Just as NC State and North Carolina had settled into a gentle rhythm of playing each other in football in the 1920s — a designated Homecoming game, played on the Thursday afternoon of the North Carolina State Fair — things began to turn political.

The next-door neighbors, which went nearly two decades without playing each other in most varsity sports because of an eligibility dispute, had reestablished athletic relations with a 1919 basketball game and quickly scheduled football games against each other, alternating home fields.

Alumni clubs from both schools gathered in Raleigh and Chapel Hill to see the rivals play, a joyful celebration of football togetherness contested on (mostly) friendly terms. At NC State, the football game played on the Thursday of the fair clearly supplanted the Friday afternoon luncheon before spring commencement in June as the biggest alumni event on the calendar.

“During Fair Week there was a large number of the fellows back among their native haunts,” wrote Technician, NC State’s relatively new student newspaper, in 1923. “This occasion has come to be more of a homecoming than the commencement period, which is annually set aside for this purpose.”

It was the first time the term “homecoming” was used in a State College publication.

NC State loved having a big home game in the middle of the state’s biggest social event of the season, when the fair was still a robust presence on the other side of Hillsboro Street (as it was spelled at the time) from campus. Carolina hated playing its chief rival so early in the season, back when school started as the leaves began to change colors and football season began the last week of September. The two schools squabbled over when their annual showdown should be scheduled, and there was talk of canceling the series altogether.

Ultimately, State said it would play during the fair or in the nine days afterward.

Gubernatorial candidate O. Max Gardner and U.S. district attorney candidate Irvin B. Tucker, both of whom received undergraduate degrees from NC State and law degrees from UNC-CH, made the issue part of their Democratic campaign platforms, suggesting that the games become the annual homecoming game for both schools.

Their prominent voices were ultimately ignored, and the two schools went off to establish their own homecoming traditions, with different opponents just about every year.

This week, NC State football will cap Red and White Week 2024 by hosting Stanford at Carter-Finley Stadium. The new Atlantic Coast Conference member, making its first appearance in Raleigh, will become the 25th unique opponent for Homecoming in State’s history, and this year’s contest will stand as State’s 100th (or so) Homecoming game.

Origins of Homecoming

The specific origin of the first Homecoming is not exactly set in stone, even though the North Carolina School for Agriculture and Mechanic Arts Alumni Association was established in 1895 and was the first host of former students returning to campus for special events. The association organized a social and an elaborate banquet at commencement during the school’s first two decades.

In 1914, as part of a quarter-century anniversary celebration, the Alumni Association formed its first subchapter in Wake County. Over the next two years, dozens of county chapters were established in state, and a half dozen city chapters were formed out of state.

On Oct. 26, 1916, at a time when the school celebrated Founders’ Day on Oct. 3, the association called for all clubs to attend a morning meeting on Thanksgiving Day, before the afternoon football game against rival Washington & Lee at Riddick Field and asked that it become an annual autumn affair.

“To that end, that there might be a special day each year when its scattered sons might come together for a renewal of acquaintance and a rekindling of their interest in their alma mater the board of trustees has designated Oct. 3 of each year as A & M College Day,” wrote the original student newspaper The Red and White.

It didn’t even matter that the football team lost that first unofficial homecoming game 21-0, ending the one-year tenure of coach Britt Patterson. It was the de facto origin of setting aside a day to remember fondly the college experiences of the mostly men and few women who had earned their degrees at North Carolina’s first land-grant college.

Homecoming therefore predates the school’s first name change, to North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Engineering (1917), and the football team’s adoption of the nickname Wolfpack (1921). It took nearly a decade for the game to establish itself as a fixture on the football schedule as Alumni Day, Homecoming Day, Homecoming Weekend or Homecoming Week, spawning parades, contests, pageants, parties, dances and concerts for everyone affiliated with the institution.

Since 2016, however, the homecoming game has been the final event of Red and White Week, seven days of activities that include the Chancellor’s Fall Address and a celebration of all things NC State. Randy Woodson, who has announced his plan to retire on June 30, 2025, gave his final fall address as chancellor on Wednesday at Talley Student Union.

Homecoming Traditions

Through the years, Homecoming traditions have come and gone as on-campus culture has changed. The first Miss Wolfpack contest was established in the 1930s, as the all-male students sponsored contestants from local women’s colleges to compete for the title. In 1955, a year after the student body elected a teenager from a Charlotte high school to wear the crown and more women were enrolled as undergraduates, the rules were changed to allow only NC State female students to participate. Two of the first three coeds to win were freshmen in nuclear engineering.

