An eastern North Carolina author will be holding a book signing on Saturday at the Jacksonville Barnes and Noble for his newest title, “Tar Heel Bred: How Basketball Made A Man Out of Me.”
Scott Whisnant grew up in Jamestown, just outside of Greensboro, during the same time legendary coach Dean Smith began growing the basketball program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
So, it was easy to grow up a Tar Heel fan.
Graduating from UNC in 1983, Whisnant began his career as a sportswriter, but later became a news reporter for the Wilmington Morning Star, as writing about sports interfered with his ability to fully enjoy the Carolina basketball fandom.
In 1998, Whisnant began working in community relations at New Hanover Regional Medical Center, where he stayed until retirement just three years ago.
But writing has continued to be an important part of Whisnant’s life.
In 1996, his first book, “Innocent Victims,” was made into an ABC miniseries, and he also currently writes a feature for Inside Carolina called “What Happened.”
But it was his daughter who pushed him to write and publish “Tar Heel Bred: How Basketball Made A Man Out of Me.”
“I told my daughter once, ‘You can tell the story of my life through Carolina games,’ because almost every milestone in my life gets pegged to a game,” Whisnant said.
“So, she encouraged me to do it. In retirement, I finally sat down and I wrote the first chapter, and I said, that was kind of fun.”
The book is a nostalgic look at an Atlantic Coast Conference that really doesn’t exist anymore, Whisnant explained.
It was a time where college players didn’t declare for the NBA draft after one season, and the Name, Image and Likeness, NIL, didn’t even exist, meaning money wasn’t the deciding factor in where players chose to go to school.
It was all about the ball.
“The culture was such that everything centered around college basketball, and for us Carolina fans, everything centered around what the Tar Heels were or weren’t doing,” Whisnant said. “The book is not a basketball history. It’s more of a cultural history framed by individual basketball games.”
Whisnant said the book is especially for those who remember things like “Sail with the Pilot,” Packer and Thacker, and the 8 points in 17 seconds Carolina victory over Duke in 1974.
“There’s 55 years’ worth of basketball games I tell the story through, starting when I was 6 years old, laying in bed crying and wondering if God was real because we had just lost to South Carolina,” Whisnant laughed.
While each heading within the book is the score of a different game, Whisnant said it’s more about how he felt about those games rather than the history of the games themselves.
He said the book is kind of like “the wonder years” of ACC basketball.
“Back then, the games seemed like they were more engrained in our culture,” Whisnant said. “They meant more. You didn’t see them on TV, so seeing one on TV was a big deal. It didn’t matter who they showed, you watched the game.
“So, I interspersed that with my own history of my own family, and the thing about my history is, it could’ve been anybody’s.”
For those interested in meeting Whisnant and picking up a copy of “Tar Heel Bred: How Basketball Made A Man Out of Me,” he will be holding a book signing at the Barnes and Noble in the Jacksonville Mall, at 375 Western Blvd., on Saturday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
He said there will be ACC-themed drinks, and he might even do a reading.
Besides Barnes and Noble, “Tar Heel Bred: How Basketball Made A Man Out of Me” can also be purchased on IngramSpark. Whisnant hopes to have it more widely available soon.
“Carolina basketball still matters, it really does,” he said. “It doesn’t matter like it used to in terms of the whole ACC, but it still matters, and it always will.”
