935.24 Frank Graham insisted

that the matter be pursued to the bitter end, no matter how embarrassing its consequences for the university. Not surprisingly, then, he applied the

same diligence in seeking to reform intercollegiate athletics because he

20Frank P. Graham to J. Will Pless, Jr., April 22, 1936, Graham Papers. The author has

discovered no evidence that Graham or anyone else was concerned in the 1930s that

universities employed athletes but denied them a reasonable share of the profits that they

generated. 21It is ironic that the principle of athletic amateurism was fully as sacrosanct to the

egalitarian democrat Frank Graham as to the wealthy and sporting British aristocrats, who

had nurtured the concept to begin with, and to whom it was a cherished symbol of class

status and privileges. 22Graham recounted these details in a letter to Jonathan Daniels. He mentioned also that

he had reversed early in his presidency an arrangement whereby athletes received all of the

proceeds from a $50,000 endowment that had been established outside the university,

ostensibly to help needy students in general. Frank P. Graham to Jonathan Daniels,

December 30,1935, Graham Papers.

23Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill), October 18, 1935, hereinafter cited as Daily Tar Heel. In a

letter to the expelled player's father, Graham urged the father to show sympathy and

understanding and to encourage his son to reapply at a future date to UNC, where help of

various sorts was available. Frank P. Graham to J. L. Sniscak, October 19, 1935, Graham

Papers. 24Daily Tar Heel, February 1, 1936; Robert B. House's "Confidential Memo" to Frank P.

Graham, Graham Papers.




284 Richard Stone

believed that aid from alumni to athletes was a "system" that flourished

by "hypocrisy and subterfuge" and one that tended "to corrupt the whole

moral tone of University life."25

Long after the failure of his crusade, Frank Graham continued to take

stands that even some of his friends considered quixotic. Not until the end of World War II was the UNC athletic department permitted to

engage a full-time sports publicist. Glenn E. (Ted) Mann had been such a

drumbeater for nearby Duke University throughout the 1930s. But Graham felt that a separate publicity man for UNC's athletic program would

suggest that the school's sports were somehow more important and

newsworthy than its academics. Also, during the 1930s he refused to

allow commercial broadcasts of UNC home games, although he raised no

objections to nonsponsored radio. The university, Graham contended, should not be placed in the seeming position of endorsing the dubious

products of paying advertisers.26

Among the opponents of the Graham Plan were sportswriters and

coaches who had obvious axes to grind. Duke and UNC games were

normally the biggest events covered in person by North Carolina writers

during the depression era. But even though Graham enjoyed little support on the sports pages,27 he received a good deal from the editorial sections of the same newspapers.28 Among coaches, Wallace Wade of Duke was Graham's most prominent critic. Wade was widely quoted as proclaiming (with considerable logic, it should be conceded) that the reform proposals would limit participation in college football to the sons of families with means of their own to pay tuition and fees.29 Duke's administration

25Graham expressed these views to Dean of Administration John W. Harrelson of North Carolina State College in Raleigh. See Frank P. Graham to J. W. Harrelson, December 23, 1936, Graham Papers. Because Graham resided in Chapel Hill, Harrelson had far more

autonomy over the affairs of his campus than did Robert B. House. Although Graham and Harrelson were good friends, Graham regarded the athletic situation at North Carolina State as more distressing than that at Chapel Hill. (See footnote 49 below.) From various North Carolina State faculty members over the years, Graham received letters of complaint about athletic iniquities and Harrelson's inability to correct them. See Graham Papers.

26In a letter to Gordon Gray in 1940, Graham privately cited as a disreputable product a headache remedy that was considered harmful by members of the UNC medical and public health faculties and was regularly advertised during Duke football broadcasts. Frank P. Graham to Gordon Gray, January 10, 1940, Graham Papers. A wealthy Winston-Salem

newspaper publisher, Gray succeeded Graham as president of the consolidated university in 1950 and served until 1955. Gray's career is briefly described in William S. Powell (ed.), Dictionary of North Carolina Biography (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, projected multivolume series, 1979—), II, 350-351, hereinafter cited as Powell, DNCB.

27Bill Cox of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot was a notable exception. He wrote Graham frequent letters of support.

28An editorial that strongly supported Graham appeared in the Winston-Salem Journal, January 25,1936.

