Yes, Carolina is playing for a New Year’s Bowl in Florida.
That could be a trick question, since both the Orange Bowl and Gator Bowl are in Florida, January 2, on ESPN. But only one of them is a so-called New Year’s 6 Bowl, with more prestige and higher payout.
It has provided extra incentive for the Tar Heels, although Mack Brown probably knows the Orange Bowl is a long shot even if his program upsets tenth-ranked Miami Saturday in Coral Gables. The U is a 4-point favorite, having won five straight games for an 8-1 record.
Brown hyperbolized this week that no one expects his team to win after the Tar Heels jumped to No. 17 in the College Football Playoff (CFP) rankings. He said the prognosticators already have Miami and Texas A&M (or Florida) written in for the Orange Bowl. But he likes that for motivational purposes.
Should the Tar Heels win, and they have more of a chance than Brown is making out, Carolina will finish 8-3 and would have to jump ahead of Miami in the CFP rankings to get the Orange Bowl bid in the same stadium. Miami’s only other loss was at then-No. 1 Clemson on October 10 and is scheduled to host Georgia Tech on December 19.
Even with UNC’s three-point defeats at 2-6 Florida State and 5-4 Virginia, one could say that Miami’s 42-17 drubbing at Clemson was a lot worse than either of Carolina’s losses, but Brown reminds us that was before the Hurricanes got it together and won five in a row.
Miami’s Energizer Bunny duel threat quarterback D’Eriq King is back from a bout with COVID and playing great, and the U also has star grad transfer linebacker Quincy Roche, whom Carolina faced with Temple in the 2019 Military Bowl and tried to recruit.
“We’re playing a game that really matters at the end of the season,” Brown said. “We’re potentially trying to get to a major bowl; last year, we were just trying to get bowl eligible. We’ve put ourselves in a different category. This is championship stuff.”
In those same bowl predictions, Carolina is slated for the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville against Ole Miss, which is coached by notorious Lane Kiffin, whose team rallied from a 1-4 start to stand 4-4 going into a December 19 date at LSU, which like a lot of other games is tenuous.
But first things first. “Can we compete against a top 10 team with confidence and toughness,” Brown mused. “We got whipped in the second half by Notre Dame’s front seven. So this is a huge challenge.”
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