Well, things are officially getting weird. Have been for a while, actually, but Saturday cemented it: This is now the wildest, strangest college football season in recent memory in North Carolina.
And maybe ever?
Consider the evidence:
— North Carolina allowed 40 points in one quarter against Appalachian State earlier this season (albeit in a victory) only to slowly but surely regain defensive competence while winning its first six games in the ACC. UNC could’ve easily gone 0-2 against the Sun Belt, but now the Tar Heels, whose play inspired the message board intellectuals to call for massive firings a month and a half ago, are firmly in control of the Coastal Division. Drake Maye is a Heisman Trophy candidate. Mack Brown won for the first time ever in Charlottesville on Saturday. Just as we all thought.
— In Raleigh, N.C. State — preseason media darlings — lost its most important game of the season, at Clemson, and then lost Devin Leary, the ACC preseason player of the year. And all of a sudden the Wolfpack looks ... better? For the past five quarters, including the one in which it awoke to avoid what would’ve been a disastrous defeat against Virginia Tech, this is the Wolfpack team we expected to see all along. State hounded Sam Hartman in a victory against Wake Forest on Saturday night. MJ Morris, a freshman, is playing beyond his years in filling in for Leary. Just as we all thought.
— Meanwhile, Wake Forest entered the top 10 not all that long ago after a 6-1 start — the one loss coming in double-overtime against Clemson. The Demon Deacons were riding high. Hartman was starting to get the pub he deserved. And since, well — life comes at you pretty fast, as they say. Hartman has turned in two of his worst games in consecutive losses against Louisville and State; Wake’s defense has taken a step backward. Now with a monumental home game looming against UNC, Wake’s season is suddenly on the brink. Just as we all thought.
— And Duke — well, it’s fair to say nobody expected much of anything out of Duke this season, did they? The Blue Devils were picked to finish dead last in the not-all-that-formidable Coastal. It figured that’d take a while for Mike Elko and his staff to repair the rot that left the Blue Devils floundering over the past couple of years. Instead, Duke went on the road and pounded Miami (yes, the Hurricanes are terrible, but they were the preseason divisional favorite, if you recall) before winning at Boston College on Friday and now Duke is bowl eligible. Just as we all thought.
— Elsewhere in the Carolinas, the madness has ensued, and spread. A certain local writer earlier this season ordained App State as North Carolina’s best program, only to see the Mountaineers take a turn for the mediocre. ECU couldn’t make a kick when it counted only to redeem itself in clutch moments in recent weeks. Charlotte fired its coach. South Carolina has won five of six. Coastal Carolina struggled early and has ascended late. Clemson appeared headed for a spot in the playoff ... until “Clemsoning” became a thing again Saturday at Notre Dame. Just as we all thought.
Is this the weirdest season in the Carolinas in recent memory? Yes.
Has it been probably the most fun, too? Yes.
And this has probably been the best, most competitive season, too. Which leads us to ...
ONE BIG THING
By virtue of Duke’s victory at Boston College (and one wonders where a Duke-BC Friday night game landed on the greater Boston sporting radar), North Carolina’s four ACC schools are all bowl eligible in the same season for the first time. It only took more than 100 years of college football for this to happen. And, sure, there were far fewer bowl games years ago.
Still, Duke, Carolina, State and Wake are all guaranteed to finish with at least a .500 record in the regular season. Folks, that hasn’t happened since ... 1947. And the glory days of the Southern Conference. Duke, coached by none other than Wallace Wade himself, went 4-3-2 that year. UNC, under Carl Snavely, went 8-2. State, coached by Beattie Feathers (!), finished 5-3-1. And Wake, with D.C. Walker, finished 6-4.
A couple things are clear: Coaches had much better names back then. And move over, Texas: North Carolina is the country’s premier college football state now.
THE HOTTEST TAKE
“North Carolina is the country’s premier college football state now.”
-Andrew Carter, N&O reporter
* a take in which we sarcastically poke fun at a real, actual take. Not meant to be taken seriously.
(But no, maybe it’s true!?)