29Had the Graham Plan survived, football at Duke, a private university with higher fees than the state institutions, perhaps would have been even more adversely affected than the program at UNC. According to former director of sports information at Duke, Glenn E. (Ted) Mann, Duke players of the 1930s earned their expenses by working in the university's dining halls. Although UNC players often performed identical tasks in Swain Hall, Graham objected to their receiving preferential treatment in landing such jobs. Crowell Little, a UNC player of the 1930s who originally enrolled at Duke, later remembered that recruiting aid





Among coaches, Wallace Wade of Duke University was Graham's most prominent critic. Duke's administration shared Wade's distaste for Graham's plan to de-emphasize athletics.

Photograph of Wade from the cover of Time (October 25, 1937) provided by the Duke

University Archives, Duke University Library, Durham.

shared Wade's distaste for the plan. Indeed, Duke president William P. Few had hired Wade away from Alabama, at a reported doubling of the coach's former salary. Few hoped that a championship football team

might complement Duke's excellent library and medical center as a means of building a national reputation for the university.30 Responding to Graham's reform package, Few proposed to consign all athletic

problems to further deliberation by a three-member Southern Conference committee.31 Nor was President L. T. Baker of the University of South Carolina more supportive of the Graham scheme. Baker declared himself to be in "full accord with the spirit of the recommendations," while

was better organized at Duke than at UNC. Little earned his room and meals at UNC by performing a part-time job at the Beta Theta Pi fraternity, of which he was a member. Glenn E. (Ted) Mann, A Story of Glory: Duke University Football (Greenville, S.C.: Doorway Publishers, 1985), 63, hereinafter cited as Mann, A Story of Glory, author's telephone interview with Crowell Little, 1986 (notes on interview in possession of the author), herein after cited as Little interview.

30See Mann, A Story of Glory, 55, 60-65. 31William P. Few to J. L. Newcomb, president of the University of Virginia, January 6,

1935, Graham Papers. Newcomb forwarded Few's letter to Graham. Throughout the con

troversy over the Graham Plan, Few wrote little about it to Graham.




286 Richard Stone

maintaining that the Southeastern Conference system of legitimate athletic scholarships was "more practicable for getting results."32

Football enthusiasts among the UNC alumni made several telling points against the Graham Plan. A winning team, they contended, could enlist popular and political support around the state for the financially beleaguered university, an argument that was, of course, impossible either to sustain or reject. Graham's critics also took issue with the idea of

using the honor code to check an athlete's eligibility. The plan, they maintained, would not eliminate aid to athletes but merely drive it

undercover, forcing the recipients to perjure themselves. Critics of the plan also feared widespread evasion of the agreements.

With the conference lacking police powers short of the threat of expulsion, certain members were bound to cheat—and do so successfully. K. P.

Lewis, a Durham textile manufacturer and UNC trustee, reminded Graham that in the business world gentlemen's agreements to stabilize prices rarely worked because of "various types of subterfuge and evasions."

Although businessmen "were men of high character, certainly equal to the average coach or professor," Lewis contended, the legality, not the abstract morality, of contemplated actions usually determined business decisions. Given human nature, Lewis's argument ran, it was logical to assume that UNC's strict adherence to the Graham Plan would place the Tar Heels at a disadvantage with Duke or other teams that did not

diligently observe the stipulations. Graham's notions therefore were

simply unworkable. "To use the expression of Herbert Hoover," snorted

Lewis, it was "a program 'noble in purpose' but just about as likely to be effective as the famous charge of Don Quixote on the windmill."33

Even longtime and devoted personal friends questioned the idea that athletic scholarships were ipso facto immoral. As Graham's classmate, confidant, and bitter-end supporter Charles W. Tillett, Jr., a Charlotte

lawyer, commented, "there is nothing inherently wrong in an alumnus

helping a boy to get an education even though the motive of the alumnus is to provide a good player for the home team. . . . What you are doing .. . for the sake of curbing excess, which is evil, . . . [is] prohibiting moderation, which is not evil."34

Tillett's reservations about the paramount virtue of amateurism were shared by A. W. Hobbs, a mathematician, UNC's dean of arts and

sciences, chairman of the athletic council, and a former minor-league baseball player. "I think," Hobbs wrote to Dean House in October, 1937, "that we should give up the fight for amateur sport in college and see that all students who represent us are real students in the proper and strict sense, and let the question of how they get the money to pay for their tuition alone. . . ." If there could be no middle ground between amateur and professional collegiate sports, Hobbs preferred "the Professional

