GREENSBORO, N.C. — The game is over, your team won, but you don't stop watching. None of the fans leave. Why? Because everyone wants to see the next step.
It's a step up, on the ladder to cut the net down. It is a moment.
You saw it this weekend, Duke's Coach K and UNC's Hubert Davis. Stepping up, to show all, they own the game, by taking the net home with them.
“It's a ceremony now, there's an official ladder of the net cutting. It's such an important thing and now there are multiple generations who know nothing, but you're supposed to cut down the nets when you win a championship,” says NC Sports Hall of Fame board member Tim Peeler.
It's a tradition Tim Peeler enjoys talking about. He says the sports staple started in 1947 with NC State Coach Everett Case.
“NC State beat Carolina two times in the regular season and then by two points in the championship game. The players put coach Case on their shoulders. He said, hey boys, take me to the basket and they didn’t know why. It was the first time it had ever happened. He said, lift me up, give me a pair of scissors and he started cutting the nets down,” said Peeler.
Case told his team, every time we win a championship, we'll cut down the nets, and so they did. NC State won 9 championships in 10 years. That’s a lot of nets being cut down in the face of other teams.
Of course, it had to end sometime. It did. UNC beat NC State in Reynolds Coliseum and cut down the net right in front of all those NC State fans.
Cutting down the net became the end-all-be-all bragging right.
“That started the tradition, not just cutting it down, but using it as a weapon almost. We're going to show you what we can do,” said Peeler.
Where did Everett Case get the net cutting thing? He used to do it in Indiana, as a coach, he won four state high school basketball titles and cut down those nets.
By the way, Peeler says Coach Case is also responsible for pep bands at games, the player introductions with a spotlight, and stylized warm-up outfits. He was a coach and a marketer of the sport.