UNC Football: Bowl Game Destination And Opponent Announced

The UNC Football program learned on Sunday afternoon where they would be headed for a bowl game and who the opponent would be.

Following the College Football Playoff Committee announcing their top four teams, the other bowl games were then able to start making their selections. For the UNC Football program, that meant finding out they would be spending the last week of the 2023 Calendar year in a familiar location.

The ACC bowl tie-ins do not have a specific order of selection. Rather, the teams are picked based on match-ups and which programs will generate the most interest (both for TV ratings and in-person ticket sales). It took longer than usual for the conference and their bowl representatives to decide which teams should go where.

With Florida State not being selected for the College Football Playoff, despite being 13-0, it moved all other ACC teams (plus Notre Dame) down in the pecking order and caused a log jam for the decision-makers, which led to the lengthy delay.

Prior to Championship Weekend, the expectation was that UNC Football would be headed to Jacksonville, Florida, for the Gator Bowl. However, due to the chain reaction from the Seminoles missing the playoff, the Tar Heels were selected to stay close to home and end their season where they started it…

This will be the sixth all-time appearance in the Charlotte Bowl that has had various names (Meineke Car Care Bowl, Belk Bowl, currently Duke’s Mayo Bowl) during its history for the UNC Football program. The Tar Heels have a record of 1-4 in this bowl game, with the most recent appearance coming in 2021 when they faced South Carolina and lost 38-21. The lone win came in 2013 against Cincinnati by a score of 39-17.

The opponent for UNC Football is West Virginia. It will be the third all-time matchup between the Mountaineers and Tar Heels, as the two programs are 1-1 against each other. North Carolina won the first matchup 20-13 on New Year’s Day in 1997 in the Gator Bowl. West Virginia got revenge in the Meineke Car Care Bowl in 2008 with a 31-30 victory.

The UNC Football program will also be looking to end a streak of losing six of their last seven bowl appearances and three of their last thirteen going back to 2004. The lone bowl win in the last seven bowl game opportunities came in 2019 with a 55-13 win over Temple in the Military Bowl.

North Carolina also hasn’t had a ton of success playing in Charlotte despite being less than 150 miles from Chapel Hill. Since 2000, the Tar Heels have played ten times in Charlotte and have a 3-10 overall record. Of those matchups, six of them have come against Clemson or South Carolina.

There are almost certain to be players for both programs that opt to sit out, and we will have all of that covered here at Keeping It Heel over the coming weeks if any Tar Heels do opt-out.

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