32L. T. Baker to Frank P. Graham, January 6,1936, Graham Papers. 33K. P. Lewis to Frank P. Graham, January 1, 1936, Graham Papers. 34Charles W. Tillett, Jr., to Frank P. Graham, April 18,1936, Graham Papers.





ranking as being more honest and less subject to silly interpretations. .. . When students get help to defray all or part of their college expenses it does not mean in practice that they will ever be professional players in the actual sense."35

Ultimately, Frank Graham accepted the defeat of his plan, but he refused to concede that he had been wrong to propose it. Certainly, it would have been impossible at the time to size up the long-term ramifica tions of the battle he had waged and lost. Having originally supported Graham, the University of Virginia withdrew from the Southern Con ference after the 1937 season.36 And, as UNC fans had feared, Duke continued for most of the next three decades as the region's strongest team. The Blue Devils lost to Southern California in the 1939 Rose Bowl, thus becoming the first university in the entire area between Pennsylvania and Georgia to appear in a postseason classic. Given the prestige of Wallace Wade's football program, it perhaps was unrealistic for Graham to expect binding reforms to succeed without Duke's support.

At Chapel Hill Coach Carl Snavely abruptly resigned at the beginning of April, 1936, to move to Cornell University, where he received a $2,000 increase in pay, and where he produced several outstanding teams during the Indian summer of Ivy League football excellence. The Graham Plan seems to have clinched Snavely's decision to move north.37 For a suc

cessor, UNC looked to the Ivy League and Big Ten conferences, which, Graham assured skeptical Carolina fans, were both faithful upholders of

amateurism. Two assistant coaches—Burt Ingwerson at Northwestern

University and John Gorman at Princeton—turned down the job. Both men were convinced that conference rivals would interpret Graham's rules—then expected to take full effect the following September—more liberally than could UNC coaches. Not even an offer of tenure by Graham and House could persuade John Gorman to leave an assistant coach's billet at Princeton.38 In the end UNC settled reluctantly for Raymond (Bear) Wolf, an assistant at Texas Christian University, after obtaining assurances about Wolfs "personality, character, culture, and language on

35A. W. Hobbs to Robert B. House, n.d. [October, 1937], Graham Papers. 36See footnote 13, above. Virginia had made known its intention to withdraw at the end of

1936. The Cavaliers did not defeat the Tar Heels until 1941. Establishing its own rules for

eligibility, Virginia competed as an independent until becoming the eighth member of the

Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) some months after its formation in 1953.

37From Ithaca, New York, Snavely's wife, Bernyce, wrote repeated and prolix letters to

Graham about a multitude of subjects. She archly implied that she knew of various UNC

recruiting transgressions. Graham tended to dismiss her letters politely—if indeed he read

them at all. See Bernyce Snavely's letters to Frank P. Graham, Graham Papers. A withdrawn

personality, Carl Snavely had a mixed reputation as a coach at UNC. Nevertheless, he

enjoyed two successful seasons in 1934-1935 with players who had not done well under his

predecessor. After returning to Chapel Hill in 1945 he guided three Tar Heel teams to bowl

games before slumping to a 7-19-2 record in 1950-1952. Corrie, The Atlantic Coast Con

ference, 188-189. 38Addison Hibbard to Frank P. Graham, April 13, 1936; Robert B. House to Frank P.

Graham, April 28, 1936, Graham Papers. Hibbard's letter provides information on

Ingwerson's decision to remain at Northwestern. House's letter expresses enthusiasm for

John Gorman, an enthusiasm probably influenced by Graham's obvious preference for

VOL UME LXIV, NUMBER 3, JUL Y, 1987



288 Richard Stone

Pictured above is Robert B. House, dean of administration (later chancellor) at UNC. On the adjacent page is A. W. Hobbs, dean of arts and sciences, chairman of the athletic

council, and a former minor-league baseball player. In the 1930s both men, along with

Graham, sought to verify rumors that certain university athletes were receiving improper benefits. Seldom, however, did the inquiries turn up any tangible evidence. Photographs from the North Carolina Collection.

the field."39 Inheriting a number of talented players from Snavely, Wolf did well, beating Duke twice.40

Whatever its professed ideals, the university administration did not

seriously hamper the new coach's efforts to recruit good players.41 Some

Gorman. Another applicant for the UNC coaching job was Clarence (Biggie) Munn, who had been a star fullback at the University of Minnesota. Munn had just completed a successful season with Albright College in Pennsylvania. He accepted a tentative offer by Graham and House to be an assistant to Gorman, but he went instead to Syracuse University when Gorman decided to stay at Princeton. Later at Michigan State University, Munn was one of the most successful coaches of the post-World War II era.

