How NC State’s embarrassing loss underscores North Carolina’s college football futility

A question worth considering, in light of N.C. State’s debacle in Charlotte on Saturday night: When was the last time a college football team from North Carolina — any college football team — delivered on the kind of stage the Wolfpack had all to itself against Tennessee?

It’s important to understand the dynamics of that stage, too. State entered Saturday night as a ranked team, and as something of a trendy, dark horse pick to compete for the ACC championship and maybe even for a spot in the College Football Playoff. It was playing against a marquee, name-brand opponent that was also ranked — with the Volunteers in the top 15.

It was not only a nationally-televised game (as a great many college football games are these days), but the marquee, prime-time game on ABC. Kirk Herbstreit was in the house (along with his well-traveled dog). The nation was watching. The stakes, for State, were incredibly high. A victory would have validated all the talk and the hype and could have signified something of an arrival.

And then came three-plus hours of Wolfpack pain, and a 41-point defeat.

A great humbling, really. A clear statement that, no: State is not ready to take that next step.

That it didn’t even look anywhere all that close to making such a move.

But back to the question: When was the last time any North Carolina college football program truly took advantage of the kind of opportunity N.C. State had Saturday night? To put it another way: When presented with the chance of breaking through, nationally, and announcing itself as a viable national contender, when is the last time any North Carolina team seized the moment?

We’re not talking about beating a “better” opponent or pulling off a surprise here and there. That happens fairly often: Duke over Clemson at the start of last season. Appalachian State over Texas A&M the year before that. Even N.C. State over Clemson, twice, in recent years. Great moments, all, for the in-state schools, and worthy of celebration, but not really moments that signified a national arrival for any.

We’re not talking, either, about beating fringe top-25ish type teams. UNC dispatched Miami at home last season amid considerable fanfare, but was it a moment of program elevation for the Tar Heels? Not really. Same thing with N.C. State’s victory a season ago at Virginia Tech, or any number of “solid” wins for a number of in-state teams over the years.

Part of the problem with the question at the top is that you have to earn the right to be on a larger stage in the first place. North Carolina schools rarely do that, to start with. But then, upon those rare opportunities, you have to produce. You have to prove you’re worthy of belonging. You have to win, outright, to take that next, elusive step. And for schools in this state, it just seems to never, ever happen — for any of them.

Going back even decades, it’s difficult to find an answer to the question. Maybe UNC’s 2020 win against a top-10 Miami team qualifies — but that was an awfully wonky season, in the middle of a pandemic, and it’s hard to take anything that happened that year all that seriously.

There are probably only two good answers, at least this century:

Wake Forest winning the ACC championship in 2006, and App State’s victory at Michigan in 2007. Wake remains the only North Carolina school that has won the ACC in the past 30-plus years. The Mountaineers, meanwhile, owe a lot of their football identity to that triumph in Ann Arbor (which came even before they made the jump to the FBS).

The reality is that most North Carolina schools simply fail to seize the moment. It has been a college football constant in this state, for just about as long as anyone can remember. UNC fans, for instance, fondly recall their team’s 1997 game against Florida State — “Judgment Day,” they called it — despite the Tar Heels’ 17-point loss. State fans can reminisce about the 11-win season in 2002 that also included a three-game losing streak that precluded it from being something more.

State’s humbling defeat Saturday night, meanwhile, reinforced an uncomfortable truth about college football in North Carolina: that the most satisfying part of it, from a fan’s perspective, is not so much cheering on your team’s success. It’s watching your rival fail — especially when the lights are at their brightest. It happens again and again, over and over. This time, it was the Wolfpack’s turn.

ONE BIG THING

Speaking of the Wolfpack ...

Where does it go from here? Dave Doeren, to be clear, has done a lot of very good things for N.C. State football, which is a long ways ahead of where it was before he became the head coach. The program’s floor has clearly risen. And shoot — in this already-weird, apparently-wide-open ACC season, maybe State still has a shot of making it back to Charlotte in early December.

Even so, Doeren looked as surprised as anybody late Saturday night after his team’s 41-point defeat. This is not what he expected, clearly. Not anything close to what he expected. It’s one thing to lose, but it’s another thing entirely to lose like that. And now the question has to be whether State can keep the damage contained, or whether it spirals.

THREE TO LIKE

1. UNC-Charlotte.

No, we’re not talking about the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. We’re talking about the fact that UNC and Charlotte played on Saturday in Chapel Hill, and entered into a (albeit brief) series against one another. The bigger schools don’t like these games — ones against supposed “lesser” in-state competition — but they need to be happening more often, not less. They’re good for North Carolina. They’re good for fans here. People care.

