The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1544864
MAY/JUNE 2026 ■ 27 national championship. Bob Warren and Sidney Lowe took their teams to confer- ence championship games. Les Robinson and Lowe were as excited as anyone to lead their alma mater but did not find consis- tent success. In other words, the results are mixed. Here are the eight men who have re- turned to NC State to guide the program for which they once played. Harry Hartsell (1917-18, 1921-23) Midway through the 1916 football sea- son, NC State players and fans had had enough of first-year coach Britt Patterson and his brusque personality. He was dis- missed by the Faculty Athletics Council just five games into the season. One week later, the school approached Hartsell, an Asheville native and 1912 State graduate, with an offer to become head coach for football, baseball, basketball and track, as well as an opportunity to be the school's first full-time athletics director. Then a coach at a South Carolina prep school, Hartsell jumped at the chance. He had a successful first season as football coach, leading the Aggies to a 6-2-1 re- cord. In fact, during the 1917-18 academic year, State won unofficial state titles in three of the four varsity sports. The onset of World War I and the Span- ish flu pandemic of 1918 brought things to a screeching halt; most of the school's stu- dents were either absorbed into the U.S. Army or afflicted with the flu. Hartsell himself was called into active duty in the Army in the fall of 1918, ending his short reign as leader of the department and his first stint as a coach at his alma mater. He returned to the director's job after the war but lasted barely two years before alumni and student demands for more success also forced him out of his posi- tions. Hartsell was 16-18-4 in four years as football coach (1917, 1921-23). In two years as basketball coach (1921-23), Hartsell was 11-21, with just two wins in Southern Con- ference play. Talmage H. "Tal" Stafford (1918-19) Stafford, a teammate and classmate of Hartsell, took over as graduate manager of athletics when Hartsell left for military duty, essentially holding an interim posi- tion as football coach, basketball coach and athletics director until Bill Fetzer was hired from Davidson as a permanent re- placement. Stafford guided the school through the dual crises of war and flu but only for short terms. His final records were 11-3 in basketball, with a 39-29 win over North Carolina in the first unofficial state cham- pionship game, and 1-3 in football, includ- ing a 128-0 loss to Georgia Tech when his team came back from a five-week break during the pandemic. Stafford again became the athletics di- rector in 1927 after a failed attempt to ab- sorb athletics into the physical education department but did not return to coach- ing. He eventually gave up his athletics post to become the university's publica- tions editor and the head of the Alumni News, which at the time was a more lucra- tive position than running the athletics department. Bob Warren (1940-42) A native of Wisconsin, Warren found his way to NC State to play for assistant football coach Dr. R.R. "Ray" Sermon, who had been his teammate at the Okla- homa School of Osteopathy. They were Talmage "Tal" Stafford played football as an undergraduate before taking over as interim coach of that team and the basketball squad while also serving as athletics director in the late 1910s. PHOTO COURTESY NC STATE ATHLETICS