For a program which proclaimed itself to be the “33rd NFL team” during the offseason, the Tar Heels looked more amateurish than professional Monday night.
Outclassed in every way on a night of celebration which quickly turned into a public humiliation ritual, Carolina had only itself to blame. It was its Board of Trustees which prevented its athletic director from directing athletics, committed flagrant insubordination and then brought in a head coach who promptly laid UNC’s biggest football egg ever. It is this school which is currently paying that man a whopping $10 million this season, with a guaranteed $20 million more on the way. That’s $30 million for a 34-point loss, Carolina’s largest at home since the George W. Bush administration.
John Preyer, the chair of the Board of Trustees, did not go public with fiery comments following Belichick’s postgame press conference Monday, as he did last November after Mack Brown’s firing. But somewhere, the UNC alumnus was seething. He was seething because his power play, his leap of faith to turn Carolina into a football dynasty at last, blew up so spectacularly. He had finally encountered something his considerable power and influence could not sway. Football is played on a field, not in a back room.
It’s hard to resist the urge to point and laugh. Fans of rival schools were no doubt glorifying in the fiery mess broadcast to football fans across the country. All Belichick, the eight-time Super Bowl champion who looked far from a winner as Monday night turned to Tuesday morning, could say was that his team would keep trying.
“We’ll just keep working and keep grinding away,” Belichick told reporters. “We’re better than what we were tonight, but we’ve got to go out there and show that and prove it. Nobody’s gonna do it for us. We’ll have to do it ourselves. And that’s what we’re gonna do.”
Michael Lombardi, the team’s general manager and designated public mouthpiece for Belichick, consistently noted that the Tar Heels would be built from the “inside out,” emphasizing a commitment to winning the line of scrimmage along both the offensive and defensive fronts. TCU’s 542 total yards of offense, 7.4 yards per rush and eight tackles for loss against the UNC offense were a decisive rejection of that admittedly noble thesis. These looked more like the Tar Heels of the last few seasons (though it’s arguable that not even Brown was humiliated to this degree).
The two UNC players made available for comment, defensive back Kaleb Cost and quarterback Max Johnson, said all the right things. Johnson was simply happy to be out there after suffering a devastating leg injury last August, while Cost assured fans better days were on the horizon.
“We understand what happened tonight,” Cost said, “and we’re gonna fix it. We’re gonna solve it and figure out everything we need to do to solve it.”
But are there better days ahead? Does anyone who watched the Tar Heels play Monday truly believe that? The famous Rodgers and Hammerstein showtune “You’ll Never Walk Alone” says, “At the end of the storm, there’s a golden sky.” But it doesn’t say how long that storm lasts.
For a program which so brazenly strutted around the country in defiance of nearly its entire mediocre history, Monday night was a richly deserved farce. Now, in the early days of September, nearly three weeks before autumn even begins, the Tar Heels’ season already appears to be teetering on the brink of total collapse.
Pride cometh before the Fall.
Featured image via Associated Press/Chris Seward
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