McCormickonHistory

The Atlantic Coast Conference formed out of an unwieldly 17-member Southern Conference. This episode looks at the schools that formed the conference, the crises and motivations, and the exciting football and basketball action that led seven schools to create a new league.

This is part one of a three-part series on the founding of the Atlantic Coast Conference. Point-shaving, cheating at West Point and William & Mary as well as the growing popularity of college sports influenced the establishment of the ACC.

On a cold night in December 1943, in Robeson County, NC, a northbound Atlantic Coastline passenger train traveling at 80 miles per hour crashed into two derailed cars, killing 72 passengers. It was an avoidable tragedy.

On December 24, 1884, John C. Ferguson murdered Arthur Benedict, a Jewish man, in Abbeville, South Carolina. The facts were clear. It was cold-blooded murder. But that was only the beginning of the story.

During the colonial era and well into the 1800s, cockfighting was enormously popular in the Carolinas. The sport's popularity in England meant that settlers brought it across the Atlantic where it rapidly gained prominence. The second most popular sport in the Carolinas, cockfighting had a legion of fans, but some Carolinians called the sport cruel and condemned the behaviors around it. After...