UNC, Duke meet with stakes rarely seen in old rivalry

At about 10:30 last Saturday night, it appeared that North Carolina and Duke were headed toward what would have been something of a historic meeting. Then history itself intervened.

Miami’s kickoff return for a touchdown, one that included eight laterals and four officiating mistakes, will be remembered as one of the craziest endings in college football history. It gave Miami an improbable victory, Duke a bitter defeat, and it immediately changed the circumstances surrounding the North Carolina-Duke game Saturday at Kenan Stadium.

Without Miami’s return, Duke would have won. And if the Blue Devils had won, they likely would have remained ranked in the Associated Press top 25 poll. And if they’d been ranked, their game against the Tar Heels would be the first of its kind in, oh, more than three-quarters of a century.

One has to travel back that far – to 1939 – to find the most recent time that UNC, which is ranked 21st, and Duke played one another as members of the AP top 25. And so it remains that 1939 is the most recent time the Tar Heels and Blue Devils played each other while ranked.

Even so, their game Saturday is historic in another sense: Rarely have both programs met this late in the season with so much at stake. A UNC victory would provide the Tar Heels with a commanding lead in the ACC’s Coastal Division and would give them tiebreakers against Duke and Pitt, perhaps UNC’s two most formidable challengers in the Coastal.

A Duke victory, meanwhile, would allow the Blue Devils to control their own destiny, as the cliché goes this time of year, and set its path to the ACC championship game. The most clear-cut way for Duke to get there, as it stands on Saturday: Beat UNC and win out.

So, no, this isn’t a once-a-century meeting between Duke and UNC as ranked teams. But it is meaningful football in November for both of these programs, and that’s a contrast to what for so long has been the norm when Duke and UNC get together.

“The bigger the stakes, the better,” UNC coach Larry Fedora said earlier this week. “I mean, that makes it that much more fun. When you’re a kid, when you grow up in this state, those are the kind of things that you dream about, is playing in games like that, that are meaningful.

“And not just a rivalry game. But you’re playing for something in November.”

There have been many seasons when Duke-UNC games provided the winner with nothing more than pride and the satisfaction of walking back to their locker room with the Victory Bell, which in some years has given the winning team rare sounds of joy amid otherwise dismal seasons.

Like in 2006 and 2007, when UNC finished losing seasons with victories against the Blue Devils, then mired in one of the worst stretches of futility in college football history.

And then there have been other seasons when UNC-Duke games have meant something for one team but not the other.

Like in the 1990s during some of UNC’s best seasons in school history under Mack Brown. And in the late 1980s during some of Duke’s best seasons in school history under Steve Spurrier.

Historic November

But now the Tar Heels and Blue Devils collide in November with but one ACC loss between them. The last time that happened? It was 1954, the year after the ACC formed. Some teams played four conference games that season, others six. One, Virginia, played two ACC games.

Outside that one season, UNC and Duke have never played in November with one combined conference loss between them. As a bonus: The rivalry, after years and years of UNC dominance, has become more competitive in recent seasons, too.

Before Duke’s victory in 2012, UNC had won eight consecutive games and 21 of the previous 22 in the series. Then the Blue Devils won again in 2013, before the Tar Heels played their most complete game of their 2014 season in a 45-20 victory at Duke last November.

Coaches and players say these games have always been meaningful. At UNC this week, the Tar Heels practiced with the Victory Bell parked next to the practice fields. Instead of the normal horn that signals the end of a practice period, a student manager rang the bell.

That’s nothing new, necessarily. But a game that means this much to both teams? It hasn’t happened in a while.

“It’s kind of nice to see it be big for everyone else,” Landon Turner, a UNC senior offensive guard, said of the football rivalry between UNC and Duke.

When Turner, a fifth-year senior, arrived at UNC, the Tar Heels were in the midst of that long winning streak against the Blue Devils. Back then, winning was the only thing any UNC player had ever experienced against Duke.

But then Duke coach David Cutcliffe completed a transformation.

“That definitely adds more competition to it,” Turner said of Duke’s ascent. “I think it makes it better, personally. I hate that we lost it, ever. But in retrospect it’s kind of a humbling experience, and it’s made the game more exciting.

“Sunshine’s not as good if you don’t have rain, I guess – that kind of thing.”

When Cutcliffe arrived in 2008, Duke was perhaps the worst major-conference program in the country. Five years later the Blue Devils won the Coastal Division and played Florida State in the ACC championship game.

Now they’ll play against their primary rival in a game that isn’t meaningful just for one team but for both. The Tar Heels and Blue Devils meet at Kenan Stadium with much more at stake than merely some pride and an old bell.

This story was originally published November 6, 2015 at 2:30 PM with the headline "UNC, Duke meet with stakes rarely seen in old rivalry."