THREE TO LIKE
1. Just a week and a half ago, N.C. State’s season appeared on the verge of disaster. And now? Perhaps 10 regular-season wins doesn’t appear so crazy, after all. The difference: MJ Morris. Yes, he’s a bit raw. Yes, he’s young. But the Wolfpack’s freshman quarterback has provided State with an unlikely jolt, and now all of a sudden the Pack looks like the team a lot of people thought it’d be in the preseason. Maybe, just maybe Morris should’ve started at Syracuse?
2. Getting back to the theme at the top, with the pervading weirdness: Mack Brown won in Charlottesville. “Hallelujah,” say Tar Heels fans everywhere. If UNC wasn’t going to win at Virginia on Saturday, it’d have been fair to assume that no Brown-coached team ever would. He’d been 0-6 there, dating back to his first tenure in Chapel Hill, and Scott Stadium was known as UNC’s house of horrors. Emphasis on “was.”
3. Few things deliver the way the beaches and the mountains of the Carolinas deliver, and so it’s only fitting that Coastal and App State continue to give us football competitions of esteem. The latest came Thursday night, with Coastal’s 35-28 victory against the Mountaineers. The potential is there for this to become one of the premier Group of Five rivalries in the country.
THREE TO ... NOT LIKE AS MUCH
1. On the one hand it’d be unfair to describe what happened to Clemson on Saturday as “Clemsoning” but on the other, how exactly to describe it? The Tigers’ performance in a 35-14 loss at unranked Notre Dame was eerily reminiscent of the kind they used to deliver back before they got over the hump in Swinney’s early years. And with that, there goes the ACC’s hope of having a playoff team.
2. Wake quarterback Sam Hartman deserves all the credit for his role in helping Clawson build a winner in Winston-Salem, which makes his play the past couple weeks all the more perplexing. There were the six turnovers in the loss at Louisville and, OK, a freak accident of a bad game can happen. But to follow it up with three more interceptions Saturday night at State? Not great. That said, would anyone be surprised if Hartman gets it rolling again against UNC’s defense?
3. Remember when Florida State-Miami made for appointment viewing? Back when the ACC’s divisional format began in 2005, FSU-Miami games received all the hype. Brent Musberger provided the soundtrack. ABC put them in prime time. One of the sport’s truly great rivalries has faded into irrelevance, with FSU’s 45-3 victory Saturday night the latest chapter. The ACC needs these games to matter, but that’s not happening with Miami in disrepair.
CAROLINAS RANKING
1. N.C. State (sure, why not, let’s continue to get weird); 2. North Carolina (you’d think these close wins would eventually catch up to the Heels but, maybe not?); 3. Clemson (worst loss to an unranked team since 2011, the Tigers’ 24-point loss at N.C. State); 4. Wake Forest; 5. South Carolina; 6. Duke; 7. Coastal Carolina; 8. ECU; 9. Appalachian State (remember, folks — programs are established over years!); 10. Charlotte.
FINAL THOUGHTS, IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER
— I think we’re heading toward probably the biggest UNC-State game in recent memory later this month. The Tar Heels and Wolfpack met as ranked teams in 2020, but they haven’t met as top-20 teams (which they very well could be) since 1993. That’s only happened one other time, in 1979, and both were pretty decisive UNC wins.
— I think UNC might be the best team in the ACC. Or, maybe it’s more like the fourth- or fifth-best team in the ACC. No real way to know. The Coastal is so bad, it’s difficult to tell. UNC will win the division (it appears) without having played a Top 25 team. Duke is certainly a good story this season. Pitt is OK (but not great). The rest of the Coastal? Yikes. No fault of the Tar Heels, of course, and Maye has indeed been fantastic. But still. How good is this team? Who really knows?
— I think the upcoming “BBQ Bowl” this weekend between Campbell and Gardner-Webb is a fun thing. Kudos to those schools for recognizing that this state needed some sort of BBQ-related college football rivalry. Everyone knows, though, that when it comes to BBQ there’s no competition between east and west. After this game in Buies Creek on Saturday, the teams should hop on the bus and head to Ayden. It’s only about 90 minutes east to Skylight Inn, and the best BBQ in the state.
