What does UNC have to lose this season? A ton. But it has a lot more to gain, too.
Miami and UAB got things going Thursday night, and an ACC football season that at one point seemed unlikely if not impossible is officially proceeding not quite like normal. If Mack Brown traversed the long and often uneven road to this point with as much trepidation as any coach in the country, it was for good reason.
The great leap forward North Carolina could take this season, from the foundation the Tar Heels built in their first season under Brown, is huge. Massive, even. That’s not guaranteed, and Brown has cautioned his team repeatedly not to take anything for granted, least of all against Syracuse on Saturday, but the potential is plainly there.
And over the course of the summer, and over the course of a season that’s anything but a given — one ACC game Saturday already has been postponed because of COVID-19 positives, the would-have-been opener between N.C. State and Virginia Tech — no one has more to gain from playing, and more to lose from a season unfinished, than North Carolina.
Not Clemson, the presumptive ACC favorite, looking for its third national title in five years. Not Notre Dame, the presumptuous ACC ad hoc invitee suddenly very interested in being a part of a conference. Not anyone else.
There’s more on the line for North Carolina, because the Tar Heels may be on the verge of greatness. “May” being the operative word, and why Brown has had to strike a delicate balance between bolstering his team’s belief, in the absence of the spring practices where that process normally could have taken place without risking overconfidence, and guarding against complacency.
He knows what’s at stake, and how tenuous a situation it is, both inside and outside his locker room.
“What we’ve talked to our players about the last 10 days as we get ready for Syracuse is we’ve got to develop an identity,” Brown said. “Every team is different. The reason we’re getting this publicity is we have good players. And our players are good enough to reach expectations that are out there.”
Brown followed that with a long list of caveats, but it’s impossible not to see the best-case scenario for one of only three ACC teams in a preseason top 25 that still included the Big Ten and Pac-12.
That much he can control, or at least try to control. And his team should remember how it struggled with that at times last season, from early success to midseason swoon to strong finish.
But Brown cannot control a virus that continues to rage largely unabated across the country, and on his own campus, if not within the confines of his team. That is a much larger threat to the Tar Heels’ ability to compromise on their promise than anything else.
Even in the spring, Brown believed college football could still be played, even if he didn’t think it could be played if it wasn’t safe to have fans in the stadium. He would come to change his position on that. And over the last month, as the ACC proceeded toward the season, his belief grew with each day that his team would get the chance it wanted to prove itself.
He wavered once, on that day a month ago when the Big Ten and Pac-12 made the decision that it was not safe to play football in the fall. If their medical experts felt that way, surely the ACC’s couldn’t be far behind?
“They didn’t say we were going to play,” Brown said. “But I thought if they would just not pull the plug too soon and continue to watch — and if it was not safe for the kids, we weren’t going to play. And that was fine with me.”
The ACC kept rolling forward, toward this day. And now North Carolina is prepared to begin what could be a remarkable year — if the Tar Heels can finish the job, and if the ACC can finish the season.
“I want us to be ready to play and play great,” Brown said. “Just so we can figure out who we are. And then we can go from there.”
This story was originally published September 11, 2020 at 12:10 PM.
