Scholarships and Fairness

Before NC State joined the Atlantic Coast Conference, the school was affiliated with the Southern Conference.  The Graham Plan was implemented into Southern Conference rules in time for the 1936 football season.  The plan only lasted four months because of outrage by the various schools of the conference and alumni from these schools.  The Graham Plan stated that “no student at a Southern Conference school could receive financial aid based on athletic ability.”  Regardless of this rule, many of these schools ignored Graham’s policies because they felt it put them at a disadvantage with other conferences.

A large part of the testimony from the hearings focused on fears from alumni of NC State.  They were concerned that since other schools in their own conference were ignoring the Graham Plan, NC State would not be able to compete well in the Southern Conference.  One of the images below shows an excerpt from a faculty council hearing that clearly highlights Graham’s personal opinion about the role of college football.  President Graham described, “It is not a healthy thing for an institution to win all the games, it is not natural.”  While this belief was not a facet of this Graham Plan, this excerpt defines Graham’s position against the commercialization and professionalization of college football.  North Carolina sports historian Pamela Grundy emphasizes that “Graham still held to the amateur ideal, the idea that sports should be played for the sake of play alone, untainted by any hint of monetary gain.”  This led many NC State alumni groups to voice that the Graham plan was too idealistic.  Similarly, this newspaper article described the plan as “baloney” and “not practical” because it was created by “an educational authority.”