Disappointed, yes, but the Tar Heels’ biggest games are still ahead.

Let’s go back to 2017 and 2018, when Carolina was in the midst of three-year losing streaks to Duke and State and had also lost three in a row to ECU by 75 points! Larry Fedora had gone from great coach to get out.

Football had sunk from the excitement of a 2015 Coastal Division championship to anger and, then the worst, apathy, when no one cares, no one comes and UNC fans start looking to hoops early.

Certainly, Mack Brown has his detractors who say he talks too much, overpromises and underdelivers. USA Today had a story Sunday that put his Tar Heels at the top of the all-fraud college football poll.

However, the plain truth is that much of the fan base had stopped caring when Bubba Cunningham decided to make a change. And no one could rev up that fan base even before the next season started better than Brown, whose energy sold out Kenan Stadium.

The Tar Heels turned it around with a winning season and bowl game in Brown’s first year back, then reached a New Year’s Day Bowl for the first time since 1950 last season. Sure, Mack could have tamped down the 2021 fervor, but that is not his nature.

I’ll go back to another Dean Smith-ism when he asked Rams Clubbers if they would rather get to the Final Four or beat Duke twice in a season. Both, of course, but they had to pick one.

So, our goals have changed from making the College Football Playoff to local bragging rights. Beat Duke Saturday, beat Wake Forest on November 6 and beat State on the day after Thanksgiving.

“You have to beat your own state,” Brown said. “If not, how are you going to win out-of-state?”

Add opportunities to beat Florida State and Miami, which would bolster recruiting down there, and then there is the chance to shock Notre Dame and its behemoth interior lines in South Bend.

Some, but not all, is lost. Carolina can still earn bragging rights as the best team in the state and, in the long run, that is better for the program than anything else, except maybe a national championship.

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