UNC Football: USA TODAY lists Tar Heels as biggest frauds

After a wild few weeks in the Atlantic Coast Conference, the UNC Football program had the chance to go on a run and make some noise in the conference the rest of the way. But after Saturday’s loss to Georgia Tech in Atlanta that quickly went down the drain.

North Carolina jumped out to a 7-0 lead over the Yellow Jackets with a Sam Howell rushing touchdown following a blocked punt. And that would be the bright spot the rest of the way for the Tar Heels as the Yellow Jackets imposed their will and ran away with this game to send UNC to 2-2 on the season. 

It was an embarrassing performance all around for Mack Brown’s Tar Heels, a team that entered this season ranked No. 10 and this game No. 21. But it quickly showed that the Tar Heels were more of a pretender than a contender all along.

Following Saturday’s loss to Georgia Tech, USA TODAY writer Dan Wolken had some harsh words for the Tar Heels putting them No. 1 on his misery index and flat out calling them the biggest frauds in all of college football:

"The Tar Heels were the Talented Mr. Ripley of this season, only it turns out they weren’t that talented. Unlike the character in the Matt Damon movie, which had a run time of nearly 2 1/2 hours, it only took about half that for North Carolina’s football team to be exposed as a complete fraud.The Tar Heels, it turns out, were as phony as Fyre Fest and disappeared from the scene faster than Crystal Pepsi. After getting absolutely wrecked by Georgia Tech on Saturday, 45-22, North Carolina as a preseason top-10 team is one of those notions that seems as ill-advised in retrospect as a $5 seafood buffet.It’s not just that North Carolina plays mediocre football. That’s the program’s general state of being. But when Brown comes out of retirement, starts recruiting well again, wins some games early on and raises expectations significantly — only to be out of the race for anything significant before October — there’s a different level of disappointment."

Should we have all seen this coming though? It’s not UNC’s fault they were over ranked in the preseason polls. Yes, they did return 21 starters from that Orange Bowl game but they lost FIVE players to the NFL Draft including four of their best players on offense.

Sure, other teams do reload with talent and if you want to be on that level, you need to do that as well. The Tar Heels aren’t on that level just yet and this year proves that.

Even if UNC was overhyped and didn’t deserve their Top 10 ranking, what makes it much worse is that they have now lost two road games to teams they should have beat. Especially on Saturday when they entered the game as two-touchdown favorites against a Yellow Jackets team that was struggling coming in.

The bottom line is that UNC isn’t ready to take that next step yet. It won’t happen this year and probably not next year. But this season isn’t a total waste just yet as they can use this to build the program up and start to take baby steps into getting where they want to be.

And if they want that to happen, they need to take a long look at themselves in the mirror and fix things…now.

For more on the UNC Football program, please make sure to check back with Keeping it Heel.