Heels vs Horned Frogs

CFordUNC said:
Yeah, I am almost certain that we could have hired almost ANY college coach from amongst the ones in which we were rumored to have interest (at least until the BOT took the search away from Bubba- guys like Matt Campbell, Jon Sumrall, and Tommy Rees) and given him and his staff the exact same financial resources used to buy this year's roster, and that game would have been a lot more competitive. What we saw last night was a staff that was completely in over its head and clueless as to how to stop the bleeding. Cannot believe we are paying Bill and his sons $12.5M a year to look like Larry Fedora against East Carolina.
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I think last night was much more of a Jimmies & Joes issue than an Xs & Os issue. That’s not to say our game plan was great, especially on offense, but it was pretty obvious our talent is severely lacking. And that’s not terribly surprising given that nearly every difference-maker on last year’s team left to either the NFL or the portal and we hired Belichick too late for him to get in on most of the best talent in the winter portal. We’ve known the talent on this team was lacking and last night just really proved that. I think the worst you can say about the coaching is that it did almost nothing to help the lackluster talent.
 
wmheel1287 said:
No doubt the sun came up because football isn't that important, but there is no recovery from this episode as a football program. It doesn't matter what we do from here on out. This will ALWAYS be the memory and legacy of UNC football.
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Yup. For three hours before the game last night we were an SEC football school. Campus was electric. Final four atmosphere but in September. For two minutes during the game last night we were a football school. And shortly afterwards we showed the world while that atmosphere will never exist at UNC again.
 
wmheel1287 said:
No doubt the sun came up because football isn't that important, but there is no recovery from this episode as a football program. It doesn't matter what we do from here on out. This will ALWAYS be the memory and legacy of UNC football.
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We should have opened with Elon
 
SmilingJack said:
So the “giant” still sleeps?!?
There were some good jokes during the two Mac 1-10 seasons.

Why did the abused boy want to go to Carolina? They don’t beat anyone.

I recall betting on total score as victory wasn’t happening.

This all has a sort of “Groundhog Day” feeling for me.
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Early in Dick Crum’s tenure at UNC, the Heels had a media campaign touting “Carolina Fever.”

The bad joke was “What’s the cure for Carolina Fever? Dick Crum.”
 
BlueSteel said:
And then he left to go win a natty with Texas. He finished the job in Texas. Then, when he wore out his welcome, he returned to Club Med - Chapel Hill to retire. It’s not the popular opinion, and I realize his reasons for leaving involved the school prioritizing basketball over football, I get all that, but I’ll still never forgive Mack for leaving us high and dry when we were so damn close to being a national championship caliber team.
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You would have left too if you were in his shoes. I was there. Nobody in that department gave a shit about keeping Mack around. If you want to hate someone, I'd suggest kindly Dick Baddour. Mack leaving is 100% on him. Mack went to DB first and didn't even want to go to talk to Texas. Baddour actively encouraged him to go and never made a counterproposal to keep him.
 
Icky Mettle said:
No, but I was there in 1999 when the Heels lost to Furman 28-3.
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So was I and the mood wasn't even close at the end of the game. Had there been anyone left in the stadium, Belichick would have been lynched midfield. I've never heard so many people declaring they wouldn't be back. Our crowd never boos and there were LOTS of them from the big donor sections on the home side before halftime.
 
BlueSteel said:
And then he left to go win a natty with Texas. He finished the job in Texas. Then, when he wore out his welcome, he returned to Club Med - Chapel Hill to retire. It’s not the popular opinion, and I realize his reasons for leaving involved the school prioritizing basketball over football, I get all that, but I’ll still never forgive Mack for leaving us high and dry when we were so damn close to being a national championship caliber team.
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I don’t blame Mack for that.

I blame Dick Baddour (and whoever else was involved in hiring decisions). No one forced Baddour to hire Carl Torbush or John Bunting (and to keep Bunting when Steve Spurrier was available).
 
Glad I didn't buy into the hype. But I'm also not ready to call the whole BB experiment a failure after one game either.

I just didn't expect much out of this quickly thrown together team but the game last night went worse than I could have ever imagined. And that game was a confidence destroyer that could linger for the rest of the year with many players.