39See telegram by one "Olin" to Edwin D. Mouzon, ca. April 12,1936, Graham Papers. 40At UNC Wolf was known for his espousal of a wide-open passing attack. Following four

successful seasons he was wooed by Rice Institute in Houston, a job that Jess Neely of Clemson subsequently accepted and held for twenty-seven years. Unfortunately for Wolf, his 1941 Tar Heel squad won only three of ten games. He accepted a naval commission shortly after Pearl Harbor. Early in 1944, while Graham was spending much time in Washington engaged in war work, the athletic council quietly dispatched Athletic Director Robert A.

(Coach Bob) Fetzer to buy out Wolfs contract. Wolf settled for a mere $8,000. Wolf did not

enjoy much success at the University of Florida in the late 1940s. Athletic Council Minutes, Office of the Director of Athletics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

41John Howard Vaught, Wolfs principal assistant coach at UNC and subsequently head coach at the University of Mississippi, later recalled that university restrictions on recruiting





evidence indicates that even before the formal repeal of the Graham Plan there were always men to whom Charles P. (Chuck) Erickson, assistant

coach, could quietly turn for help for athletes with financial problems.42 From time to time, it is true, Graham and Deans House and Hobbs sought to verify rumors that certain Carolina players were receiving what Graham would have considered improper benefits. Almost never did the inquiries

were "not much of a problem." Vaught did much of the recruiting for Wolf, especially in the Northeast. Author's telephone interview with John Howard Vaught, November, 1982 (notes on interview in possession of author). Crowell Little suggested that Wolf and Vaught had to do more formal recruiting in the Northeast than had Carl Snavely, who previously had established many useful contacts in that region while coaching in Pennsylvania. Little interview. If he did not interfere excessively with Wolf, Graham nevertheless did intervene in UNC athletics in curious ways. In the late 1930s he tried hard, but unsuccessfully, to

arrange a 1943 Kenan Stadium game with Princeton. The game would have commemorated the 150th anniversary of the laying of the cornerstone of the Old East building on the

Chapel Hill campus in 1793. Like other Ivy League teams, Princeton was unwilling to schedule any southern team except at home and on unequal financial terms. Graham also

opposed adamantly a couple of bowl possibilities in the late 1930s. At that time the Sugar, Cotton, and Orange bowls did not approach the Rose Bowl in prestige, but in any case none of Wolfs teams managed to get a bid. Players of the Wolf era seem to have pleasant personal memories of Graham. Don Baker, a fullback of the 1940 team, remembers fondly the famous Sunday evening "at-homes" at the president's residence in Chapel Hill. Author's

telephone interview with Don Baker, November, 1982 (notes on interview in possession of

author). 42Greensboro textile magnate Caesar Cone, New York stockbroker William D. (Billy)

Carmichael, Jr., and Chapel Hill theater operator Carrington Smith were three UNC alumni cited by Crowell Little as being consistently ready to assist the UNC football program. Little indicates that, in addition to awarding jobs not administered or controlled by the university—




290 Richard Stone

turn up any tangible evidence,43 nor were they pressed very hard by Athletic Director Robert A. Fetzer, who, like Graham and House, was a

notoriously casual administrator. So far as Fetzer was concerned, profits from a winning football team made possible for UNC an intercollegiate athletic program, which, by the extremely modest standards of the 1930s, was one of the most comprehensive in the South. A notable beneficiary was Fetzer's own strong track team, the sport closest to his heart.44 Not

surprisingly, then, Fetzer did not inquire too closely into the football

program. In any case, aid to athletes during the Great Depression never

approached the flagrant excesses that were all too typical of the postwar era.

