UNC was independent for most of her earliest years of college football, spending most of 1888–1921 as a member of no formal athletic conferences. The exceptions to this include a brief foray with the informal North Carolina Inter-Collegiate Foot-ball Association from 1888 to 1890 with Duke (then known as Trinity) and Wake Forest, and a few brief stints with the more formally recognized SIAA. After this, in December 1892, eight colleges from around the South, led by Virginia, attempted to form the first iteration of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association; this association folded by July 1893 amid internal disputes.