It has been more than three months since Duke and North Carolina met in the Final Four and – Seems like, maybe? – we all survived and managed to come out the other end without existence as we know it folding into a topological pretzel.
While it is possible to get one louder – with a national title on the line – we should all be preparing to run the Triangle winner-take-all nightmare rivalry scenario back before 2022 is over.
What if the ACC football season wraps up with N.C. State playing North Carolina in Chapel Hill … and then North Carolina playing N.C. State in Charlotte eight days later? It’s not as crazy as it sounds. In fact, it might not be a bad idea to stock up on canned goods and fresh water. This is some real end-of-days stuff.
The N.C. State half of it is not at all far-fetched. If not now for the Wolfpack, when? They slayed the Clemson dragon last season, and while the Wolfpack has to go to Death Valley this fall, this is a veteran, driven, motivated, hungry, talented team with a legit star quarterback, game-breaking defensive players and some of the best leaders in college athletics.
Between the failure to win the Atlantic Division last season, the Holiday Bowl fiasco and the several players who could have moved on but stayed, N.C. State has more unfinished business than an Elon Musk start-up. All of the pieces are in place for the Wolfpack to shove Clemson and Wake Forest aside and finally leave Louisville and Syracuse (and Maryland!) behind and become the 13th ACC team to play for a title.
Destiny is on the line, and while N.C. State has a bad habit of sending that call to voice mail, no one would be surprised in the least to see the Wolfpack in Charlotte on December 3, and perhaps even popping up in those silly weekly College Football Playoff rankings with regularity.
It’s possible the Wolfpack will be so far ahead of the pack that the Black Friday game at North Carolina might not even matter, other than in the national picture. More likely, N.C. State will need to win that game to clinch the division … but the Tar Heels might not.
Wait, what?
Because if everyone can see N.C. State coming, nobody’s looking at North Carolina this time around, not after the Tar Heels whiffed with similar aspirations a year ago. But the Coastal being the Coastal, UNC might just be a year late to the party – and have more room for error.
Consider, first, the competition: It’s always a good idea to sell Miami short, and those who have failed to get caught up in the annual hype have been right 17 out of 18 times. The Hurricanes finished strong, have perhaps the ACC’s best NFL quarterback prospect and a new coach and, presumably, yet another new attitude, but this is also a program that annually collapses under the weight of its own history. Pass.
Pittsburgh reloaded at quarterback with USC transfer Kedon Slovis after losing Kenny Pickett and the defending ACC champs return a ton of talent including an NFL-caliber defensive line, but it’s hard to imagine the Panthers catching Coastal lightning in a bottle again. As for the others – Duke, Georgia Tech, Virginia, Virginia Tech – it’s even harder to believe this is their year.
Which leaves North Carolina, minus Sam Howell but plus Gene Chizik. The last time Chizik showed up on campus to run UNC’s defense, he turned a group that gave up 70 at East Carolina into division champions, an onside kick away from a potential upset of Clemson in the title game. Mack Brown keeps pulling in highly ranked recruiting classes, and all that accumulated talent will surely produce results at some point, right?
If you look closely enough, you can see the collision course now. There’s every reason to believe N.C. State will be there at the end. It’s really a question of whether North Carolina can hold up its end of the bargain in the easier division. It’s possible the biggest variable is whether one team will have its division already clinched, opening the door for a title-game rematch.
So: State-Carolina with more than bragging rights on the line. And then State-Carolina with the ACC championship on the line. Prepare now. What if the Basketball Apocalypse wasn’t enough for 2022? The Football Apocalypse may be coming as well.
