Looks like the Tar Heels will go bowling in Florida, somewhere.
Since 10 bowl games have been cancelled due to COVID, 31 are still scheduled to be played, according to the latest ESPN.com roundup. And eight of those bowls are in Florida.
They begin with the Boca Bowl and end with the Orange Bowl, and this doesn’t include the College Football Playoff national championship game in Miami on January 11. Right now, the bowl prognosticators have Carolina in one of three – Cheez-It Bowl in Orlando on December 29, the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville on January 2 or the Orange Bowl on the same day.
UNC has not been picked for any other bowl game, and of course that could change at any hour of the day. But let’s look at the three bowls where North Carolina is listed as one of the possible participants.
Yahoo Sports has the Tar Heels in the Cheez-It Bowl, which could be dubbed the Mack Brown Bowl because the opponent is Texas, where Brown coached between his two stints at Carolina.
The Longhorns are currently ranked No. 23 in the latest AP poll, three spots behind the Tar Heels. But Texas coach Tom Herman is supposedly on the hot seat, so if he gets fired after the regular season all that could change. Mack is seven years removed from his last season on the Texas sideline, so this would be a storyline more than anything else.
ESPN’s latest bowl predictions now have the Tar Heels in the Gator Bowl on January 2 against Ole Miss, which is currently 4-4 and not ranked in any of the three polls — AP, Coaches or CFP. Ole Miss has a name and might benefit from the COVID exception of not requiring bowl teams to have at least six victories.
And then there are soothsayers who insist Carolina could still wind up in the Orange Bowl, also on January 2, with an upset win at No. 9 Miami Saturday. For that to happen, UNC would have to jump ahead of the Hurricanes in the final CFP rankings, which come out early next week.
But, one way or another, it does looks like the Heels will be in the Sunshine State for the holidays.
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