Football

Lewis White Studio. 1930s. "Unidentified football players, Dunn area." North Carolina State Archives. Photograph Collection, Ph.C.121. Online at Flickr. [2]Football is an exceptionally popular sport in North Carolina at the high school, college, and professional level. The first colleges to field football teams in the state were Trinity College [3] (later Duke University [4]), the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill [5], and Wake Forest University [6]. The first intercollegiate games were played in 1888. Many of the state's football pioneers, most notably Trinity president John Franklin Crowell [7], learned the game on northern campuses. North Carolina A&M (now North Carolina State [8]), Davidson College [9], and other schools started playing football in the 1890s. Livingstone College [10] hosted Biddle Institute (now Johnson C. Smith University [11]) on 27 Dec. 1892 in history's first intercollegiate football game played between black colleges.