ACC hoops were first televised 65 years ago

You might be a hard-core Atlantic Coast Conference basketball fan if you can sing the old jingle “Sail with the Pilot.” 

That was the little ditty that defined the image of Pilot Life, an insurance company based in Greensboro, N.C., that was the first corporate sponsor of ACC basketball games, beginning in 1957, produced by the venerable Castleman DeTolley Chesley, who went by C.D.

 

This is one of the ACC milestones featured by author Ed Southern of Winston-Salem in his new book, “Fight Songs: A Story of Love and Sports in a Complicated South.”

 

What makes southern living complicated for the Southern family is that Ed is a die-hard fan of the Wake Forest Demon Deacons…but his wife, Jamie, is one of those Alabama “Roll Tide” types.

 

Ed Southern said he thinks every politician in North Carolina should be required to sing from memory “Sail with the Pilot.” It goes like this: 

Sail with the Pilot at the wheel

On a ship sturdy from its mast to its keel.

He guides through storm and wave,

Insures you while you save.

 

Sail with the Pilot o’er the seas,

He’s got plans for every growing family.

Worries are far behind you

There’s really peace of mind, too.

 

When you sail with the Pilot all the way,

So get on board the Pilot ship today!

 

Those were the good old days – 65 years ago this year. Charlie Harville, the sports anchor at WFMY-TV in Greensboro, and the legendary Jim Simpson were the first sportscasters employed. Chesley soon brought in others, including Woody Durham, Jim Thacker, Bones McKinney, Billy Packer and Jeff Mullins. 

Ed Southern claims that “sports fandom” is essential to one’s being. “I root because I feel rooted when I do. I cheer on my favorite teams in my favorite sports not just because I favor them, but also because of the connections I feel when I do, and I am not alone, not nearly.” 

Traditionally, Wake Forest University football has struggled to be competitive, Southern said, but the Deacons were pretty good when Coach Douglas “Peahead” Walker was there from 1937-50, compiling a record of 77-51-6.

 

Southern wrote that in 1948, a kid from Latrobe, Pa., arrived on Wake’s campus as a freshman. Coach Walker tried to steal Arnold Palmer away from the golf team to play football, “because he would never get anywhere in life playing golf.”

 

Southern also told about a kid from Wellsville, N.Y., who enrolled at Wake in 1958 to play basketball. He was born as Anthony William Paczkowski, but his parents subsequently changed the family’s Polish surname to Packer. 

Billy Packer heard about a guy named Cleo Hill, who was the star at Winston-Salem State, an HBCU (historically black college or university). Packer went to watch a game and stood out among the crowd. 

Winston-Salem State’s coach Horace “Big House” Gaines invited Packer to join him on the bench and meet his players. Soon thereafter, early one Sunday morning in 1959, Gaines was surprised to hear squeaking sneaker soles on the gym floor. Billy’s guys were playing a pickup game against Cleo’s guys. 

What they did was “unofficially integrate Winston-Salem,” Coach Gaines said.

Cleo Hill was a first-round pick in the 1961 National Basketball Association draft, selected eighth overall by the St. Louis Hawks. He served 24 years as head basketball coach at Essex County College in Newark, N.J. He died in 2015.

Cleo Hill Jr. played his college ball at North Carolina Central University in Durham. He’s now the head basketball coach at Winston-Salem State.