It is time for Carolina football to get back to what and where it is.
So, the Notre Dame game is over, which was our almost annual chance to prove the Tar Heels can compete on a national level.
As with a history dating back to the 1972 Ohio State game (and the unveiling of Archie Griffin) to the 1997 Florida State “Battle of the Unbeatens,” the 45-32 loss to the bigger and better Fighting Irish was a chapter of Carolina’s personal foray into the Myth of Sisyphus.
You know Sisyphus, the figure in Greek mythology who was condemned to repeat forever the same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll down again.
UNC football, especially with Mack Brown in charge, is good and exciting and wins more games than it loses. But it may never reach the level of men’s basketball here, or many of the Olympic sports that make habit of hoisting ACC and national trophies.
There are many reasons for that, some that Brown himself (who has won a BCS championship at Texas) must acknowledge when he lays his head on the pillow every night. He is positive to a fault, the perfect PR man for a school that will too easily turn its collective head to the roundball sport in mid-October if football is foundering.
Saturday afternoon at 3:30, exactly one week after the ill-fated Notre Dame kickoff, the Tar Heels have a chance to get back on a track where they are more comfortable and have been reasonably successful. Virginia Tech is clearly beatable in the ACC opener and can resume the chase for Brown’s set of “floating goals.”
If you can’t reach the college football playoff, win the Coastal Division and play for the conference title last won by UNC in 1980; if you can’t do that, play for the mythical “state championship” with Duke, Wake Forest and NC State still on the schedule; if not that, have a winning season and go to a decent bowl game.
That is where Carolina football has always been and likely will stay with the rich getting richer over NIL payoffs that UNC seems unwilling to dole out at a high level. Let’s be who we are, the best we can be.
The famous French essay of 1942 written by Nobel Prize winner Albert Camus concludes, “The struggle itself . . . is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
Damn straight, beat the Hokies!
Featured image via USA Today Sports
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Wow! Chansky has been around forever and does a tremendous job. But now he is basically admitting that UNC can’t or at least won’t be a good football school. I beg to differ (but I’m nobody important). I think we can be a GREAT football school but we need the right people running the program, people who don’t take “no” or “we can’t win” for an answer. And as nice and grandfatherly as Mack is, he is NOT the answer. He should have benched Grimes (and others who have done stupid things in the past…and there are dozens because he puts his arm around them and “teaches” them like a kind old grandpa.) But IT AINT WORKING! Yes, we can beat Georgia State (but struggle), but we can’t beat Notre Dame, Clemson, and the like, and everyone knows it! Hire a great coach, and we will get the recruits. Keep Mack and we’ll start losing recruits. And we’ll have players transfer because we’re not winning and they’re not playing. Watch and see…as Mack is here to stay.