Role Model and Counselor

Students circulated this petition that requested Coach Anderson's contract not be renewed. They claim that football coaches should be effective moral leaders, and in their eyes Anderson does not meet these standards.

The particular scrutiny directed at Coach Heartley Anderson and athletic director Dr. Ray Sermon illustrates the fact that because of football’s role in players’ character formation, college athletic coaches in the 1930s must themselves be gentlemen of upstanding character who served as role models.  Dr. Graham’s consistent queries about the “moral tone” of the football leadership and whether or not the leadership specifically is “condusive to character building and higher tone and campus life and student life” show faculty attention to the coach’s character and position as role model.

Paternalism permeated social and economic relationships in the South, and NC State alumni such as textile industrialist David Clark often assumed and encouraged industrial, educational, or athletic leaders to act as role models for those they led.  Thus existing social structure dictated that the football coach should be an upright, strong mentor and role model who led by example, and NC State students seemed to agree.  Student body opposition to Coach Anderson was rooted in the belief that he had not fulfilled his role as moral leader and counselor.  Student editor of The Technician and Student Body Investigative Committee representative Hall Morrison asserted that an athletic coach “should be a counsellor and a man whose word and statements…are respected.”  Morrison supported Anderson’s removal because he felt the coach was not a respected counselor nor was he “a leader of men.”