When good things came in smaller packages

By Bill Fields

I’m not sure how my reading ability stacked up to that of my elementary school classmates, but I’m certain having the sports pages of the Greensboro Daily News at the breakfast table didn’t hurt. There were some big words in there.

The newspaper was very specific about where it was covering an out-of-town contest. After North Carolina moved into its new basketball facility in 1965, the dateline for Tar Heel home games spilled over into a second line of narrow-column type.

CARMICHAEL AUDITORIUM, Chapel Hill—

Occasionally, if the slot man was swamped and the typesetter was sloppy, it looked like this next to my bowl of grits:

CARMICHAEL AUDITORI-
UM, Chapel Hill—

Regardless of how it appeared in the paper, the building’s name stood out because it was where my team played. It was not CAMERON INDOOR STADIUM, Durham; or REYNOLDS COLISEUM, Raleigh; or other Atlantic Coast Conference basketball venues.

We had no family ties to Carolina, notwithstanding a summer school Spanish class my UNC Greensboro sister took there. My other sister went to Wake Forest, and while I proudly wore the black-and-gold sweatshirt she gave me, I was a Carolina kid. It was one of those decisions those of us in ACC country made early, before you were even able to write the name of your favorite basketball player in cursive.

I was in first grade when the Tar Heels played their first game in Carmichael, defeating William & Mary 87-68 on Dec. 4, 1965. Although I didn’t see the place in person until I got to campus as a freshman a dozen years later, I felt I knew it.

Aside from newspaper stories and box scores, there were the radio broadcasts. In the late-1960s — when Carolina won the ACC Tournament and advanced to the Final Four three straight years — play-by-play was handled by Bill Currie, a crazy-uncle type known as the “Mouth of the South” and starting with the 1971-72 season by Woody Durham, who was “The Voice of the Tar Heels” for four decades.

Televised games were rare when I first became a fan. We had to be content when a Carolina contest was on the Wednesday or Saturday C.D. Chesley network. And “The Dean Smith Show” was weekly Sunday morning viewing, with Smith always much more effusive about assists or hustle than how many points someone had scored.

One of my first memories of basketball on television is the NCAA title game on March 23, 1968, when the Tar Heels played UCLA. It was a 7 p.m. tipoff in Los Angeles, which made it a very late night for an 8-year-old in Southern Pines. I stayed awake until early in the second half, when the Bruins were well on their way to a 78-55 victory.

Nine years later Carolina played for another championship but had its heart broken by Marquette. I attended my first game in Carmichael in the second semester of my freshman year, a two-point victory over Wake Forest on Jan. 15, 1978. Working my way up the pecking order of The Daily Tar Heel sports department, I traded a seat in the student section for one on the press row-catwalk above it. When things went well for the team wearing light blue and white, it was deafening either place. After home games, reporters huddled around Smith in a corridor outside the locker room as he smoked a cigarette and looked forward to a Scotch.

My first time on a commercial flight, on Dec. 3, 1979, I sat beside then-assistant coach Roy Williams going from RDU to Tampa-St. Petersburg to cover Carolina vs. South Florida. Prior to the start of the 1980-81 season, I had a 90-minute interview with Smith in his office. I was DTH sports editor at that point, but, needing to mind my grades as a senior, left the job well before Carolina lost to Indiana in the 1981 NCAA championship game.  The following spring, I was back on Franklin Street as a fan — and graduate — enjoying the Tar Heels’ win over Georgetown.

Carolina men’s basketball relocated to the Smith Center in 1986. It has twice the seats of Carmichael, but if one grew up with the latter, not twice the charm. Carmichael Auditorium is no more, having been renamed Carmichael Arena in 2010 following an extensive modernization. They sold small commemorative pieces of the hallowed hardwood from the old building in 1998. I didn’t buy one then, but it might be time to check on eBay.

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent.

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