North Carolina Tar Heel History

The University of North Carolina's Men's Basketball program is one of the most successful programs in all of college basketball. The team's colors are light blue (Carolina Blue) and white. The Tar Heels first used these colors around 1800 to distinguish members of the Dialectic and Philanthropic Literary Societies. The UNC athletic teams adopted these colors when the University first fielded them in 1888. UNC uses a ram named Ramses as their official mascot. Ramses was born in 1924 when Jack Merrit, known as the "Battering Ram," was a popular player on the Tar Heel's football team. UNC decided to use Merrit's nickname and Ramses was born. The Tar Heels were also known as the White Phantoms, a nickname they went by until the late 1940s. You can catch the North Carolina Tar Heels Basketball live from the Dean E. Smith Center with great tickets from StubHub.