The football Tar Heels are set up for another New Year’s Six Bowl, maybe more.

Just coming off a season when the original football schedule was torn up and rewritten due to the pandemic, the ACC sure got the 2021 slate out fast, released Thursday when it usually rolls out in February.

Carolina fans should be very excited, with seven home games that hopefully will welcome back capacity crowds that COVID banned this past fall. And the first seven games are favorable for a 7-0 start.

The opener at Virginia Tech on either Thursday or Friday, September 2 or 3, is against a team that is under fire for going 5-6 last season and missing a bowl game for the first time in 27 years. The Hokies are also losing three marquee players to the NFL in running back Khalil Herbert, offensive tackle Christian Darrisaw and CB Caleb Farley. The last time Carolina was in Blacksburg, the teams played six overtimes, the longest game in ACC football history.

Next comes the home opener against Georgia State. Enough said. Then Virginia comes to town on September 18, and Mack Brown’s team will be itching to avenge the 44-41 loss at Charlottesville followed by a trip to Georgia Tech, which is back on the Coastal Division schedule after the coronavirus cancellation last fall.

Carolina returns home for three straight games against Duke, Florida State and Miami, all underdogs coming to Kenan. Then an open date on October 23 to prepare for the first of two games that could decide whether the Heels are going to the College Football Playoffs — at Notre Dame on October 30.

Wake Forest visits Chapel Hill on November 6 for a non-conference game, the second time in three years that has happened. Five days later is the dangerous Thursday night trip to Pitt, where UNC lost another overtime game on its last visit to the Steel City.

The season ends with a home game against Wofford (enough said) and a bus ride to Carter-Finley Stadium to play the Wolfpack, which will think it belongs on the same field with the Tar Heels, who by then will know exactly what they are playing for.

 

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