Every time this comes up, I just have to scratch my head and bite my tongue (but not this time!).
Anyway, we are the 49ers because in 1949, when UNC-CH was set to close the satellite centers created to accomodate returning WWII vets, Bonnie Cone, Elmer Garinger, et al, went to Raleigh and convinced the General Assembly to allow the Charlotte Center of UNC to continue as a 2-year college that would be operated locally through the local public school system (of which Dr. Garinger was the superintendent).
Late, in the mid-1950s, the state took over administration of Charlotte College and the school ended up moving from its central city locale (current-day CPCC on Elizabeth Avenue) to what was then very rural northeast Mecklenburg County in the early 1960s. We eventually bacame a 4-year school (1963), then the 4th campus of UNC in 1965.
Up until the 49 mascot was chosen, we were known as the Owls, which was an homage to our night school origins as CCUNC.
The significance of 1949 is that the NC General Assembly used to only meet every 2 years (on odd years), so many feel/think that if UNC-CH had decided to close CCUNC in 1948 or 1950, then the school would have shut down. Not to say there wouldn’t have eventually been a UNC Charlotte, but under different circumstances and perhaps not as far along as we are now.
BTW, yes, there was football during our CCUNC days. No, Bonnie Cone didn’t have any say so in whether we had football or not. In fact, the students voted to eliminate it!
BTW2, the discovery of gold in Cabarrus/Mecklenburg occured in the 1790s, a good half a century before everyone made the mad dash to California. Charlotte even had a branch of the U.S. Mint until the Civil War and coins were produced here.
GO NINERS!
