evrheel
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If IC wants to have fewer eyeballs on their site to make life easier for Mods well I guess it's a new business model !!!
ZZLP impact on IC?
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Just because we’ve been mediocre throughout most of our history, that doesn’t mean we should be mediocre in 2024.
North Carolina Tar Heels College Football History, Stats, Records | College Football at Sports-Reference.com
Check out the North Carolina Tar Heels College Football History, Stats, Records, Polls, Bowls and More College Football Stats at Sports-Reference.comwww.sports-reference.com
Look at that link carefully. And then look at it again. If this team gets to 9 wins, you should dance a jig and thank the football gods.
After all, we have a HoF Coach. Granted, he’s a mere shadow of the guy who built the ‘90’s program. But, he’s in his 6th season in Mack 2.0. He should have a stellar staff. He doesn’t.
Now, given how BAD this year’s schedule is, all 9-3 will show is we lost to FSU, likely lost to ncsulol (a clown car athletic and football program UNC should dominate - win 65-70% of football games), and lost to a crappy team the Heels should have beaten…..then on to the Mayonnaise or Music or Military bowl and 9-4 for the season. 10-2 regular season won’t show we’re any good given this schedule. 9-3 or 10-2 regular season with a bowl win over a GOOD team from good conference? That’s a good season. Anything less? Meh.
Bowl wins don’t matter anymore. They are the equivalent of an NFL preseason game. Who cares how our backups perform against some other teams backups.
I guess it is a compliment to Mack that fans now expect 9 wins as meh (even when the over under is 7.5).
CFordUNC
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Absolutely no way should anyone “dance a jig and thank the football gods” if we get 9 wins this year. Nine wins should be the bare minimum expectation for what would be considered a success this season. Bare minimum. There is exactly one team on the schedule with a more talented roster than ours (Florida State). There are nine teams on the schedule where, in year six of this coaching staff and with a roster comprised of three consecutive Top 15 recruiting classes, that we should roll out of bed and have little to no concerns about beating (Charlotte, NC Central, James Madison, Duke, Pittsburgh, Georgia Tech, Virginia, Wake Forest, Boston College). There are two other games that are veritable toss-ups, but where we have better players (Minnesota and NC State).North Carolina Tar Heels College Football History, Stats, Records | College Football at Sports-Reference.com
Check out the North Carolina Tar Heels College Football History, Stats, Records, Polls, Bowls and More College Football Stats at Sports-Reference.com
Look at that link carefully. And then look at it again. If this team gets to 9 wins, you should dance a jig and thank the football gods.
Anything less than 9-3 with this schedule is not a success. It doesn’t matter what our football program has done historically or that we have been mediocre for pretty much our entire history. What matters is the particular composition of this UNC team’s roster compared to that of the 12 teams on our schedule. I say all of this as someone who has a Music City Bowl ring, an Independence Bowl ring, and a Coastal Division champs ring (and a hoodie!) from that year where we went 8-4 (5-3) and finished in a three-way tie for first place in the division but were ineligible to compete in the championship game. Believe me, I know firsthand that we celebrate mediocrity like we’ve accomplished something. “8 wins is pretty good around here” and all that. But anything less than nine wins with this schedule and this roster is not a success. The fact that many of our fans, and likely our administration, hold the belief that a 9-win season in year 6 against this schedule, is a success is big reason why our football program is probably doomed to mediocrity in perpetuity. You get what you tolerate, and what we tolerate is a football program that, despite having fantastic facilities, despite being the flagship university of one of the best states for high school football talent in the country, and despite historically recruiting better than 75%+ of our schedules year over year, we print shirts and rings for things like 8-4 and 9-5 seasons.
I say all of this as someone who deeply loves Carolina football and has been a “Carolina football first” fan my entire life. But I’m tired of the excuses and the tolerance for being mediocre. I’m tired of consistently not showing up against our biggest rival in the biggest game of the season. I’m tired of losing multiple games each year as 14, 17, or even 24.5 point (!) favorites. Carolina football can be better than that by a country mile- but not until or unless fans and administrators start demanding it.
