Clemson, where were you when we needed you? The nation’s No. 1 team lost that ranking after falling in double overtime at Notre Dame, where the Tigers never led for about 56 minutes of regulation. They eventually went ahead and missed a couple of chances to close the deal and stay unbeaten. Clemson’s first regular-season […]

Several reasons for no fans at Duke Saturday. Some good, some bad. Even though the governor has allowed seven percent attendance at outdoor sporting events as part of the coronavirus protocols, Duke is one of those schools that still isn’t allowing anyone into Wallace Wade Stadium except for so-called essential staff. Let’s opine at why Duke is […]

Carolina’s schedule could be working to its advantage. When the COVID-revised list of games came out, it looked troublesome for the Tar Heels with Virginia Tech and Florida State basically bookending Notre Dame and Miami with four rivalry games in a row right in the middle. Coaches usually don’t like that because it takes a […]

Nineteen hundred and sixty-eight is on my mind right now. I woke up with memories of 1968. I must have dreamt about it for two reasons. One, it was the year I really got interested in politics. And, second, I had seen Larry Miller play his last season at UNC. Let me explain. I was […]

Never has a ranked football team fallen so far, so fast. The Tar Heels are six points from being undefeated, and today they find themselves having plunged down the elevator shaft of the national rankings and probably out of the national picture. That has to be disheartening to a team that knows it is much […]

Guess the Big Ten didn’t learn much about COVID-19. The fact that Big Ten schools waited until late October to begin play, and Wisconsin immediately had an outbreak, indicates the oldest league in America did not learn much from those schools that took the field in September. Opinions aside on who is to blame, the virus […]

Mack Brown has some bad memories to erase at Virginia. During Brown’s first tenure here, his teams contributed to UNC’s 14-game losing streak at Virginia, which finally ended in 2010. Carolina is 7-3 against the Cavaliers since then, including four wins there. The most disappointing of the Tar Heels’ five defeats in Charlottesville under Brown was in […]

The Reverend Robert Seymour was not much of a basketball fan. Despite his famous friendship with Carolina coach Dean Smith, Bob Seymour did not follow the Tar Heels nearly as much as his wife, Pearl. The Seymours met Smith when he brought his family to the congregation on campus that would become Binkley Baptist Church. […]

College basketball, if nothing else, has flattened the curve. If you have a few minutes this week, call up the ESPN preseason college basketball poll and see if you have some of the same reactions that I did to what they are calling the way-too-early Top 25. Scroll through the 25 programs listed with projected […]

Know thyself? N.C. State has some studying to do. Before the annual renewal of the State-Carolina game this season, both head coaches handled it with class and tried to tamp down any hard feelings that were lingering from the rivalry. Until last season, when Mack Brown returned, State had the most recent success, beating the […]