LETTERS
Why What It Was,
Was More Than Football
One of my first memories is listening
to a vinyl record at my grandmother’s
house of Andy Griffith’s monologue,
“What It Was, Was Football.” Andy, a fellow alumnus who some 20 years later
would hire me as a fresh-from-the-Hill-very-green actor on Matlock, did the
famous comedy sketch about a simple
country boy who went to his first football
game — likely at Kenan Stadium.
Soon after, I saw Kenan with my own
eyes. It was my first jolt of that electricity
in the autumn air as I held my father’s
hand, feeling the leaves crunch beneath
my feet as we joined the crowds on campus flowing toward the Bell Tower. It was
there I could hear the drums pounding
like a rhythmic beacon down into the
ravine beyond. I learned the songs of alma
mater that day. Songs I’ve hummed on
multiple continents — especially when
barricaded in traffic on my now-native
California freeways. Songs that sang my
babies to sleep. Songs that motivate us —
cajole and sustain us.
Inside the stadium I found a wonderland. The players ran onto the field with
the glory of Roman gladiators to the
adoring crowd. It was the first, and far
from the last, time I yelled myself hoarse
in those shimmering bleachers. I can still
see Matt Kupec, No. 12, from my young
perspective peering up through the
hedges on the sideline, warming up. These
were knights in Carolina blue armor,
adorned with the crest of NC. They were
our knights. They were my knights.
It was a sentiment beautifully articulated a pair of decades later by Mack
Brown in the locker room after an enormous win for the team at Syracuse. He
told the players that the game ball would
go to the people of North Carolina in the
hope that this game brought some fleeting
moment of joy in their struggle to recover
from the devastation of Hurricane Fran.
He was right. It did.
Coach Davis has been fired. Some may
agree with the decision, I personally do
not. Still, none of that matters now. What
does matter is the current discussion
about the place of football in the fabric of
our University. Some will say that we
should retreat from the grand stage of college football and become a parallel of
Dook. That is not us.
Tar Heels strive for greatness in all
things from the arts to public service to
innovations in medicine, industry and
exploration — and, of course, in competition. To slink away from the grandest stage
in amateur athletics is to forfeit our very
mandate for excellence. For if we cede the
high ground here, why not elsewhere? It
will be an inevitable slippery slope yielding brilliance for mediocrity.
Still, others will argue that these
resources could better be used elsewhere.
This supposes, however, that our resources
are limited. Tar Heels are only limited by
their passion. Simply put, if alma mater
explains the importance for resources to
football — and supports the program herself — we will rally with all she needs to
make it happen. We have never failed her,
and never will.
The more difficult question is how she
will respond to this crisis? I honor Mr.
Baddour’s service. Few, if any, have dedicated so much to our University for so
long. As he leaves, it is vital that those
responsible for hiring his replacement seek
and secure a world-class athletics director
who will, in turn, bring another premier
football mind and marquee personality to
Kenan’s sidelines as our new head coach.
Some will shirk off this crisis by saying,
“What it was, was just football.” They are
missing the point. Carolina football is so
much more — it is us.
John Ward ’ 92
Newport Beach, Calif.
Editor’s note: Recent news stories about
UNC football have attracted more letters —
and postings on the GAA’s social media
pages — than print can accommodate. For
more, go to
alumni.unc.edu/letters,
www.facebook.com/uncgaa and
alumni.unc.edu/linkedin.
Building Boom Siphons
Empathy From Budget Woes
It is hard to empathize with the alleged
budget “crisis” at Carolina (“The Season
of Hard Choices,” May/June) when the
very next article (“Home Improvement”)
chronicles a “gargantuan” building spree (a
50 percent increase in square footage in
just 10 years!) documented as costing over
$2 billion. Unfortunately, our current
chancellor and our
previous one seem
more interested in
building Big Things
to placate tenured
faculty and manu-
facture a “legacy”
than in prioritizing
undergraduate stud-
ies (an opinion sup-
ported by research from Columbia Uni-
versity’s Hacker & Dreifus in Higher
Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our
Money and Failing Our Kids — and What
We Can Do About It).
Charles Held ’ 88
Mount Holly
How the Y Opened Doors
and Changed Lives
Thanks so much for the piece on the
Campus Y and the recognition it so well
deserves (“The Incubator,” March/April).
I cut my political
teeth at the Y while
dealing with campus social and
political issues in
1956-57.
As always, there
were issues of con-
cern on campus,
including the
admission of several black students. For
some reason, the black students were
housed in one of the oldest residences on
campus, located near the Y. Only black
students lived on the top floor, in a kind
of de facto segregation. But that is the
way Southern apartheid dealt with law-
suits. I know such conditions no longer
exist on campus, thanks to the movement
