Beryl Clyde Shipley (August 10, 1926 – April 15, 2011) [1] was an American basketball coach. A native of Kingsport, Tennessee, he is best known for his tenure as head coach of the University of Southwestern Louisiana—now as the University of Louisiana at Lafayette—from 1957 to 1973.
Shipley was hired at what was then Southwestern Louisiana Institute in 1958. In 1966, Shipley recruited three black players, thus becoming the first collegiate coach in the Deep South to have black players on his team. In a region where Jim Crow was a way of life well into the 1960s—long after most Jim Crow laws were formally repealed—Shipley faced intense criticism and opposition for trying to integrate his teams. However, he said years later that he was tired of telling good players that he couldn't sign them because of an unwritten Gulf States Conference rule forbidding black players on conference teams. When state officials barred state money from being used to fund the scholarships for the players, Shipley had area black leaders chip in enough money to pay the players' way. [2] However, this violated an NCAA rule against players receiving financial assistance from outside their family. In 1968, partly due to this, the Ragin' Cajuns were slapped with two years' probation and barred from postseason play during that time. [3]
Shipley did not take long to recover from the probation, however. In 1972, the Ragin' Cajuns jumped to Division I, finished in the top 10 of most major polls and advanced all the way to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament, becoming the first school to make the tournament in its first year of eligibility. They repeated this feat in 1973. However, a month after the tournament, Shipley abruptly resigned. That August, the NCAA found Southwestern Louisiana guilty of more than 125 violations. Most of them involved small cash payments to players, letting players borrow coaches' and boosters' cars, letting players use university credit cards to buy gas and buying clothes and other objects for players. However, the most severe violations involved massive academic fraud. The NCAA found that one of Shipley's assistants had altered a recruit's high school transcript and forged the principal's signature, and others close to the program had arranged for surrogates to take college entrance exams for prospective recruits. The NCAA responded by scrubbing the Ragin' Cajuns' 1972 and 1973 appearances from the books and shutting the program down for two years—the first time that the NCAA had ever punished a school with the so-called "death penalty," and to date the only multi-season cancellation ever handed down to a Division I member in any sport. [2] [4]
Midway through the 1974–75 season, he became coach of the ABA's San Diego Conquistadors.
After this, he retired from coaching (with Bill Musselman taking on the vacant head coaching role for the later rebranded San Diego Sails) and became involved in the oil distribution business. In his later years, Shipley admitted to violating NCAA rules, but claimed he did so for "humanitarian reasons." In an interview with Sports Illustrated in 2011, he mentioned that one of his players came to school with only one set of clothes and no sheets for his bed. The player was too poor to buy them, so Shipley felt compelled to buy some for him out of his own pocket. However, he denied knowing about the academic fraud, and fought for years to clear his name to no avail. He was largely ostracized by Southwestern Louisiana/Louisiana-Lafayette for many years; school officials took the line that as the head coach, he should have had more control over the program. [2]
Shipley suffered two heart attacks in the 1980s and later had surgery to repair an aortic aneurysm. He was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2010 which eventually spread into his brain. Louisiana-Lafayette held a reunion of the 1972 and 1973 teams in January 2011, but by then Shipley was too sick to attend. Shipley died on April 15, 2011, at the age of 84.
The New Orleans Bowl is an NCAA-sanctioned post-season college football bowl game that has been played annually since 2001. It is normally held at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans; when the Superdome and the rest of the city suffered damage due to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the game was temporarily moved to Cajun Field in Lafayette, Louisiana, and given the name New Orleans Bowl at Lafayette. Since 2006, the bowl has been sponsored by R+L Carriers and officially known as the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl. The game was previously sponsored by Wyndham Hotels & Resorts from 2002 to 2004 and was officially called the Wyndham New Orleans Bowl.
The 1973 NCAA University Division basketball tournament involved 25 schools playing in single-elimination play to determine the national champion of men's NCAA University Division college basketball. It began on Saturday, March 10, and ended with the championship game on Monday, March 26, in St. Louis, Missouri. A total of 29 games were played, including a third-place game in each region and a national third-place game.
The Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns are the athletic teams of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. The college has been competing athletically since 1901. The Ragin' Cajuns compete in NCAA Division I, fielding 16 varsity teams.
Dwight "Bo" Lamar is a former professional American basketball player. Born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, he graduated from the University of Southwestern Louisiana, now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Lamar was a leading NCAA scorer and was the No. 1 overall pick in the 1973 American Basketball Association Draft.
The death penalty is the popular term for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)'s power to ban a school from competing in a sport for at least one year. This colloquial term compares it with capital punishment since it is the harshest penalty that an NCAA member school can receive, but in fact its effect is only temporary.
The Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns men's basketball program represents intercollegiate men's basketball at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. The school competes in the Sun Belt Conference in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and play home games at the Cajundome in Lafayette, Louisiana. Derrick Zimmerman is the interim head coach after the firing of Bob Marlin in December 2024. Louisiana has appeared in the NCAA tournament eleven times, most recently in 2023. The Ragin' Cajuns have won the Sun Belt Conference tournament title seven times.
The 2011 R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl, part of the 2011–12 bowl game season, took place on December 17, 2011, at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana. The 11th edition of the game featured the Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns from the Sun Belt Conference, and the San Diego State Aztecs from the Mountain West Conference. The game was telecast at 8:00 p.m. CT on ESPN and ESPN 3D.
The Sabine Shoe is the name of the bronze shoe trophy that was awarded to the winner of the annual college football game between the Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in Lafayette, Louisiana and the Lamar Cardinals of Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. The Sabine Shoe trophy was first awarded in 1968 by the University of Southwestern Louisiana's chapter of Alpha Phi Omega fraternity. The name of the bronze rivalry trophy was derived from the Sabine River that forms part of the Texas–Louisiana border. USL defeated Lamar in the 1978 edition of the rivalry game, but the Ragin' Cajuns were not awarded the trophy as it had vanished. The Sabine Shoe trophy now sits in at trophy case in the Ragin' Cajun Athletic Complex in Lafayette.
The Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns football program is a college football team that represents the University of Louisiana at Lafayette at the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) level as a member of the Sun Belt Conference. Since 1971, the team has played its home games at Cajun Field in Lafayette, Louisiana. Michael Desormeaux has served as Louisiana's head coach since 2021.
The 1981 Southwestern Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns football team was an American football team that represented the University of Southwestern Louisiana in the Southland Conference during the 1981 NCAA Division I-A football season. In their second year under head coach Sam Robertson, the team compiled a 1–9–1 record.
The 1983 Southwestern Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns football team was an American football team that represented the University of Southwestern Louisiana as an independent during the 1983 NCAA Division I-A football season. In their fourth year under head coach Sam Robertson, the team compiled a 4–6 record.
The 1986 Southwestern Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns football team was an American football team that represented the University of Southwestern Louisiana as an independent during the 1986 NCAA Division I-A football season. In their first year under head coach Nelson Stokley, the team compiled a 6–5 record.
The 1987 Southwestern Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns football team was an American football team that represented the University of Southwestern Louisiana as an independent during the 1987 NCAA Division I-A football season. In their second year under head coach Nelson Stokley, the team compiled a 6–5 record.
The 1989 Southwestern Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns football team was an American football team that represented the University of Southwestern Louisiana as an independent during the 1989 NCAA Division I-A football season. In their fourth year under head coach Nelson Stokley, the team compiled a 7–4 record.
The 1990 Southwestern Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns football team was an American football team that represented the University of Southwestern Louisiana as an independent during the 1990 NCAA Division I-A football season. In their fifth year under head coach Nelson Stokley, the team compiled a 5–6 record.
The 1973 Southwestern Louisiana Bulldogs football team was an American football team that represented the University of Southwestern Louisiana in the Southland Conference during the 1973 NCAA Division II football season. In their thirteenth year under head coach Russ Faulkinberry, the team compiled an 0–10 record.
The 1972 Southwestern Louisiana Bulldogs football team was an American football team that represented the University of Southwestern Louisiana in the Southland Conference during the 1972 NCAA College Division football season. In their twelfth year under head coach Russ Faulkinberry, the team compiled an 5–6 record.
The 1970 Southwestern Louisiana Bulldogs football team was an American football team that represented the University of Southwestern Louisiana in the Gulf States Conference during the 1970 NCAA College Division football season. In their tenth year under head coach Russ Faulkinberry, the team compiled an 9–3 record and were Gulf States Conference champions.
The 1973–74 NCAA Division I men's basketball season began in November 1973, progressed through the regular season and conference tournaments, and concluded with the 1974 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament Championship Game on March 25, 1974, at the Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, North Carolina. The North Carolina State Wolfpack won its first NCAA national championship with a 76–64 victory over the Marquette Warriors.
In 1973, the University of Southwestern Louisiana was penalized by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for rules violations concerning the university's basketball program. This followed an investigation in which the association discovered that the program had been fielding academically ineligible players and paying student athletes, in violation of the NCAA's rules. As a result, the NCAA applied the "death penalty" to the program, barring them from competing for two years, in addition to other forms of punishment that included a probation period and a removal of voting rights in the association.