Innocent Fun, Contemplated: NC State vs. UNC Football

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© Tim Peeler, 2023

By and large, the NC State-North Carolina football rivalry has been relatively prank free, likely because of an admonition given by one of the state’s foremost leaders at the turn of the 20^th century.

Writing in NC State's Red & White student newspaper, the sports editor said: “Innocent fun in all may be contemplated, but is in the highest degree reprehensible and should receive more than passing consideration.”

The scolder, writing in 1903, was future North Carolina governor O. Max Gardner, who played football at both NC State, as an undergraduate, and UNC, as a graduate law student. For the most part, students from both schools have listened to him – at least for football.

Basketball has been a different matter, as students have been much more active, generally with spray paint and stolen trinkets such as championship banners.

Students from UNC have painted NC State’s iconic and hallowed Free Expression Tunnel and the base of the Memorial Tower on Hillsborough Street so often that the NC State Student Government hosts an annual “Ram Roast” pep rally at the Brickyard before every home basketball game against UNC to protect the tunnel from light blue paint.

For years, throughout the 1970s into current times, the student newspapers printed fake editions of the other school’s paper to not-so-gently stir up passion for the rivalry. Usually, UNC’s Daily Tar Heel generates a spoof issue during football season and NC State’s Technician prints a spoof issue during basketball season for the Tar Heels’ trip to Raleigh.

Here, without in any way endorsing vandalism or violence, are some of the better pranks through the years.

• As early as 1933, NC State students banded together to steal UNC’s live mascot, an adult sheep named Rameses, from the Orange County family farm where it lived. When leadership groups from NC State, UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke got together on Nov. 14, 1933, to discuss improving relations among the student bodies, just before the State-Carolina football game, Rameses disappeared from Jack Hogan's farm. The mascot was returned before the game. Jack Hogan was a former football player at UNC. His family has provided a home for every Rameses mascot since 1925. It was at this time that NC State students began raising money to purchase a live wolf for its home football game. The school went through several of those through the years (1935, 1947, 1966 specifically), and it was never stolen. Since 2010, State has used a Tamaskan husky named Tuffy, which resembles a live wolf, to serve as its game-day mascot.
•  In 1935. State students marched two cows and a sheep onto the field of Riddick Stadium, right in front of sitting governor Ehringhaus and Gardner. The sheep was rumored to have been kidnapped from the Hogan farm, but it was not. The feisty lamb escaped from custody just before kickoff and ramped around the Riddick field.
  
• In 1942, after a delegation of UNC students defaced a building on NC State’s campus with chalk graffiti, four carloads of NC State College students sneaked over to Hogan’s farm in Chapel Hill to steal the UNC mascot, Rameses III, the week before the annual rivalry. The front half of the ram was turned red with a vegetable dye, and the back half was turned blue. UNC officials were upset and threatened to cancel the annual contest. “All athletic relations may be discontinued if students from both schools lose their heads and start a serious fracas,” said UNC system comptroller W.D. Carmichael, a former UNC basketball player and university administrator who has gymnasiums at both schools named for him. State’s entire student body gathered at Riddick Stadium and voted unanimously to return the ram. Most of the UNC student body was on hand the day before the game for the sheep’s return, but another group of State students stole Rameses III from the first group of State students before it could be returned. “Our neighbors can get our ram, but never our goat,” wrote the Daily Tar Heel. Student leaders all met for dinner at a Chapel Hill restaurant. Unlike most low-budget World War II-rationed gatherings, mutton was not served. NC State responded with its second consecutive win over the Tar Heels after a 13-year winless drought.
• In November 1947 NC State students painted red “NCS” letters on seven locations around UNC’s campus, including the Institute of Government’s Highway Patrol Training area and Quonset Hut No. 8.
• Wake Forest once tried to steal North Carolina’s mascot from Hogan Farm in 1965, but got the retired version of Rameses VII, not the newly incarnated Rameses VIII. Later that year, Duke students stole Rameses VIII before the annual Duke-UNC game.
• On Oct. 15, 1982, the Daily Tar Heel published a fake edition of NC State’s student newspaper, the Technician, just before the two schools played a football game in Chapel Hill. In response, during basketball season Technician published a fake edition called the Daily Tar Hell, which included, among other things, a photo of Dean Smith laying naked at center court of Carmichael Auditorium. The next day, NC State beat the defending national champion Tar Heels in Reynolds Coliseum, thanks, in part, to a ginned up student body and an overheated Smith, who got two technical fouls in the game. The next edition of Technician read: “Dean loses clothes on Friday, cool on Saturday.”
• In 1986, the two editors-in-chief wagered on the football game, both agreeing that the winning school would be recognized by having the losing school’s newspaper printed in the color of the winning team. When NC State beat UNC at Kenan Stadium by one point, 35-34, the banner of the Daily Tar Heel was printed in red. It was State’s first win in eight seasons against the Tar Heels.
• On Feb, 25, 1996, NC State students were blamed when Rameses XXIII was repeatedly stabbed, gutted and disfigured on the Hogan family farm just before the 1996 ACC basketball tournament. However, it was later discovered the death was caused by an intoxicated man seeking food, not a college prank.
• Following a spate of light blue spray paint creativity in the early 2000s at NC State's Free Expression Tunnel that made a lot of money for Big Spray Paint, State students retaliated by painting "NCS" in red on several Chapel Hill landmarks, including the iconic Old Well. NC State fans painted the letters "N.C.S." on several Chapel Hill landmarks, including the iconic Old Well. After drawing widespread condemnation from administrators on both campuses, student and social media and adults throughout the state, in 2005 the NC State Student Ambassadors turned the school's traditional pregame pep rally into a twice-a-year branded event called the Ram Roast, where groups and organizations would spend three-hour shifts protecting the tunnel from an azure future. It's held before the football rivalry game between the two schools and home basketball games against the Tar Heels.  Through the years, it featured players, coaches, entertainment and prize giveaways and is still ongoing.