Heels down
The dream of recreating the Deion Sanders experience in Chapel Hill took its first major step forward Saturday, when a world-famous rapper finally showed up for a game. Unfortunately, this was because Ludacris was contractually obligated to play the pregame concert, and due to the miserable September unfurled by both of Saturday's participants, he was forced to (ahem) roll out of bed bright and early for a 9:45 a.m. set. It's rare for Carolina's usually staid wine-and-cheese crowd to dig into the Chicken-n-Beer (we know) before lunch, but in fairness, they would've otherwise been 2 Furious 2 Fast (seriously, we're sorry).
This was supposed to be one of the season's great matchups -- Belichick vs. Dabo Swinney, the first college football game between a coach with a Super Bowl ring and one with a natty since Bill Walsh and Joe Paterno faced off in the famed 1993 Blockbuster Bowl, which feels a little like saying The Beatles and The Rolling Stones once got together to play a show at a RadioShack. With
North Carolina and
Clemson a combined 0-5 against Power 4 competition entering play, Saturday's matchup might well have been dubbed The Disappointment Bowl.
The game started well enough for UNC, with the Heels down 28-3 after the first quarter. Unfortunately, Belichick wasn't coaching against the Atlanta Falcons in this one.
If losses to
TCU and
UCF were embarrassing for UNC, Saturday's first half was something altogether different -- like a septuagenarian posing for a 20-something's Halloween photos on Instagram.
Clemson scored touchdowns on five of its first six drives, and
Cade Klubnik had twice as many TD throws (four) as incompletions (two), before the Tigers called off the dogs, and the surviving members of the
1916 Cumberland team could celebrate, knowing their legacy of a 222-0 loss was safe for another week.
Earlier in the week, Heels GM Michael Lombardi wrote a letter to donors that bordered on a manifesto, suggesting this is all part of Belichick's rebuilding plan, though it had more of the feel of the guys who started Fyre Festival saying the porta potties would be delivered any minute now. For a team that is already having this much trouble scoring points, moving the goal posts seemed a bad idea, but Lombardi's analogizing Belichick's plan for UNC to the Philadelphia 76ers' famed "process" might be fitting. After all, throughout all of the Sixers losing, management continued to invest in bad personnel, and the end result, a decade later, is still nothing close to a title.