BOSTON – It’s over.
The cord has been cut.
Fin.
The end of the Mack Brown era in full occurred on the soggy surface inside one of the most iconic sports venues in the nation, which happens to be the oldest baseball stadium in the country.
Fenway Park saw the Boston Red Sox go 86 years one time between winning a World Series. They called it the “Curse of the Bambino” because the stretch of futility started when Sox ownership sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees following the 1919 season.
The Yanks won 26 World Series championships before the Red Sox won one.
Not that the Mack Brown era was a curse in any way, that’s not what’s being said, but the point here is this ballpark witnessed a sleeping giant for nearly a century that couldn’t get over the hump until the Sox pulled off a miracle against the Yankees in 2004 and have won four in the last 20 years, and have taken on greater stature as a franchise than any time previously.
North Carolina walked off the field here following an ugly 27-14 loss to Connecticut in the Fenway Bowl in a game that was nowhere near as close as the final score suggests. The Tar Heels were terrible in every way, and quite frankly, the Huskies should have won by more.
But perhaps the curse being lifted from UNC Football is that its days as a sleeping giant could soon be a thing of the past.
While BoSox fans waited 86 years, UNC’s heyday is now 75 years ago, which is the last time Charlie “Choo Choo” Justice wore Carolina blue.
His era was the only time UNC was ever ranked No. 1 in the polls. He was the only UNC player to come close to winning a Heisman Trophy, coming in second place in 1948 and 1949. And it was during the Choo Choo years the Tar Heels finished ranked in three consecutive seasons. That’s the only time in program history.
So, when the universe wakes up on Sunday, the Bill Belichick era as UNC’s head coach fully begins. He was hired a few weeks ago, but he couldn’t completely corral the Kenan Football Center until the bowl game was played.
Players will go home for a week before returning. Some new faces will arrive. More will be reeled in through the transfer portal. Most of the coaching staff must still be hired.
An offseason training schedule must be put in place. Spring practice scheduled. Opponents for 2025 scouted. Tracks laid recruiting of high school kids. And messaging to a fan base being asked to fork over a ton of cash to make the curse of the sleeping giant finally smash the snooze button, spring to its feet, and once and for all show us all if North Carolina can actually be a player on the football national stage.
The mess on the field here Saturday was a Ginsu knife cutting the cord to the program’s past. Or at least that’s what Tar Heel Nation hopes and some expect.
A 6-7 season, UNC’s second losing mark in the last four campaigns, the Tar Heels conclude the last three-quarter century of occasional bouts hitting their collective heads on the ceiling only to never break through.
Belichick may not puncture it either. But with an abysmal performance taking place Saturday, at least the Carolina brass and its legion of fans had that to think and now look forward to.
Is the sleeping giant about to awaken, or was the slumbered walk of dirty, wet, and downtrodden Tar Heels to their locker room after the game just another day in this program’s history with many more to come?
We will find out.