NC State’s first female student body president, Kathy Sterling, first called for an end to electing a queen in 1971, two years after a male student was named a semifinalist and one year after Mary Evelyn Porterfield was named the first African American Miss Wolfpack. The sexism of the contest was debated for some two decades until 1990, when students began electing female and male students as “Leaders of the Pack,” a tradition that continues today.

“At this university, the contest [is] at worst an exercise in the perverted (but sadly, time-honored) traditions of putting the sexual value of boobs, bras and bod above the basic considerations of human aspirations, personalities and personal force,” said an unsigned editorial in Technician.

Homecoming parades of up to 40,000 spectators, sometimes attracting far more attendees than the football games, were conducted from downtown Raleigh’s State Capitol on Hillsboro Street to State’s campus, featuring student-created floats, area bands, local dignitaries and both radio and television coverage.

The parades came and went through the years, as interest and world events allowed. The most recent one was in 2019, the autumn before COVID-19 shut down many traditional events, including the annual football game. The parade has yet to return.

Coed dances featuring local performers and big-band orchestras were the highlight of the fall social calendar, especially until more women were admitted to pursue undergraduate degrees.

In 1970, on the Friday night before a 21-16 victory over Virginia, an up-and-coming band from Illinois performed to a sold-out crowd at Reynolds Coliseum as part of the New Arts concert series. The group, called Chicago, performed all the biggest songs from its 1969 debut album, The Chicago Transit Authority.

Concerts at Reynolds and other campus venues returned in force after the coliseum went through extensive renovations in 2016-17, with performers including rappers T.I. in 2016, K Camp with 2 Chainz in 2017 and Yung Gravy with Duckwrth in 2021.

Today’s Homecoming-related events include such activities as Wear Red Wednesday, Wolfpack Appreciation Day, Paint the Tunnel Red, tours of the Belltower and the university’s Hallowed Places, and other activities throughout the week.

Games of Interest

The focus of Homecoming and Red and White Week has always been the Saturday football game, though in 1948 head basketball coach Everett Case and his team played a Homecoming basketball game. Interestingly enough, that December contest was played at Durham’s Duke (now Cameron) Indoor Stadium. The Wolfpack team beat Pittsburgh in front of a sold-out crowd, then embarked on a month-long, 12,000-mile road trip that took the team to Nevada, California, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania and back to North Carolina for a much-needed homecoming.

Some of NC State’s most iconic and historic football games were also part of Homecoming festivities. For the school’s 50th anniversary jubilee in 1939, national champion Tennessee came to Riddick Field as the Wolfpack’s Homecoming opponent.

In 1979, nationally ranked Penn State played Bo Rein’s ACC championship team and walked away with one of the most gut-wrenching outcomes in program history, as it kicked a last-second field goal that bounced off the uprights — and then through them — as time expired for a 9-7 win.

There has been much joy, however, among the 52 Homecoming victories, such as the last game at Riddick Stadium, a 3-0 victory over Florida State in 1965, and the first win in newly opened Carter Stadium in 1966.

Few things have stood in the way of Homecoming festivities. In 2003, quarterback Philip Rivers and the Pack faced Texas Tech the day after Hurricane Isabel blew through the Triangle. Classes were canceled the day before because of the storm’s impact, but the game, a 49-21 victory, was played as scheduled.

At last year’s Homecoming, the Wolfpack beat Clemson 24-17.

Duke has been the Wolfpack’s most frequent Homecoming opponent, with 19 total games, and Virginia is second, with 13 games. State has never lost to Florida State (4-0-0), Wake Forest (4-0-1), South Carolina (4-0) or Virginia Tech (3-0-1) in Homecoming contests. 

Though it was supposed to be a regular feature on the football schedule, the NC State-North Carolina game has been the Wolfpack’s Homecoming just once since the end of World War II, a 27-19 loss in 2013.

NC State Football Homecoming Records
Opponent Win-Loss-Tie
Duke 9-8-1
Virginia 8-5-0
South Carolina 6-0-0
Maryland 5-3-0
Florida State 4-0-0
Wake Forest 4-0-1
Virginia Tech 3-0-1
Richmond 2-0-0
Appalachian State 2-0-0
Clemson 2-5-0
North Carolina 2-6-1
Louisville 1-0-0
Southern Mississippi 1-0-0
Texas Tech 1-0-0
Boston College 1-1-0
William & Mary 1-3-0
Furman 0-0-1
Miami 0-1-0
Tennessee 0-1-0
Wyoming 0-1-0
Houston 0-1-0
Penn State 0-1-0
East Tennessee State 0-1-0
Georgia Tech 0-3-0
Total 52-42-5