If you don’t live in Fayetteville, NC, and subscribe to the local newspaper or read it online, you may have missed the interesting seven-part series the Fayetteville Observer did about the 100th anniversary of Carolina basketball. They chronicled the Tar Heel program decade-by-decade and had a number of features to go along with each highlighted time frame. It is a good read and worth your time to click the links and explore a little bit.
What caught my eye, however, was the feature piece for the 1920s, which explores Carolina’s 1924 Helms Foundation championship. The virtues and vices of the Helms title have been explored here at THF and I will not delve into them again. But the Observer’s Dan Wiederer, who has seemed to have a love-hate relationship with UNC basketball over the past few years (see Danny Green’s father, his piece about Roy and the Presbyterian fan that got a beat-down from Steve Kirschner, and his new book on the ’09 team) suggests something I’ve never heard before:
Maybe the 1924 team didn’t deserve to be national champions at all.
Wiederer plays the usual anti-Helms arguments: that it was retroactive, that it was mythical, that UNC gives it the same treatment as the NCAA banners, no one else but Kansas even acknowledges it, etc, etc. Then he takes it a step further by trotting out “noted ACC historian” Al Featherston to discount the legitimacy of the Helms Foundation and of just how good the 1924 UNC team actually was.
Yes, that Al Featherston. Duke grad, writer for the Durham Herald-Sun for 31 years, and current correspondent for GoDuke.com. Or, as Blue Devil Nation. com puts it, “When you talk of the Duke beat in journalism, the first name that comes to mind is Al Featherston.”
Featherston suggests that there was no Helms panel picking the retroactive national champs, as the popular myth goes – only a single person. He goes further, saying that despite the 1924 team’s 26-0 record, they didn’t play anyone outside the south so how good they actually were can’t be gauged. And he uses the fact that UNC went 0-10 in the 1920s and 2-7 in the 1930s against teams from outside the south as his guide that the ’24 team wasn’t up to snuff.
The 1924 team had a pair of all-Americans, Jack Cobb and Cartwright Carmichael (the two jerseys in the Smith Center rafters without numbers since basketball jerseys didn’t have numbers back then), but Featherston claims that the best basketball back then was being played in the east and midwest, so Carolina probably wasn’t worthy of being called “national champions.”
Never mind the fact that quoting Al Featherston – who does know his ACC hoops, by the way – is like asking Art Chansky to rationally comment on anything Duke. Is that really the best source you could find, Dan? Was Al’s bias on the phone with you during the interview with you? But Wiederer notes “critics do wonder whether the Tar Heels were good enough to be worthy of that ‘national champions’ label.” The only critic I have ever heard challenge the 1924 Helms title on anything other than how it was awarded is Featherston.
The level to which Carolina fans and ABCers alike obsess over a designation given nearly 70 years ago to a team that played nearly 90 years ago escapes me. Either you believe it’s appropriate to celebrate it the way UNC does or not. But to attempt to discredit the validity of the award itself by discrediting the team that won it is stepping the anti-Helms argument up a notch. And to cite someone who is noted for his coverage of and association with Duke to comment on a subject like this is akin to asking Dick Cheney to rate Barack Obama’s job performance – he may be correct, but then again what do you expect him to say and you will always question the motives. Plus, it really is a stretch to say that the ’24 team would not have beaten teams outside the south because Carolina was winless the rest of the decade. By that logic, I guess the 2005 team wasn’t worthy of the national title because the 2002 team was 8-20.
There’s the pop culture saying that goes “don’t hate the player, hate the game.” Well in this case, Dan and Al, hate the Helms Foundation title if you like, but don’t hate the 1924 team.
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Before the 1890′s, pitchers threw from approximately 50 feet. Football players were not allowed to throw forward passes in the early days of rugby/football. Basketball teams did not even alternate possession in 1924. All of these sports were fundamentally different sports. The stupidity of people obsessing over this is extreme and that is even without focusing on the racial exclusion that UNC practiced at the time….
so i’m the only one wearing a numberless 1924 jersey and shouting “in your face!” to Trinity College alums?
huh.
Yes, who really cares about the Helms Foundation title? I mean if we didn’t have 5 NCAA titles it might be a bigger deal. However, we do have 5 “real” titles, so I’m perfectly happy to ignore the Helms award. I think this is another attempt by ABCers to make mountains out of molehills. I don’t know many Carolina fans who REALLY care about it. It stills irks me a bit to hear Woody always mention that we have 6 titles. I’d just as soon pretend that it doesn’t exist so these types of arguments would go away.
