You know the name. Everyone knows the name.
Eddie Cameron is, as a Duke Basketball Report writer penned in 2019, “one of the most famous non-famous people in college basketball history.”
That’s because his name adorns Cameron Indoor Stadium, the raucous bandbox where Duke basketball teams and their fans have battered opponents for decades now.
But who was he?
Well, Eddie Cameron was a Duke basketball coach. Interestingly, he was also a Duke football coach.
Cameron started as a coach for the freshman basketball, football and baseball teams in 1926 and took over as basketball coach in 1929. He compiled an impressive 234-104 record before stepping down in 1942. Cameron then took over as Duke’s football coach for four seasons, filling in for head coach Wallace Wade, who had served in the U.S. Army in World War I and re-enlisted during World War II.
Later, Cameron became Duke’s athletic director, a post he held from 1951 to 1972.
That’s a lot of work for Duke athletics, so it was fitting in 1972 that the university rename the basketball arena to honor him.
Cameron’s basketball teams were successful yet rarely saw the postseason due to the structural quirks of the day. His best seasons, like 1930 when his team won 18 games and lost only twice, came at a time before postseason tournaments. And when the NCAA tournament began in the late 1930s, it took just one team from a region, which is why Duke’s 1941 team, which won the Southern Conference tournament, was passed over in favor of an impressive team at the University of North Carolina.
Cameron’s imprint on college athletics stretched further than Durham. He was a founder of the Athletic Coast Conference, chaired the basketball committee of the Southern Conference and the ACC, was on the NFL Hall of Fame selection committee and was on the governing committee for the Olympics.