Was TCU better than advertised? I'd say yes
Was UNC over hyped? I'd definitely say so

I guess we just watch from here on out and see which holds true for the above.
 
nycfan said:
I was there for the fans turning on Dick Crum (I’ve never gotten over how ugly the Rams Club guys were at UVa after UNC lost there on my first roadtrip football game — the ugliness in the stands that afternoon about Crum was off the charts, I was embarrassed for the University being associated with those guys), then Mack’s 1-10 seasons while I was in college, not to mention living through the collapse of the Nascarl era, the Bunting experiment (when we thought we were going to hire Dick Vermeil) and the overstay and unpleasant unwind of Mack 2.0, I guess I am neither surprised nor depressed.

I am just used to UNC football being a tantalizing mirage, that handsome ne’er do well boyfriend who always has that next get rich quick scheme at his fingertips if I just believe in him and give him one last chance.

I am too old to change now, so I find I am curious to see how UNC looks at Charlotte on Saturday since I can compare how App State performed at Charlotte this past Saturday. I don’t have good expectations but I’ve done the ride along for every other train wreck the last 40 years, so why stop now?

Bad Boy Movie GIF by Laff
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It's fans like you and me who hold this program down with our low( realistic ) expectations...or so Tarpitters have told me for years 😜
 
I'm 100% with @wmheel1287 and @ZZLPHeels on this- last night was something from which UNC football probably won't recover. I understand that probably sounds hyperbolic, dramatic, emotional, knee-jerk, prisoner-of-the-moment, or whatever. I don't think it is. That's not to say that UNC won't win football games, go to bowl games, even occasionally be competitive in the ACC title race. We may even do all three of those before this season is over- the schedule is that favorable. But I don't think we will ever, ever, ever again be in a spot where we were the darlings of the entire sports world, all by ourselves, on ESPN prime time, on Labor Day night, with the stadium packed to the gills, campus busting at the seams, Chapel Hill rocking like it was a men's basketball nationlal title game day, big-time celebrities (sports and otherwise) in attendance, College GameDay doing a live show from on our field for an entire hour before the game, Pat McAfee and Nick Saban taking selfies on our sideline, etc. It wasn't for Georgia, it wasn't for Alabama, it wasn't for Ohio State, it wasn't for Texas. It was for North Carolina.

And then not only did we lose, we completely and totally shit the bed in a way that I don't think any of us could have even foreseen in our most pessimistic outlooks. That wasn't just a loss. We were completely out-classed in quite literally every facet of the game, for 3.5 hours, in front of the entire sports universe. We quite literally looked like we'd never played organized football before. We didn't have to win the game. Heck, TCU was favored. A loss would have been completely understandable. And yet even with the bar set *that* low....we managed to dig a hole beneath the damn bar so that we could crawl under it.

UNC Football will never again be the center of the attention of the entire sports world like we were yesterday. We missed the opportunity of a lifetime. Again, none of if this is to say that the program won't win more games, play in more bowl games, land more good recruits, be on national television, etc. We will. It's just that we will do all of those things with the entire college football world knowing that we are a joke of a football program far more obsessed with style over substance, obsessed with winning the press conference instead of winning on the field.
 
BlueSteel said:
And then he left to go win a natty with Texas. He finished the job in Texas. Then, when he wore out his welcome, he returned to Club Med - Chapel Hill to retire. It’s not the popular opinion, and I realize his reasons for leaving involved the school prioritizing basketball over football, I get all that, but I’ll still never forgive Mack for leaving us high and dry when we were so damn close to being a national championship caliber team.
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Understand the sentiment. I was still a little too young to fully grasp things like a coach changing schools in 1997, but I can’t fault Mack at all for going to a place that actually had the talent pool and resources to compete for a title (yes I know he wasn’t technically that far away from doing that at UNC, but let’s be real, it was probably never happening here).

I do blame Mack and our PTB for the way they handled his second tenure here. I personally don’t think he should have been re-hired in the first place, but the fact that he actually rejuvenated recruiting and fan interest at first before the wheels came off and it was clear that he was half-assing it was such a tease kick in the crotch. So frustrating that not even 1 of his teams from that 2020-2023 stretch ever fully broke through. The collapses in those seasons + the pathetic 2024 campaign destroyed any momentum the program had and put us in a deep hole.

To be clear I’m not saying that’s the sole reason that we got buried last night; coaching staff really sucked regardless of roster talent. Still, the previous regime didn’t leave much behind to work with.
 
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