UNC football adds another in-state opponent to its 2020 schedule. But there’s a catch.
North Carolina coach Mack Brown said on his Monday video conference with reporters that the Tar Heels will play Western Carolina on Friday, Dec. 11. It comes with a caveat, though — if the Heels have an ACC game postponed due to COVID-19 concerns, they will reschedule their league opponent for that weekend and not play the Catamounts.
Brown said the ACC still wanted UNC to play its one non-conference game to fill television obligations. The Heels were scheduled to play Charlotte on Sept. 19, but was forced to cancel after the 49ers had several players in coronavirus contact tracing quarantine, which decimated their offensive line.
Carolina has an open date on Nov. 21, before facing Notre Dame on Friday, Nov. 27, but because of the university schedule, Brown said filling an game on that weekend would not work.
“We ended up, because our university moved everything back a week, we have finals the week before the Notre Dame game so we could not have played that weekend,” Brown said. “We looked at every possible scenario and it would be very unfair and not smart for us to be taking finals the day before and maybe the day after.”
This story was originally published September 28, 2020 at 11:43 AM.