Historian and Author
Robert B. McCormick
About The Author
Author and historian Robert B. McCormick's latest book is Founding the ACC: The Origins of a Major Athletic Conference, 1951-1953. In this first book-length examination of the conference's origins, McCormick examines how college presidents, hoping to reform and contain abuses in college athletics, combined with coaches and athletic officials, who desired better competitive balance, to form a new and unique athletic conference, the ACC.
McCormick is also the author of Croatia under Ante Pavelić: America, the Ustaše, and Croatian Genocide in World War II and co-editor of Distant Fronts: An International Rediscovery of World War I. McCormick has authored many articles ranging from genocide in Croatia during World War II to an evolution controversy in nineteenth century South Carolina to opposition to World War I in the Palmetto State.
Robert B. "Rob" McCormick is Professor of History at the University of South Carolina Upstate in Spartanburg, South Carolina. A native of North Carolina, McCormick holds a B.A. in history from Wake Forest University and a M.A. and Ph.D. in history from the University of South Carolina.
LATEST WORK
In 1953, seven universities seceded from the NCAA’s Southern Conference to form the Atlantic Coast Conference. Founding members Clemson, Duke, Maryland, North Carolina, North Carolina State, South Carolina and Wake Forest were soon joined by Virginia. Inspired by national academic and gambling scandals, and a bowl game crisis in 1951, the ACC’s leaders hoped to reduce the commercialism and professionalism that permeated college athletics in the 1950s.
This first ever full-length history examines founding of the ACC, the star athletes and coaches and football and basketball season highlights, along with the negotiations that led to the creation one of America’s most successful athletic conferences.