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Honestly, I don’t think looking at a program’s all time W/L record is a very good way to calibrate expectations.North Carolina Tar Heels College Football History, Stats, Records | College Football at Sports-Reference.com
Check out the North Carolina Tar Heels College Football History, Stats, Records, Polls, Bowls and More College Football Stats at Sports-Reference.com
Look at that link carefully. And then look at it again. If this team gets to 9 wins, you should dance a jig and thank the football gods.
“Well we’re barely over .500 all time, so 7-5 is above average!”. Sure, that’s technically true, but that doesn’t take into account how frequently the landscape of the sport and our opponents changes. 7-5 in certain seasons would be really good considering the state of the program and difficulty of our schedule. Other seasons, 7-5 is a big disappointment.
CarolinaFever
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Yes, there's no reason with the name recognition and facilities UNC has that the football program should not be consistently in the top 25. We have seen the past few years the teams just fall apart and collapse at the end of the season when they have a chance to make that leap forward, and Mack seems fine with the outcomes. I think Mack was great for coming back and restoring the program better than it was, but I don't think a coach should ever be satisfied and complacent.
BlooVooDoo
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I can think of at least 30 reasons.
I understand the emotion. But the reality is that we are projected to be a 7-5/8-4 team, which is well in line with our historical averages. If this team wins 9 games, it will be significantly outperforming expectations.
By way of just one example, take the upcoming Minnesota game, which I’m going to. Most Carolina fans think we will win the game. But we are a 2.5 point underdog. We should lose the game. But fans don’t see it that way.
CFordUNC
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Right, I understand what our historical average is and I understand what the betting markets are saying, but if we go 8-4/7-5 this year, assuming we don’t suffer an extraordinarily unusual amount of injuries, it will mean that we lost somewhere between 2-4 games to teams to which we have no business losing. I find that to be unacceptable now, in year 6. Assuming a loss at Florida State, where could 3-4 more losses come from on this schedule and it be considered “on par”/acceptable. And to me, if 8-4/7-5 against this schedule isn’t acceptable, then going 9-3 should not cause anyone to “dance a jig”. Going 9-3 should be the bare minimum expectation for *this* year’s team against *this* schedule. What our 2014 or 2004 or 1994 teams did against their own schedules should have no bearing on how the 2024 team is assessed against its schedule.
To be clear, I’m not one of those fans who is going to look down on any other Carolina fan who would be excited about going 9-3. Not at all. I do not want to gatekeep fan happiness. But I just personally believe that nine wins should be the bare minimum expectation for what can be considered a successful season this year, because before the season even starts, there are 9 teams on that schedule to whom we have no business losing if we are serious about being a real football program that actually contends for conference championships and things like that.
The fact that we are an underdog to a team that is picked somewhere between 12th and 14th in the Big 10 is part of the problem. Sure, if we beat them then that's technically a great result for this team. But the problem is that shouldn't be some exceptional result in year six for Mack Brown. The same logic applies to the season record. Since we are expected to go 7-5, then I guess technically that would be a decent season and anything more we should be happy with, but that's not what we were expecting when Mack returned. Add mediocre expectations in year six against a weak schedule to the fact that he completely wasted probably the two best QB's we've ever had by fielding historically awful defenses, ending the season losing to terrible teams and not showing up against our chief rival over and over and it's no wonder people are fed up and not that jazzed up about maybe having another 7 or 8 win season.
I will say if we win 9 games I'll be happy, but I don't think it's some major achievement. In any case, I will be shocked if it does happen and that speaks volumes given our schedule is not very difficult.
I will say if we win 9 games I'll be happy, but I don't think it's some major achievement. In any case, I will be shocked if it does happen and that speaks volumes given our schedule is not very difficult.
CFordUNC
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You said it much better than me. Agree with all the above!
CFordUNC
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Something that always cracked me up when I was still on the IC Tar Pit premium board was how many posters would talk shit about Butch Davis out of one side of their mouth but then defend Mack Brown out of the other. They are literally the exact same coach from a results standpoint. Exactly the same.
superrific
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One problem is that there is too much competition for recruiting in our state. If you look at the teams with the best programs over time, they tend to be ones with only one big instate school. OSU competes with . . . no other major program in Ohio. Penn State competes with . . . nobody in PA. GA competes with Tech, but Tech is comparable to Wake. LSU competes with nobody instate. Tennessee . . . etc.
