(AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

If the Tar Heels don’t beat Western Carolina, all bets are off.

Even with Larry Fedora’s seventh UNC football team losing to State for the third straight year, he is safe to come back for at least one more season. A 2-9 record, following last season’s 3-9, looks like the program is going backward fast, but there are better reasons to keep Fedora than to fire him.

One is the buyout, which is estimated between $12 and $18 million if you factor in the assistant coaches who have multi-year contracts. Another is that Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham hired Fedora, and that usually gives the coach one more season. If not, it looks like two bad decisions by Cunningham – one to hire him in the first place and, two, to give him the extension with the buyout after the 2015 season, when Carolina won the ACC Coastal Division and Fedora was a hot coaching commodity.

He is anything but that now, considering UNC’s dismal record against Power 5 schools over the last two years, 2-17 I believe. But the Tar Heels have been hit with truly unfathomable injuries for two seasons now, losing four different quarterbacks and multiple starters on both sides of the ball.

Yet, they have continued to fight and play hard, losing close game after close game, albeit mostly by self-inflicted wounds due to penalties and failures to execute. The last four games were winnable in the fourth quarter, two of them blown on literally the last series and one more tied with the ball.

Something does have to change, and in a case like this it is usually assistant coaches who get fired, from the coordinators on down. So look for that to happen as soon as the season ends after the State game.

There is one condition to all this, however. Should Fedora find some way to lose to Western Carolina tomorrow in Kenan Stadium, the hue and cry may be too loud for the university to ignore. Losing at home to a college football subdivision opponent would have the alumni and fan base in such a dither that Cunningham might have to bite the bullet and can his coach.

That would be starting all over again after Fedora had built a championship program and regular bowl participant over his first four years. And there are still some building blocks left in many talented players who return next season and don’t need to learn another system under a new coaching staff.

Let’s take care of business tomorrow against Western, and play the Wolfpack next week without any pressure to keep the coach’s job. Because at 2-8 it would still be safe. Hard to believe, but it’s the lesser of two evils.

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