That being said, as THF pointed out I think that it was still a big accomplishment for the 1924 team to go undefeated.
B.S.
That is all.
I don’t think it is B.S. at all. I think Featherston makes an argument that seems quite likely to be true given that the sport’s origins were in the Mideast and Northeast. It took a coach from Indiana, Everett Case at N.C. State and another coach from New York, Frank McGuire, at UNC to really bring bigtime basketball to the Carolinas and the ACC.
Furthermore, unlike some, I have very little interest in purported athletic achievements at UNC prior to integration or at least efforts at integration. UNC did not represent over 20% of the state’s population at the time of this ludicrous Helms Award.
Those are interesting links to read through. Any treatment of the Helms national title is worth a banner in the rafters, and that’s where it’ll end for me. My personal count goes to 5.
William, as the ‘resident historian’ here what would you know about the McGuire / Smith transition in 1961; did UNC even consider or interview other candidates? Just wondering…I’ve no idea and read different accounts here/there.
william, when you say no alternating possessions, so they played make it take it?
keith,
The losing team always got the ball after a made field goal, so kinda the opposite of make it take it (unless you were losing). They also didn’t dribble. It was all passing and juggling/batting while moving. They used to do an exhibition of old school rules during halftime of a game in the Dean Dome every season or so. They were fun to watch, but I’ll take today’s game.
TxTarheel,
Anyone who has admitted having “very little interest in purported athletic achievements at UNC prior to integration or at least efforts at integration” cannot be the ‘resident historian,’ imo.
Thanks, Santiago
TxTarheel,
As far as I know, there weren’t any other canidates. UNC chancellor Bill Aycock handpicked Smith because he was impressed with his work. But I’m not the ‘resident historian’, so don’t take my word for it.
They had a jump ball after ever single basket, regardless of which team made it. So a team that had a really, really tall player had a huge advantage. Believe it or not, player heights have dropped over the past fifty years (and scoring has dropped over the past 35 years).
I do not believe that UNC ever considered any other coaches except for Dean Smith after McGuire decided to leave and take the Philadelphia job coaching Wilt the Stilt.
Watching any regular season big 10 game, it is easy to believe scoring has dropped.
Appreciate the responses. I had never seen another candidate named, and wondered if perhaps I had missed it.
My whole thing is why does anyone outside of Chapel Hill care what banners the University decides to put up in its own building??? If Carolina wants to put up a section of banners honoring the past team managers, what business is it of anyone else, it is Carolina’s building and Carolina’s banners…
William, and this is not meant to be a knock or a slam but just a question, should we also do away with all MLB records prior to 1947??? Should we put an asterisk in the record book beside all of Babe Ruth’s records??? Should Carolina take down the statue to Charlie “Choo Choo” Justice and should the Redskins unretire Sammy Baugh’s jersey and take both Justice and Baugh out of the ring of honor???
I understand your point about intergration… But, times were what times were… Both Frank McGuire and Dean Smith were committed to trying to integrate the Carolina program before Charlie Scott… McGuire in fact heavily recruited Wilt Chamberlain… Smith tried to get three other players before Scott, one went to a different school, one couldn’t qualify academically and one decided once he got to school to not play basketball but concentrate on his academics, his daughter by the way was a star on the Women’s team…
I make a distinction between individuals and organizations. Obviously, it wasn’t George Glamack’s or Choo-Choo Justice’s fault that UNC was not integrated but it was indeed, the University’s fault, so it seems self serving to me for us to put the banners up. Kentucky’s sins are far greater and I find it laughable to hear their African-American players touting Kentucky’s titles from the early 1950′s during a period when such players would not have been able to play for Kentucky, or even eat in the same restaurant with the team.
I do think that player records from before integration are suspect, but this is probably less problematic in baseball than in other sports. Baseball is to a large extent, an individual sport played by teams.
When Jackie Robinson came in, it did not seem to make Stan Musial worse. It might have had more effect on pitchers and perhaps should be something that commends guys like Marichal and Koufax and Gibson, who had to face integrated teams. Walter Johnson’s and Babe Ruth’s pitching records might be somewhat lower, although most observers of the time seemed to think that Johnson was the best in either the Major Leagues or the Negro Leagues. Fortunately, for the NFL and the NBA, most of their important records indeed date only after integration, so this is less of a problem. Wilt Chamberlain and Jim Brown were the best when they played and they are still the best at their positions of all time.