UNC, NC State football will once again settle petty grievances instead of real stakes
Does it get any better than two teams on the margins of bowl eligibility, with one coach a lame duck and the other increasingly on a warming seat, and two fan bases that would otherwise be utterly tuned out if not for the opponent?
Not in this rivalry it doesn’t.
For either N.C. State or North Carolina, bragging rights are all they’ll have left in the morning.
Certainly North Carolina’s decision to push Mack Brown out a door he was unwilling to step through himself adds some interest to what’s once again, and all too often, a season-ending Meh Bowl, but given the circumstances it’s hard to see his final home game at Kenan Stadium as much of a victory lap.
Neither team has had a season to remember, not by the longest shot. It’s been a campaign to endure, not enjoy, and the memorable moments have largely been grim ones: UNC giving up 70 points to James Madison and no-showing at Boston College; N.C. State getting smoked by Tennessee and contriving to lose winnable games against Wake Forest and Duke and Georgia Tech.
Meanwhile, Duke is on its third coach in four years and nevertheless has a 10-win season within its grasp, having beaten both of the other legs of the Triangle — who, one way or another, are going to combine to go 12-12. Perfect. No notes.
For two teams that have both gone 40-something years without an ACC title, the consolation crown of Second Best Team in the Area Code will lie even heavier on the head of the winner.
Maybe Dave Doeren will get things turned back around next season, as he did after his program bottomed out in 2019, even if it seems this season like he’s lost touch with what made the Wolfpack consistently successful. Maybe Brown’s successor will have the magic touch to unlock the alleged sleeping giant that is UNC football, or at least figure out how to perform vaguely adequately on defense in a way neither Larry Fedora nor Brown never could.
Yes, it would be nice if some year in the not-too-distant future a trip to Charlotte was on the line, or either team had the CFP rankings as something to worry about other than an interruption to basketball on TV, but alas. It’s been this way forever and it’ll probably continue to be this way forever, so we might as well enjoy what rivalry scraps have been thrown our way this year.
And in place of the kind of stakes that might be compelling elsewhere, we have these petty grievances to settle instead Saturday, the kind that occasionally have made the postgame handshakes the most compelling portion of the proceedings.
Can North Carolina deny five-win N.C. State a bowl game and send Brown out with one last win in Chapel Hill?
Can N.C. State spoil Brown’s goodbye and avoid the ignominy of staying home for the holidays?
Befitting this rivalry, it’s less about what either team can accomplish than what it can stop the other team from doing.
That may not seem like much, but when it’s all you have, it’s everything.
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This story was originally published November 28, 2024 at 6:00 AM with the headline "UNC, NC State football will once again settle petty grievances instead of real stakes."
