As Saturday proved, North Carolina’s best college football program resides in Boone

The question now is not whether Appalachian State has North Carolina’s best college football program — which it clearly does — but how exactly the Mountaineers defied the odds to build it in such an enduring way. And also: why no other school in the state has come close to replicating it.

Now keep in mind: a program is different than a team. Nobody has forgotten (or is likely to soon forget) North Carolina’s still-fresh 63-61 victory in Boone. That’s all well and good for the Tar Heels, who proved it (kind of) on the field on that particular Saturday.

This past Saturday, meanwhile, in College Station, Texas, the Mountaineers proved some things, too, with their 17-14 victory at then-No. 6 Texas A&M. They proved they have short memories, for one. They proved, again, that recruiting rankings and endless resources aren’t always the end-all, be-all.

And App State proved, also again, that it’s the one team in the state that does the most with the least. Forget North Carolina for a moment, too: Does anyone, anywhere, do more with less? Less “talent,” at least that which the recruiting services try to quantify. Less money. Less everything, in this state, relative to UNC and N.C. State.

In its past 100 games, App is now 80-20. In eight FBS seasons, the Mountaineers have won four Sun Belt Conference championships and six bowl games. One thing has become pretty clear around here: if N.C. State and UNC maximized their resources to the extent App State has in football, then the Wolfpack and Tar Heels would be perennial national title contenders.

As it is, neither school has won the ACC in more than 40 years. Heck, neither school during that span has even beaten one team on the road as highly ranked as Texas A&M, let alone two. App during the past 15 years now has victories at No. 5 Michigan, in 2007, and against the sixth-ranked Aggies on Saturday.

UNC has never beaten a team that highly ranked on the road. N.C. State’s most recent comparable road victory came in 1967, at No. 2 Houston. It’s not as if both schools haven’t had plenty of at-bats over the years. Yet time and time again, they swing and miss to do what App has now done twice.

Why bring the Tar Heels and Wolfpack into the discussion? Because in North Carolina, these are the two schools with all the built-in advantages, and all the desire to become contenders in football. And yet, a strange thing has happened in recent years: While State and UNC have engaged in an endless stalemate to decide which is less mediocre in football, App has become this state’s best, most consistently excellent program.

The Mountaineers have done it with a culture that, from the outside, appears as strong as any in the country. They’ve done it with a kind of resilient grit that’s perhaps typical of Appalachia. And they’ve done it with players UNC and State thought themselves too good to recruit.

The state’s flagship may be in Chapel Hill, and its most-highly ranked team in Raleigh. North Carolina’s best program, though? Go West, young man. To Boone.

ONE BIG THING

Well, that was one of the wilder college football Saturdays in recent memory. You had the Mountaineers doing what they did in College Station. And also in Texas: Alabama outlasting the Longhorns with a last-second field goal. The story of the week, though, has to be the Sun Belt Conference. App won at Texas A&M, Marshall won at Notre Dame and Georgia Southern won at Nebraska. When was the last time the ACC had a non-conference Saturday like that?

THE HOTTEST TAKE*

Tired: Power conference teams should never, under any circumstances, go on the road and play against a school from a Group of Five conference. Wired: Power conference teams should never play those games at home, either! There’s just nothing to gain for schools from the big, bad ACC, Big Ten and SEC for playing these sorts of games. Why, if they continue to, these schools face the risk of further exposure.

* a take in which we sarcastically poke fun at a real, actual take. Not meant to be taken seriously.

THREE TO LIKE

1. Say what you will about the Tar Heels, but they’re the only 3-0 team in the country and, more impressive, they survived (barely, but survived, nonetheless) the Sun Belt gauntlet and came out clean on the other side. UNC’s road victories against App and even Georgia State looked a lot more impressive Saturday night than they did a few hours earlier.

2. And speaking of UNC: You might say it was foolish for athletic director Bubba Cunningham to have agreed to back-to-back road games at App and Georgia State. I say it took guts — which are often missing in college football, when it comes to scheduling — and that ultimately the Tar Heels will be better because they spent the past two weeks being tested. And finding a way to win.

3. Just like we always say: Leave it to Duke and Wake Forest to pick up the ACC’s slack. While Pitt let down the conference in its biggest Week 2 game (the Panthers lost at home against Tennessee), Duke and Wake went on the road and returned home with victories against Northwestern and Vanderbilt. It’s the little things, folks, that will help improve the ACC’s football standing as much as the big ones.

THREE TO ... NOT LIKE AS MUCH

1. Can we stop the obsession with how many recruiting stars are bestowed upon still-developing 16- and 17-year-old kids? This was another one of those weeks that proved the limits of recruiting rankings. Are they a sound indicator of long-term potential, both individually and for a team? Sure. But in a world in which high school recruiting rankings matter as much as some fans they do, Texas A&M, Notre Dame and Nebraska wouldn’t have been tested Saturday, let alone lost.

2. This week’s edition of Why the ACC Can’t Have Nice Things is brought to you by Pittsburgh, which followed up an exhilarating Week 1 victory against West Virginia with ... that predictably sad overtime defeat against Tennessee. Co-starring in this week’s episode: Virginia, which absorbed a three-touchdown loss at Illinois. As we said: All hail the Blue Devils and Demon Deacons (and Louisville) for carrying the conference flag this week.

3. Indeed, games against FCS opponents are a standard part of major conference college football, but it doesn’t mean we have to like it. N.C. State during its 55-3 victory against Charleston Southern did what good teams do against overmatched competition, but how much did we really learn about the Wolfpack? Ditto for Clemson, which apparently took a nap in the second-half of a snoozer against Furman.

CAROLINAS RANKING

1. Clemson; (still a gap, but maybe not quite as large?); 2. App State (one of the nation’s best early season wins cancels out the close loss against UNC); 3. N.C. State; 4. Wake Forest; 5. North Carolina (perhaps some defensive strides?); 6. South Carolina; 7. ECU; 8. Duke; 9. Coastal Carolina; 10. Charlotte.

FINAL THOUGHTS, IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER

▪ Playing the what-if game: What if App had converted on its first two-point conversion attempt against UNC? The play was right there. Had the Mountaineers gotten it, and held on, and been 2-0 right now ... wow. App was that close — a pass just a tad overthrown — from entering the College Football Playoff discussion before mid-September.

▪ The 2007 season is remembered as probably the wildest and most unpredictable in modern college football history. Fifteen years later, might we be on the way to something similar? One could make a case, after Week 2. The teams at the very top (hello, Georgia) are likely stronger this year than they were then, but we’re two weeks in and already things are getting a little weird.

▪ All of that to say: embrace the victories. There are a couple of fan bases in North Carolina who might need a reminder about the value of a win. Escaping Greenville by a point, or escaping Boone by two? Take it and be happy.

▪ And one more on App: Was the Mountaineers’ victory among the coldest in recent college football history? Let us consider the facts. They went into one of the most difficult places to play and beat what was the nation’s No. 6-ranked team. In the process they made off with a reported $1.5 million in guarantee money. And, by virtue of the victory, they stole an appearance from ESPN’s “College GameDay,” which was likely headed to College Station for A&M-Miami but is now going to Boone. Cold, indeed.

This story was originally published September 12, 2022 at 5:10 AM with the headline "As Saturday proved, North Carolina’s best college football program resides in Boone."

Andrew Carter

The News & Observer

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Andrew Carter spent 10 years covering major college athletics, six of them covering the University of North Carolina for The News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer. Now he’s a member of The N&O’s and Observer’s statewide enterprise and investigative reporting team. He attended N.C. State and grew up in Raleigh dreaming of becoming a journalist.