2. Jordan Moore and Duke getting weird on a Friday night in Evanston.

Well, nothing so weird, at least, about Moore’s performance at Northwestern: 11 catches for 121 yards and a touchdown, which came in overtime and helped the Blue Devils secure a 26-20 victory. That’s just good football. But the setting? The vibe? Real weird. And pretty fun, really. We’re not saying more college football teams should build makeshift, temporary stadiums next to lakes (or whatever else), but we’re not not saying that, either.

3. Cal, carrying the ACC banner.

Just as we all expected, Cal is delivering for the ACC early in this college football season. And what, you thought the conference’s best chance of a win against an SEC team was going to be Clemson over Georgia, or N.C. State over Tennessee!? Well how about the Golden Bears going into Auburn, Alabama, and spreading the Good Word of ACC football? You feel that, Berkeley? That’s ACC fever, spreading throughout the greater Bay Area.

THREE TO ... NOT LIKE AS MUCH

1. The Wolfpack is humiliated.

What can be said about State’s performance in Charlotte? If anything, it underscored the vast difference between an SEC team at the top of its game and one that hopes to be in contention in the ACC. The Wolfpack was punished up front on both sides. It couldn’t run, or stop the run. It couldn’t (and didn’t!) do much of anything. It was as if these teams were playing completely different games.

2. Wake Forest, in a state of decline.

Don’t look now, but there’s trouble in Winston-Salem. The Demon Deacons entered the fourth quarter against Virginia on Saturday with a 13-point lead ... only to lose by a point after allowing the Cavaliers the go-ahead touchdown with about two minutes to play. And, newsflash, but Virginia was not expected to be very good this season. Neither was Wake, for that matter. Dave Clawson has worked wonders, overall, there but the luster is fading.

3. Charlotte’s traffic management.

Look, we know given the state of the Panthers that Charlotte is not used to handling large crowds of people who actually want to come into town to attend a football game, but the traffic management always seems especially atrocious for big college games there. Does the city not have the budget to direct traffic? Does it simply not care? It should not be as bad as it was Saturday (or last year, for UNC-South Carolina) and yet, it is. It always is.

THIS WEEK’S BEST PROGRAM IN THE STATE

Hmmm, let’s see. Pretty slim pickings here. Well, it’s not N.C. State, is it?. It’s not Wake. App State lost by 46 at Clemson, so probably not the Mountaineers. ECU? Well, the Pirates rallied to beat Old Dominion but, no. UNC? Could make a case. But this week, the coveted honor of Best Program in the State goes to (drumroll ... and more drumroll) Duke.

Manny Diaz, come on down. It was not pretty for the Blue Devils on Friday night at Northwestern but, in another way, it was oh-so-pretty, what with prevailing in double-overtime in that lakefront experiment in temporary architecture. And don’t look now, too, but Duke is suddenly dominating this series. That’s six straight for the Blue Devils against the Wildcats.

CAROLINAS RANKING

1. Clemson (OK, Tigers, noted: Perhaps you’re better than everyone thought after Week 1); 2. North Carolina (the Tar Heels schedule: favorable); 3. Duke (fun fact: no team in college football history has ever lost a game after winning on a Friday night in double-overtime at a temporary lakeside stadium); 4. South Carolina (are the Gamecocks good?); 5. N.C. State (and this is probably generous for the Wolfpack); 6. ECU (are the Pirates good?); 7. Coastal Carolina; 8. Wake Forest; 9. Appalachian State (that was ... humbling ... for the Mountaineers at Clemson); 10. Charlotte.

FINAL THOUGHTS, IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER

▪ I think someone out there at State, UNC, Duke or Wake Forest could build a worthy social sciences PhD thesis about why college football in North Carolina has been so middling and mediocre since, well, forever. Get into the nitty-gritty of it. Analyze the data. The money. The recruiting trends. Well, there’s an idea, actually.

▪ I think with Grayson McCall’s early-season woes at State — and he has not been particularly good through two games — it’s worth having a conversation about building an offense around a transfer quarterback. Anecdotally, the success rate for these experiments doesn’t seem great, nationally or locally. There are only so many Joe Burrows or Caleb Williamses out there.

▪ I think, speaking of McCall, building from the transfer portal in general is dicey. When it works, it works. But who knows how much money State spent (a lot to be sure), only for the offense to look really, really pedestrian (or worse) through much of its first eight quarters of the season. How do you blend so many new pieces together, so quickly? The answer: Maybe you don’t.