Extra Points: The Dance Card

There was a time long before the ACC expanded to California and the Big 12 extended from Florida to Utah when Carolina's football team staked a flag as the southern outpost of the Big Ten. Over a five-year period from 1962 to '66, the Tar Heels played seven games against Big Ten opponents, plus had Notre Dame on the slate three of those years.

And the results weren't half bad—Carolina beat Michigan State at home in 1964, ventured to The Horseshoe to thump Ohio State in 1965 and then to The Big House to beat Michigan in 1966.

"That period was a lot of fun," said Danny Talbott, the Tar Heel quarterback from 1964-66. "It was very exciting to beat those teams, particularly when we struggled against some teams in the ACC. We just seemed to rise to the occasion for those games. It's a great thrill to think back on going to a place like Michigan and turning a crowd of 88,000 into total silence."

Carolina Athletic Director Chuck Erickson scheduled those games for what he called "prestige and currency," the Tar Heels getting some high-profile national branding and a nice paycheck for playing in front of huge Midwestern crowds.

If only it were so simple these days.

The Tar Heels' non-conference schedule continues this week with a game against a Big Ten opponent it has never seen in 135 years of football following an emotional win over a sister-institution from the UNC System. How App State and Minnesota fit into the Tar Heels' scheduling philosophy are illustrative of the many sticky wickets that Carolina Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham and Coach Mack Brown face today.

There is the matter of how does the ACC's expansion with the University of California, Stanford and SMU affect scheduling?

How does UNC's flagship university try to accommodate the wishes of every other football playing campus in the state to play the Tar Heels?

How do the Tar Heels attempt to comply with a directive from the ACC and the desires of the conference's TV partners to schedule at least two Power Five games a year?

And how do opponents in the month of September reflect Brown's desire to play games that help test the newcomers, iron out schematic wrinkles and give the team a head of steam heading into conference play—without it being so soft if could affect strength-of-schedule as the College Football Playoff comes into focus in November?

"There are a lot of challenges, but it's a lot of fun as well," says Rick Steinbacher, the associate athletic director tasked with executing the scheduling plan. "It's like working a giant jigsaw puzzle."

That puzzle begins with the ACC having to trash after one year its new 3-5-5 model that had each of 14 league teams having three core opponents to face annually and rotating the other 10 teams twice over four years, one at home and one away. The Tar Heels' locked-in opponents would have been Duke, N.C. State and Virginia.

ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips and Associate Commissioner Michael Strickland have formed a study committee of league ADs to look at ideas for including the Bears, Cardinal and Mustangs in league play beginning next year. One idea that seems to have early support is having each of the 17 league teams play two core opponents every year and rotate through the other 14 over a three-year period. Another key issue to resolve is how many times teams on the East Coast will have to travel west to Texas and California over a given period.

There appears to be no momentum toward expanding the league schedule to nine games. Clemson, Florida State, Georgia Tech and Louisville have long been strongly against that idea as they have a non-ACC rival game locked into their schedules.

That leaves four non-conference games a year. Now that a three-game series against App State has run its course (two wins for the Tar Heels, one for the Mountaineers), there are no further games with App State or East Carolina on the horizon.

Carolina's schedules for the next four years are essentially locked in.

Games against in-state opponents include home vs. Charlotte and N.C. Central in 2024, at Charlotte in 2025 and home vs. N.C. A&T in 2028.

Power Five games include home-and-away with TCU in 2025 and '26, Purdue in 2027 and '31, South Carolina in 2028 and '29 and Central Florida in 2025 and '27.

And one-off Group of Five and FCS teams coming to Chapel Hill include James Madison in 2024 and '28, East Tennessee State in 2026, Richmond in 2025 and UConn in 2026.

This week's game against Minnesota is the first of a home-and-home deal that has Carolina opening the 2024 season in Minneapolis. A strong Gopher team under Coach P.J. Fleck certainly ticks the box of playing games against quality competition from Power Five leagues.

"We're working together to create better matchups and matchups that people around the country, their fans and others, would like to see," Phillips said in January. "And certainly television would like to see. We have pushed hard about making sure when we have opportunities to play really good programs and teams in the nonconference, we need to do that."

Despite the Big Ten now stretching from Los Angles to College Park, the Golden Gophers represent Midwestern football at its finest—size, strength and a propensity to run the ball. Last year in posting a 9-4 record, they ran the ball more than twice they threw it and logged a 35-25 minute time of possession edge. The numbers are similar in two games this year, wins over Nebraska and Eastern Michigan. It's consummate old-school, meat-and-potatoes football the Tar Heels must defeat as they work their way through their ever-evolving non-conference menu.

Brown noted the interesting September lineup the Tar Heels are facing—an old ACC rival now in the SEC in South Carolina, an in-state opponent that won three FCS titles in 2005-07 in App State, and now a rock-ribbed foe from the Big Ten.

"It's the hardest out-of-conference schedule I've ever had to start the season," he said. "Three really good teams, really physical teams. Unlike a lot of teams, we'll know who we are after three weeks. They will uncover every concern we've got in these first three games."

Chapel Hill writer Lee Pace (Carolina '79) is in his 34th season writing about Tar Heel football under the "Extra Points" banner and 20th year reporting from the sidelines for the Tar Heel Sports Network.

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