We have a lot of competition. Not just from NCSU, but also Wake and Duke (not always factors; Duke maybe rarely a factor in NC recruiting). And Clemson is just over the border. Parts of our state are closer to Knoxville than Chapel Hill. We've also got two P5 programs to our north.
Obviously Florida has supported three major teams in the past, but Florida is a huge state and there's nobody to its south. Michigan has supported two teams, though MSU has been inconsistently good. Michigan's big advantage was dominance from the very beginning, sustained through the years. Also a 100K+ stadium. And nobody to its north. And Indiana doesn't really do football, nor does Illinois. Texas and CA are so big they aren't comparable.
So there's only one really successful program located in a non-huge state that faces regular instate competition for recruiting, and that's Alabama. Too bad we never had a Bear Bryant. And Bama has nobody to its south and the overall density of P5 schools in the area is much lower. We have four ACC schools in NC alone, plus ECU who every now and then picks off a recruit.
Butch had the same problem Mack has right now with getting owned by Nc State.
Consistently losing to vastly inferior opponents like Ga Tech and UVA and not showing up against good opponents like Clemson is frustrating enough, but repeatedly getting pantsed by State is where I think a lot of people draw the line.
heelinhell
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I made this observation on TTP for years. Some years we win 8 or 9 games and some years we win 4 or 5 games. and then there is a rare year when we win 10 or 11 games offset by a rare year when we win 2 or 3 games.... but we are and always have been and always will be a 7-5 program
My hope each year is to beat the neighborhood ( dook**, ncst, wake ) finish with a winning record and go to a bowl game.
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superrific
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It was what I expected. Mack did a great job turning the program around from 1-10 to back to back top 10 finishes. But that was mostly about recruiting and Torbush creating a legendary defense that was jettisoned after two years, for some reason that has never made sense to me.
Mack got fired from Texas for a reason. So he was surely going to turn the program around from whatever 3 win debacle we had in the last years of Fedora but expecting a mid 90s return to glory was a long shot.
This is definitely true, although I think the Wake, dook and ECU effect is virtually nil. VT, NCST, UT, UGA, UofSC and Clemson all provide regular competition for recruits, which is difficult for a school with UNC's history to overcome. That said, when Mack first showed up and had excitement at a fever pitch we pulled in three top 15 classes in a row, so with our brand and facilities it is possible. The problem is he hired a putrid staff on the defensive side of the ball and we wasted the results of those classes. I also think those classes may have been a little overrated due to covid, but the bottom line is all the schools I listed above and more were after those recruits and we got them. So I do think it's possible for UNC to have regular top 20-25 classes, which combined with the transfer portal and being in a relatively weak conference the results ought to be better.
You were expecting to have defenses ranked close to dead last in the country after recruiting top 15 classes? To lose to 3-9 teams when ranked in the top 20 more than once? To get dominated by NCST who's recruiting was worse than ours particularly at the most important position on the field? I wouldn't say Mack 2.0 was a complete failure, more like a massive missed opportunity.
superrific
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Not the specific way it has gone down, but the overall results. We've had a winning record every year, and have gone bowling every year, but have never meaningfully contended for anything. I suppose I might have been expecting a little bit more, but on the order of one win a season and maybe a slightly better bowl berth. I wasn't expecting Mack to compete for the title.
superrific
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Mack had always had a great talent for landing wildly overrated recruits. When he left and Torbush took over, the cupboard was pretty bare despite top 10 or top 15 recruiting classes. It was like Duke with white big men. How many McD AA recruits went to Duke and proved they had nowhere near the game to play in the ACC?? Joey Beard. Crawford Palmer. Zoubek. Etc. That was Mack with "athlete" players.
And some of our recent big time recruits suffered from the same problem. What was the name of our 5 star D-back who turned out to be scared to hit anyone? He left the program. That's not on the defensive staff. That's just a personality thing.
I used to think that other programs trolled us. They offered the guys who looked great but had problems, without recruiting them hard. Mack would swoop in, pick them up, and then we'd have a roster full of 4 star players with significant issues.