The December, 1937, Southern Conference decision to allow "outside" assistance to athletes held important implications for Chapel Hill.45 Just a year later, in December, 1938, several prominent UNC alumni applied to North Carolina's secretary of state, Thad Eure, for a charter to create an

independent foundation to raise money for UNC athletes. The law firm of former governor O. Max Gardner promptly arranged tax-exempt status for the new organization. From modest beginnings the so-called Educa tional Foundation gradually burgeoned into one of the largest organiza tions of its kind in the land.46 Only in the 1950s was it brought fully under

which was legal in the 1930s—such men as these passed quiet "grants" through Erickson to

players who otherwise would have found it impossible to settle their overdue tuition charges and thus get their end-of-term grades recorded by the university's registrar. Little emphasizes that this aid was dispensed on the basis of real need during an extraordinarily difficult time. Little interview. Billy Carmichael made no secret of his enthusiasm for football, but in 1940 Frank Graham nevertheless selected him as university finance officer and principal assistant to the president. Carmichael told Graham in various letters that Erickson had solicited him for contributions, but he did not state how the money was spent. Powell, DNCB, I, 326-327; letters of William D. Carmichael, Jr., to Frank P. Graham, Graham Papers.

43In November, 1937, for example, House wrote to Graham that "we . . . call for evi dence . . . and we will investigate any evidence which anyone presents. We honestly hope that anyone interested in the situation will confine himself to facts and cease to make general impeachments as to the character of athletes, coaches, or any other . . . persons having to do with the situation." Robert B. House to Frank P. Graham, November 6, 1937, Graham Papers.

'■"'Graham was undoubtedly aware in a general way of Robert Fetzer's attitude. He nevertheless held the kindly Fetzer in high personal regard and, like Fetzer, was as much or more interested in other sports as in revenue-producing football. Robert Fetzer and his brother William had coached the UNC football team in the early 1920s, and Robert Fetzer had become the school's first athletic director in 1923. Participants in other sports received various forms of assistance, but football was by far the athletic department's largest generator and spender of income through the 1950s.

45Graham (and other UNC administrators even after the awarding of conventional grants-in-aid had become fully accepted in the postwar era) objected to linking aid to football players to gate receipts. To avoid becoming dependent upon gate receipts, they earmarked some of the profits from the student stores at the Chapel Hill campus for athletic scholarships, although the practice was regularly and routinely denounced in the Daily Tar Heel.

46Following UNC's lead, North Carolina State College soon established its alumni booster organization, the Wolfpack Club. See Alice Elizabeth Reagan, North Carolina State Univer sity: A Narrative History (Raleigh: North Carolina State University Foundation and North Carolina State University Alumni Association, 1987), 148.





Graham resigned as president of the consolidated university in 1949, but the legacy of his crusade lingered. William B. Aycock, who replaced House as chancellor at UNC in 1957, upheld Graham's athletic philosophy by keeping "a firm rein on two coaching prima donnas," Jim Tatum in football and Frank McGuire in basketball. Photograph of Aycock from the North Carolina Collection.

the authority of the UNC athletic department and administration.47 Whether or not Frank Graham approved in principle of the foundation, he was confronted in 1938 with a fait accompli. Perhaps surprisingly, the Educational Foundation and the indirect aid it provided eventually made the UNC athletic department less dependent than Southeastern Con ference members upon bountiful gate receipts.48

47In August, 1982, George Thomas Barclay, a graduate of UNC and its head coach from 1953 to 1955, told the author that the executive secretary of the Educational Foundation caused problems for the coaching staff during Barclay's tenure because it was the secretary who dispensed meal tickets directly to players. Not until the respective appointments in 1956 and 1957 of Jim Tatum as head coach, Ernie Williamson as executive secretary, and William B. Aycock as chancellor was this particular administrative snarl corrected. Aycock insisted that athletic grants be reviewed by the university's scholarship committee, and he signed personally the letters in which they were officially tendered to prospective recruits. Aycock believed that, no matter how scholarships were funded, the university itself should award them and continue them as long as the recipients faithfully upheld their obligations. Author's interview with George T. Barclay, August, 1982, and with William B. Aycock, July, 1982 (notes on interviews in possession of the author).

48Even during UNC's football doldrums of the 1950s and 1960s, the foundation brought in several hundred thousand dollars per year with a steady increase in contributions dating




292 Richard Stone

After the 1930s Frank Graham had little direct impact upon the UNC athletic program. He spent much time engaged in war work in Wash

ington, leaving university affairs largely in the hands of William D.

