Under Larry Fedora, UNC has had its way with FCS teams

Larry Fedora, the North Carolina coach, would like to believe that his team didn’t need the reminder, or the lesson, and that his players already knew not to overlook James Madison, an Football Championship Subdivision team that plays against UNC at Kenan Stadium on Saturday.

And yet the Tar Heels received such a reminder, nonetheless. It came from an unlikely source: their week one opponent.

UNC began the season earlier this month with a 33-24 defeat against Georgia – a mistake-filled loss that cost the Tar Heels a chance for a memorable victory on a national stage. Then, last week, Georgia barely beat Nicholls State, an FCS team from the Southland Conference.

Andre Smith, the UNC sophomore linebacker, grimaced when reminded earlier this week of Georgia’s 26-24 victory against Nicholls. For a brief moment, Smith looked in pain.

Maybe it was the thought that Nicholls had been more competitive against Georgia than UNC. Or, perhaps, that UNC’s inability to defeat Georgia looked worse now than it did then, given the Bulldogs’ close call against a lower-division opponent.

“I know they got the guy from Last Chance U,” Smith said of Ronald Ollie, a Nicholls State defensive tackle who was featured in the popular Netflix documentary. “So he had to make a lot of plays (against Georgia). I was like, man, he must really be a baller, then.”

Nearly every year early in the college football season, a small number of teams from the FCS – formerly known as Division I-AA – prove their worthiness against higher-division teams from the Football Bowl Subdivision, long known as Division I-A.

During the first week of the season, for instance, Richmond, one of the best FCS teams in the nation, left Virginia with a 37-20 victory. In the process, the Spiders spoiled Bronco Mendenhall’s head coaching debut at Virginia.

This season, like the last, UNC plays against two FCS teams. James Madison is the first, on Saturday, followed by The Citadel on Nov. 19. Both James Madison (No. 8) and The Citadel (No. 15) are among the top 15 teams in the FCS coaches’ poll.

Last year, when the Tar Heels entered the College Football Playoff discussion late in the season while their winning streak kept growing, they received criticism for playing against two lower-division teams. Ideally, Fedora said, UNC wouldn’t be doing it again.

“One is enough for me,” he said earlier this week.

And yet the Tar Heels were left with holes on their schedule they were unable to fill. UNC in recent seasons had non-conference series – ones against Minnesota and Ohio State, for instance, that fell through. Fedora said there was uncertainty about how many non-conference openings UNC might have, too.

He attributed that to the ACC’s ongoing debate about whether to play eight conference games or nine. The ACC’s scheduling rotation with Notre Dame adds another wrinkle.

“And it just created some holes in our schedule,” he said. “And we weren’t able to fill it (with FBS teams). We’re in this situation. Nothing really we can do about it.

“I will say this, you guys know this, if you look at the last two weeks, there’s been FCS teams beating Division I teams every week the last two weeks of the season.”

It happened at Virginia in week one. Last week, in addition to Georgia’s escape against Nicholls, lower-division Illinois State beat Northwestern.

UNC, meanwhile, has won 11 consecutive games against FCS teams, with its most recent defeat coming against Furman in 1999. Since Fedora arrived at UNC in 2012, the Tar Heels have been especially dominant against FCS opponents.

During Fedora’s first four seasons, UNC played against five FCS teams. The Tar Heels won those five games by an average score of 59-15. Fedora credits the success, in part, to the old coaching cliché of preparing for every opponent the same way, regardless of its relative strength or weakness.

If the Tar Heels needed a reminder, though, they received one last week when they learned about Georgia’s two-point victory against Nicholls State. Fedora described it as “a good example” of the potential peril of playing a lower-division opponent – one against which victory is expected.

“I don’t know how Nicholls is, but Georgia was a good team and apparently Nicholls is, too, because they gave them a good fight,” Mitch Trubisky, the UNC junior quarterback, said earlier this week.

Trubisky promised he’d play on Saturday “like I’ve got a chip on my shoulder.”

“Because,” he said, “I haven’t played to the standard that I want to play yet.”

This story was originally published September 16, 2016 at 1:36 PM with the headline "Under Larry Fedora, UNC has had its way with FCS teams."