Why is Carolina playing Cal in football anyway?

The Tar Heels open the season at the University of California-Berkeley Saturday, the second straight of a two-game series. Larry Fedora said that if his team has to spend 11-plus hours in the air going to and from a game destination, he’d prefer it’s the opener. Wish granted.

Why that series was ever scheduled is a legitimate question. Carolina doesn’t recruit in California much or even the west coast. Fedora lost a key quarterback commit from Arizona, who changed his mind and signed with Oregon. So what is the benefit, which was a more salient question last year after the Bears sprung the 35-30 upset in Kenan Stadium.

After winning its first three games in 2017, Cal went 2-7 in the Pac 12 and finished 5-7 overall. This season, the Bears are picked second-to-last in their six-team division, while the Tar Heels are picked next-to-last in the seven-team ACC Coastal. Yet Cal has been installed as a seven-point favorite.

That has to be because the game is in Berkeley and Cal may have a more experienced team if not coaching staff. Head coach Justin Wilcox is in his second year, while Fedora is in his seventh in Chapel Hill. While the Bears may also have a more talented team on paper, the Tar Heels don’t really know what they have with so many new faces on the field, exacerbated by the suspensions stemming from Shoe-gate.

One Pac 12 story said if Cal wins its first three games against UNC, BYU and Idaho State, the Bears will definitely go bowling in Wilcox’s second season. Their quarterback, Ross Bowers, who threw for 363 yards and four touchdowns in Chapel Hill, turned erratic but gets the nod over Nathan Elliott, unless Elliott developed a stronger arm than last fall.

Fedora is always cagey with his injury report, and this season he says he won’t know his two-deep on both sides of the ball until just before the 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time kickoff Saturday. Winning their first two on the road at Cal and ECU is also UNC’s key to at least a .500 record and return to a bowl.

If the Heels don’t get off on the right foot, the trip out west may seem even longer as the season unfolds.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Related Stories
‹
Chansky's Notebook: Mack's The Story
If God is a Tar Heel, he will let us play football in the fall. The news about Mack Brown won’t go away, or even subside. His current recruiting class has climbed to 14 in number and No. 3 in the country, and there are almost a dozen uncommitted prospects who are among the best […]
Chansky's Notebook: An Attractive Pick
Is the Sam Howell news helping Carolina’s bowl prospects? This week, every year, it is always fun to read the bowl predictions by all the news outlets. Literally they change every day for various reasons. One of those reasons may be the continued ascension of Carolina freshman quarterback Sam Howell, who has received the following […]
Chansky's Notebook: The Time Is Right
It’s high time the Tar Heels took back the rivalry with N.C. State. Recently, Mack Brown recalled the first year his Carolina football team defeated N.C. State. It was 1993 after five straight losses to the Wolfpack of Dick Sheridan. After the game, Brown was informed that one of his assistants had body-slammed a Wolfpack […]
Chansky's Notebook: Keeps Getting Better
Once again, how lucky for Carolina that Mack Brown came back. Despite the tough luck and bad pub UNC has had over the last 20 years, three factors have kept Tar Heel athletics among the best in the nation. One is that this is such a great place to go to school that thousands of […]
Chansky's Notebook: DEE-Fense (Clap, Clap)!
It’s the D, not the O, most responsible for Carolina’s fast start. Before the season I asked Lee Pace, who is the best writer of Tar Heel sports around, how he thought Mack Brown’s first team of his second tenure would do. Pace predicted Carolina would be 4-0 going into the Clemson game because a […]
Chansky's Notebook: 'Be The One'
Is that Miami game still ringing in your eyes or ears? Due to the ACC Network still being a work in progress, we had several ways to follow Carolina’s classic win over the Hurricanes in Kenan Stadium Saturday night. Best bet, of course, was to be there. The game sold out after the Tar Heels stunned South Carolina […]
Chansky's Notebook: Digging Deep On Mack
Inside Carolina has the Mack Brown story right on the money. This is a tough week for Mack and Sally Brown. Cedric Benson, an all-star running back and one of the Browns’ favorite players at Texas, was killed in a motorcycle crash. His funeral is Saturday and the Browns will be there to celebrate and […]
Chansky's Notebook: Start With Swagger
Starting a freshman quarterback doesn’t matter for UNC now, does it? When Mack Brown announced freshman Sam Howell would be running the first team offense as the time clock to the opener against South Carolina begins to tick, what does he have to lose? Howell is a true freshman who was playing high school football when redshirt […]
Chansky's Notebook: Something to Show
Saturday is the first big test of the Mack Brown magic. No other coach could have shaken Carolina football out of the apathy that had finally overcome the program in Larry Fedora’s last two losing seasons. The alumni and fan base had moved on from anger to the annual excitement of another basketball season. Kenan had […]
Chansky's Notebook: Rebuilding Yesteryear
Mack Brown must love the song lyrics, “Yesterday’s gone.” For those who wonder what has changed between Mack I and Mack II as the Tar Heels football coach, there is quite a difference. After leaving Carolina with a top ten program in 1997, Brown spent 15 seasons at Texas rebuilding one of the proudest college […]
›