The Great Banner Heist of 1986

The NBC broadcast, featuring Al McGuire and Dick Enberg

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© Tim Peeler, 2018

No one condoned what they did, then nor now.

It was dangerous, perhaps even a felony.

What happened the week of Feb. 16-23, 1986, was about as close to the perfect college prank as one group of fans could pull on its rival, without being expelled or incarcerated.

It was a time when NC State and North Carolina students regularly tried to out-do each other before big football and basketball games. The student newspapers would make fake copies of the other school’s paper and replace the real ones on campus on game day. Sometimes, stealthy UNC students would sneak into the Free Expression Tunnel and paint it light blue and white.

Sometimes, fans went a little too far, as when UNC fans spray painted the base of the Memorial Tower on Hillsborough Street light blue after a Tar Heel win in Reynolds or when a student stole the wolf mascot head following a club hockey game in Greensboro.

One of those pranks even played a part in the Wolfpack winning the 1983 NCAA championship.

Even the coaches were into it. Earlier that season, when NC State played the Tar Heels in the last game ever at Carmichael Auditorium, as soon as the final buzzer sounded an NC State team manager threw a game ball to head coach Jim Valvano, who dribbled in for a layup so he could forever say he scored the last basket at UNC’s fabled gym.

In its next game, North Carolina hosted Duke at its brand new, state-of-the-art Dean E. Smith Student Activities Center. It was college basketball’s shiniest new penny, a $34 million dome that Tar Heel fans everywhere were two-carat-engagement-ring proud of, especially the fact that it was paid for solely with private donations.

The new arena had just about everything, except perhaps appropriate media seating and a high-tech security system. It was well-appointed with banners that celebrated every program championship, both real and imagined. The light blue banners hung from every available spot in the rafters.

Sometime on Sunday morning, Feb. 16—a week before the rematch between the No. 17 Wolfpack and the top-ranked Tar Heels—a half dozen of the banners, several logoed scoreboard signs and six nets from the basketball rims mysteriously disappeared from the Smith Center. An unknown liquid was found on the arena floor.

The perps entered the arena from a tunnel that connected it to the unfinished adjacent natatorium. They climbed onto a catwalk 120 feet above the floor to remove the banners, and proved to themselves, some 30 years before it was apparent to others, that the ceiling really was the roof.

UNC campus police recovered the six metallic signs in the woods behind the Smith Center and one championship banner was found in the lower parking lot of Hinton James Dormitory on the UNC campus.

Five, however, were still missing. They were for the 1983, ’84 and ’85 NCAA tournament appearances and the 1983 and ’84 regular-season ACC basketball championships, which that the time was not officially recognized by the conference.

That Tuesday night, NC State students camping out in front of Reynolds Coliseum for tickets to that Sunday’s game against top-ranked North Carolina were treated to a brief glimpse of the banners. The roar from the crowd was audible from the Technician offices on the third floor of the Student Center.

Both campuses were tremendously roiled by the Great Banner Heist of 1986.

As the rivalry weekend approached, the banners began to resurface on NC State’s campus.

Friday afternoon, one was displayed on the top of Dabney Hall.

Saturday night, as students settled in for a late-night showing of “Nightmare on Elm Street” in Stewart Theatre, a banner was unfurled in front of the movie screen, to great applause and surprise.

At sunrise on game day, one of the missing banners was attached to the arm of a 50-foot-tall construction crane at Carmichael Gym, adjacent to Reynolds Coliseum. Two other homemade flags—one that read “[action verb] the Tar Heels” and “UNC [action verb]”—flew on either side.

The nationally televised game tipped off at 1 p.m. and was one of the classic contests between nationally ranked rivals, despite the fact that the Wolfpack had lost three consecutive ACC contests and the Tar Heels had just suffered their first loss ever at its new arena, an overtime defeat to Maryland.

The Wolfpack, who practiced twice the day before the game to prepare for the Tar Heels, came out smoking behind the leadership of senior Nate McMillan and the scoring of sophomore Chris Washburn and junior Benny Bolton. The Tar Heels, missing point guard Steve Hale and center Warren Martin to injuries, were flat the whole game and missed 10 of their first 11 shots.

Valvano’s Wolfpack scored the first basket, led by 11 at the half and never once trailed in the contest. 

During a timeout midway through the second half, the fourth missing banner came flying from the westside balcony, nearly blowing the top off the infamous Reynolds Coliseum noise meter. It was retrieved by a UNC cheerleader.

The closest the Tar Heels got in the second half was five points, but the Wolfpack virtually cruised the rest of the way, beating the Tar Heels in Reynolds for the third time in four years.

What of the final banner?

Following the game, the culprits were in the process of hanging it on an Interstate-40 overpass in Cary so that the defeated Tar Heels would see it as they returned to Chapel Hill. But several UNC fans saw it first and retrieved it.

All five were back in Chapel Hill and hanging from the rafters two days after the game.

No suspects were ever identified or charged in the theft of the banners.

“From the way they were yelling when we took down the banner [from the top of the crane], I have a pretty good idea that it was someone from Owen Dorm,” NC State campus police detective Laura Reynolds said.

No one condoned what they did, then nor now.

It was dangerous, perhaps even a felony.

It's hard to match the electricity of ACC and Big Four rivalries of the 1980s.