NC State Sports, Illustrated Trappings of the NC State Football Tradition The Wolfpack Gridiron On the Battlefield and the Playing Field The Baby Boom Hoops, 1950s Changes in the Medium
  
NC State Sports, Illustrated:
The Baby Boom, 1946-1950s

The end of the war was greeted with relief and elation. Birth rates hit record highs in the "baby boomer" years of the late 1940s, and images in print media and advertisements both captured and stoked the excitement. At NC State men were busy studying under the GI Bill, and the cheerleading squad needed people. In 1946 the fourteen-person squad became coeducational for the first time, welcoming four women (Elizabeth Frazier, Tula Carter, Frances Cox, and Betsy Young).

  Fertility symbols (flowers) and pretty women graced the covers of football programs, just as they were featured in other media. It was the hey-day of the pin-up, and the work of artists such as Gil Elvgren, Alberto Vargas, and Earl Moran appeared not only in the daring centerfolds of Esquire, but also in mainstream magazines such as Life, Time, and Look.
Football October 25, 1952
Football October 13, 1951
These well-scrubbed, wholesome "girls-next-door" fit into the Norman Rockwell vision of American life and sold publications. Advertising agencies recognized their allure and adopted the style as well.
Football October 12, 1946
Football 1958
Gil Elvgren and other pin-up artists worked for the Steven and Gross advertising agency under Haddon Sundblom, best known for his Coca-Cola ads, which included the Santa Claus campaign. The artists in Sundblom's studio worked in oil using a lush, smooth style that gave the humans in their paintings glowing skin. A good example of this technique, which is sometimes called "the Mayonnaise School," is found in illustrator Joe Little's "barbershop quartet" of football players (October 1958). Two of them are holding Coke bottles. Football 1958 Coke Roster Ad.
Football October 18, 1947
Lon Keller's and Larry Tisdale's girls had rosier cheeks and toothpaste-commercial smiles.
Football November 16, 1946
Foot September 25, 1948
Other 1950s program covers and ads included elements of modernity such as commercial airplanes, sports cars, and television sets. Life carried on and football became just another fall sport-albeit an immensely popular one in which skilled players were idolized as "knights in shining armor" (as in Fred Fixler's drawing from October 1958).
Football October 4, 1958
Football September 27, 1952
Football 1956 Tailgate Ad. Football 1948 Chesterfield Ad.