The 2021 UNC football season hasn’t yet begun, but the Tar Heels are already scheduling teams for the 2022 season. On Friday the program announced that its first opponent for the 2022 campaign would be Florida A&M. The game was rescheduled from its original date of September 17. It will be now played exactly 365 days from when Friday’s announcement was made: August 27, 2022 in Chapel Hill.

UNC and Florida A&M have never met on a football field. FAMU, as the university is colloquially known, is the third-largest historically Black college and university in the country by enrollment. The 2022 game will be the first time Carolina has played an HBCU in football since they hosted North Carolina A&T in 2015.

Though the Rattlers didn’t play football in 2020 due to COVID, they ended their 2019 season in the FCS Top 25 with a 9-2 record. This included a win over then-No. 10 NC A&T, who would go on to win the Celebration Bowl and the HBCU National Championship that season.

The makeup of the 2022 UNC football team will be a hot topic of conversation once the 2021 season concludes. Head coach Mack Brown expects star quarterback Sam Howell to declare for the NFL Draft after this year, opening up a compelling positional battle between veteran Jacolby Criswell and highly-ranked recruit Drake Maye. The game against Florida A&M will likely be the first start for either player.

August 27 is the earliest date for a UNC football game since 2001, when Carolina played at Oklahoma on August 25.

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