When Was the Last Time UNC, Duke, State and Wake All Started 2-0 (Or Better) In Football? Never!

By David Glenn

No, really, 2022 is the first time!

Heading into the first of its two open weeks during the 2022 season, North Carolina is 3-0, with a home win over Florida A&M and road victories against Appalachian State and Georgia State.

While most of the details of the Tar Heels’ 3-0 start understandably didn’t overwhelm anyone, the relative rarity of their accomplishment nevertheless is worth noting.

“Overall, happy to be 3-0 for the first time in a long time,” UNC coach Mack Brown said. “Happy to have two wins on the road, both of them tough wins, which really helped us grow up and put us in a position where we can have two weeks here to fix a lot of things.”

Brown didn’t get all the details right — the Tar Heels started 3-0 on his watch just two years ago — but the general tone of his sentiments certainly was understandable, both because 3-0 starts in Chapel Hill have been hard to find lately and because the Heels’ next opponent, Notre Dame (on Sept. 24), has an all-time record of 19-2 against Carolina on the gridiron.

Believe it or not, UNC has started 3-0 only four times in the last 25 seasons, including twice in the last three years. In 2020, under Brown, the Tar Heels opened with a 3-0 mark before finishing 8-4. In 2011, interim coach Everett Withers led the Heels to a 3-0 start but lost five of his last seven games to finish 7-6. In 2009, under Butch Davis, Carolina entered the season ranked in the Top 25 nationally and opened with a 3-0 record before finishing 8-5.

Amazingly, Carolina’s 3-0 start here in 2022 also was quietly a part of an even more stunning slice of (state of) North Carolina football history, although it was not an “accomplishment” you’ll find anywhere in a history book or media guide.

Duke, UNC, NC State and Wake Forest, also known as the “Big Four” to many North Carolinians, have been fellow members of the Atlantic Coast Conference since its founding in 1953. Before that, they spent additional decades together in the Southern Conference, which was created in 1921, or more than 100 years ago. With some exceptions, the four universities have been on each other’s schedules in football and many other sports for more than a century.

Oddly, until Saturday, there had NEVER been a football season in which the Blue Devils, Tar Heels, Wolfpack and Demon Deacons all started with the relatively modest record of 2-0 (or better). That’s going all the way back to the 1880s, even before the creation of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, when sometimes an entire season consisted of only two games.

While it’s true that scheduling details, meaning head-to-head Big Four matchups in the first two weeks of the season, sometimes made it impossible for all four schools to get off to 2-0 starts, it’s also true that such details can’t possibly explain away their long-time failure to reach such a mild collective milestone, and those head-to-head matchups have been especially rare over the last half-century.

Since 1970, for example, UNC played a Big Four opponent during the first two weeks of the season only four times: Wake Forest in 1974, 1992, 2000 and 2012. In modern times, the Tar Heels’ matchups against Duke and NC State almost always have been at or near the end of the regular season.

Similarly, Duke and NC State have played each other in the first two weeks of the season only twice since 1955, and the Duke-Wake Forest rivalry offers a similar theme. The Wolfpack and Demon Deacons have had early season matchups a bit more often, even during the ACC era, but not enough to be an excuse for this particular century-plus-long Big Four drought.

Looking ahead to Week Three action, there appears to be a pretty good chance Duke, NC State and Wake Forest all will be able match the Tar Heels’ 3-0 start. The Devils are a huge favorite over 0-2 North Carolina A&T in Durham, the Pack is a 10-point favorite over 2-0 Texas Tech in Raleigh, and the Deacons are a 17-point favorite over 2-0 Liberty in Winston-Salem.

With those three victories, the best collective start in Big Four gridiron history would be able to retain that unofficial title for at least one more week.

David Glenn (DavidGlennShow.com, @DavidGlennShow) is an award-winning author, broadcaster, editor, entrepreneur, publisher, speaker, writer and university lecturer (now at UNC Wilmington) who has covered sports in North Carolina since 1987.

The founding editor and long-time owner of the ACC Sports Journal and ACCSports.com, he also has contributed to the Durham Herald-Sun, ESPN Radio, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Raycom Sports, SiriusXM and most recently The Athletic. From 1999-2020, he also hosted the David Glenn Show, which became the largest sports radio program in the history of the Carolinas, syndicated in more than 300 North Carolina cities and towns, plus parts of South Carolina and Virginia.

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