Carmichael, Jr., university comptroller and an ardent sports enthusiast. Graham resigned as president of the consolidated university in 1949, when Governor Kerr Scott selected him to fill an unexpired term in the United States Senate. Failing to be reelected to the Senate, Graham served in the United States Department of Labor and with the United Nations. A strongly religious Presbyterian, he died in 1972. Yet, the

memory of Graham's crusade lingered, especially after William B. Aycock succeeded Robert House as chancellor of the Chapel Hill campus in 1957.49 As UNC chancellor, Aycock went to considerable lengths to keep a firm rein on two coaching prima donnas, Jim Tatum (a UNC graduate) in football and Frank McGuire in basketball.50

Since Frank Graham's tenure as president of the consolidated University of North Carolina, but particularly over the last three decades, UNC coaches have had to contend with his legacy. Like all members of their

fiercely competitive profession, they live with the ever-present pressure exerted by alumni to deliver winning teams. But there is also a stern

expectation among the various components of the UNC community that success will be garnered in "the right way" and that Carolina's teams will operate within the rules of the day, remain free of scandal, and

project a positive image for the institution.51 Often denounced as an

from 1963. Prior to about 1949 the foundation's income was relatively modest. In that year, the last of the Charlie Justice era in UNC football and the inaugural season of the Carolina Notre Dame series with the first game to be played at Yankee Stadium, the foundation moved toward a "hard sell" approach to solicitation, strongly linking contributions to

preferential treatment in the filling of orders for football tickets.

49Powell, DNCB, II, 332-333. As president of the student government of North Carolina State College in 1936, Aycock had persuaded the student council to express public support for the Graham Plan. He had also resisted pressure from State coach Hunk Anderson to

protect certain football players charged with honor offenses. William B. Aycock to Frank P.

Graham, January 29,1936; February 19, 1937, Graham Papers. 50Aycock was quick to accept the August, 1961, resignation of Frank McGuire, whose

violations of NCAA rules had led that organization to place his program on probation. Also, some of McGuire's players had been implicated in a nationwide point-shaving scandal. See News and Observer, August 3, 1961. Earlier Aycock had acted to extend (a year early) the

three-year contract of football coach Jim Hickey. Although Hickey's record at the time was 6 wins and 12 losses, Aycock considered him a reputable man.

51At times UNC has placed much emphasis on nonathletic factors in its choice of coaches.

Raymond Wolf was not President Graham's first preference as football coach in 1936

(although the university hired him anyway), and Jim Tatum was rejected outright in 1953

(although the university hired him too, three years later) because he appeared to symbolize big-time football. Jim Hickey, who served as football coach from 1959 to 1966, was retained at UNC for a much longer period than perhaps he would have lasted elsewhere with a

comparable record. The employment of Jim Tatum in 1956 and Bill Dooley eleven seasons later came only after prolonged Tar Heel gridiron droughts, following which UNC's pride in nonathletic considerations gave way to pressure for a winning football team. When Dooley departed UNC in 1978 his position was filled by Dick Crum only after an extraordinarily long search to find a suitable coach with a proper respect for academics. Author's interview with Benson Willcox, chairman of the 1978 search committee, July, 1982 (notes on interview in possession of author).





impractical and idealistic visionary, Frank Porter Graham nevertheless

managed to implant a bit of his southern Presbyterian conscience into his

university, and that influence has survived until the present day.52

52In 1956 William C. Friday, a Graham protégé, became president of the consolidated

university. William S. Powell, The First State University: A Pictorial History of the

University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1972), 261. Friday was an outspoken proponent of stricter academic standards for athletes, notably in the

NCAA's so-called Proposition 48 battle during the mid-1980s. In the last year of his

presidency the University of North Carolina's Board of Governors issued its report on

intercollegiate athletics in the university system. The report did not argue for Graham's

concept of pure amateurism but addressed instead the excessive commercialization associated with college football and basketball and the tendency to bend academic standards. See

Report of the Special Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics. UNC's football coach Dick

Crum and basketball coach Dean Smith took strong public exception to several of the

report's comments.




Documents

The Graham Plan of 1935: An Aborted Crusade to De-emphasize College Athletics