Football in the spring, baseball in the minors? I don’t think so. Granted, administrators of professional and college athletics have to do something when they meet behind closed doors. But the two latest plans they threw against the wall won’t really stick. Major League Baseball is proposing a plan to keep games away from all […]

What’s your latest take on the college football season? This is the week that was supposed to be building toward the annual spring game, which Mack Brown has made more exciting along with everything else about Carolina football. The official scrimmage to end spring practice was set for this Saturday in Kenan Stadium. If it […]

Roy Williams has been better than his mentor on getting to Monday night. Dean Smith retired with 11 Final Fours, five advancements to the championship game and two NCAA titles. The losses on the last night of the season were to UCLA in 1968, Marquette in 1977 and Indiana in 1981. There were also six […]

It took the Tar Heels 11 years to do it again in New Orleans. A lot happened between Dean Smith’s first and second national championships. Carolina won more games in the 1980s than any other college program, but despite going undefeated twice in the ACC there were no more Final Fours in the decade after 1982. At […]

The big one in the Big Easy was pretty damn hard. The 1982 Tar Heels were No. 1 in the country for all but five weeks of the season, but that doesn’t mean anything unless you won the games you had to win. Over that season, Carolina – with Worthy, Perkins, Jordan, Black and Doherty […]

The world waited to see if President Reagan would survive. On Monday, March 30, 1981, John Hinckley tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan, and while the president was under intensive care the NCAA had to decide whether to play the national championship game that night in Philadelphia between Carolina and Indiana. The Tar Heels had avenged two regular-season […]

Monday nights to remember… and forget. Since tonight would have been the national championship game in Atlanta, I’ll venture into the world of nostalgia this week that is choking us right now, as the present and future remain on hold. Carolina played in four NCAA title games held on Monday night under Dean Smith and […]

Here’s a story from the sports world that is relevant. ESPN’s website carried a photo of the New England Patriots plane sitting on a tarmac with dozens of crates being loaded onto the giant aircraft. So that story was worth clicking on. Turns out, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker teamed with the Patriots ownership to buy […]

Still not much current to report on the sports front, so here are some general thoughts and comments. It helps to start your day with a sense of order and purpose. So I make the bed and put everything back where it’s supposed to be. I used to never bank at the drive-up window, but […]

As the world can’t go forward, we’re living in the past. Today, normally, if I said there are no scores to report or headlines to break, you would say, “Hah, ha, April Fools!” But no kidding. There is next to nothing to talk about from the world of sports. So fantasy teams, best-of polls and nostalgia […]