UNC Football’s Fifth-Year Seniors Have Seen It All

As UNC’s incredible football season approaches its conclusion, all five of the team’s fifth-year seniors each celebrated another milestone this past Sunday—as they graduated from school and put one of the final touches on their difficult, but triumphant, journeys.

Recruited by former head coach Butch Davis back in 2011, redshirt seniors Marquise Williams, Landon Turner, Jeff Schoettmer, Sam Smiley, and Romar Morris were thrown right into the midst of the NCAA academic scandal as soon as they set foot in Chapel Hill.

Soon after, Davis—the man who brought them here—was fired.

Following a season under interim coach Everett Withers, UNC brought in its third coach in as many years—Larry Fedora.

The team’s record regressed in each of Fedora’s first three seasons, but this year—the last for this senior class—the Tar Heels are 11-2 and on the verge of the first 12-win season in school history.

“Five of them were here before I got here,” Fedora said at his press conference on Tuesday. “You know what they were going through, and what was going on in the program, and what’s gone on for the last four years.”

“I can’t say enough great things about the way these guys have stepped up and provided leadership for this team throughout this season.”

Williams, throughout his time at UNC, has had to face numerous questions about whether he was the right man for the quarterback job.

He was forced to share the role with backup Mitch Trubisky for a good part of last season.

He took the blame for the team’s heartbreaking loss to South Carolina after throwing three interceptions.

He was even suspended for a semester of classes back in the spring of 2013.

Now he’s graduating as arguably the program’s most accomplished signal-caller–and one of only four players in ACC history to account for more than 90 touchdowns in a career.

“It still hasn’t hit me yet,” Williams said with a laugh. “That I’m old now.

“It was a dream come true,” he continued. “I graduated from the best university in the country. I’ll keep that in my mind. A lot of people don’t get this opportunity and [I did].

Not since 1997 had UNC won nine games in a season, let alone 11 or possibly 12.

Still though, if you had told Turner—recently named a First-Team All-American at offensive guard—five years ago that he and his team could reach this point, he wouldn’t have been surprised.

“Whether [earning those accomplishments] was plausible or not, my mom likes to say, ‘Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars,’” Turner said.

“That’s not her saying, obviously, someone else came up with it—but she would repeat it a lot,” he added. “And I kind of took that to heart.”

Coming out of a private high school in Dallas, Schoettmer came to Chapel Hill as an out-of-state student without a scholarship, just a dream that maybe one day he could make some kind of impact.

Now the heart and soul of the team’s defense, he remembers what it was like arriving on campus that same summer, unsure of whether he’d ever get a chance to reach that goal.

“I came in, and then all those NCAA sanctions happened and we got a loss of scholarships,” Schoettmer said. “So I’m sitting there as a walk-on thinking, ‘Dang, I’m never gonna get a scholarship.’

“That just added motivation to me,” he continued. “Because I [had to] work even harder to prove myself and earn one of those scholarships.”

During preparations to face Baylor, Fedora has preached non-stop about what it would mean to get the 12^th win. Not just for he and the school, but also for this select group of seniors that have seen the program at its lowest, and now at its highest.

“As you look back on your life, it’s usually the adversity, the hardships, the things that you endure, and things you overcome that mold who you are,” Fedora said in reference to his fifth-year players. “And usually good things come out of those things—they really do.

“If you keep a real positive attitude, you learn from your mistakes, and you grow on a daily basis—usually good things are gonna happen,” the coach added.

“And I think that’s what’s happened this year.”