Mack Brown finally got a chance to talk about mostly football Thursday. And without question he enjoyed it.

North Carolina’s coach has met with the media now seven times via zoom since the shutdown started and this was easily his most football-laced Q&A session. In fact, 14 of the 15 questions he fielded were actually about football.

COVID-19 and its many effects have been the dominant topics during Brown's previous "pressers," so Thursday was more about the stuff that happens on the gridiron, you know the sport people used to always speak about with Brown.

“It was so much fun, and it was fun to watch the guys have fun,” Brown said Thursday, following UNC’s first practice of fall camp.

The Tar Heels have been together for the better part of a month, but partitioned workouts kept the team from congregating at one place, so this was really the first time the gang was all there simultaneously. COVID protocols are still a strong underlying theme, including during practice, but football took center stage with an added boost that the Heels now know who they will open their season against and when.

The days of looking ahead to an opener at Central Florida before facing Auburn the following week in Atlanta made for good discussion and certainly would have generated a ton of excitement around the program had those tilts not been cancelled, but given the alternative of not playing, Syracuse visiting Chapel Hill to get things going on Sept. 12 may be even better.

A bit more for UNC’s Good-News-Thursday: How about the Tar Heels debuting at No. 19 in the first Coaches’ poll of the season?

Camp starting, a date and opponent with which to kick things off, and some national recognition had the Heels downright hopping Thursday.

“We’ve had so much talk about - will they want to play and is it safe and all that – and they had a blast today,” Brown said. “This is what they want to do, this is who they are. A lot of their identity is in football. It was just fun to see them have some goals that they can redefine now. They shouted when (the rankings) said we were in the top 20 in the poll, that was fun for them because we haven’t been there for a while.

“It was fun for them to be out here competing with guys they haven’t even seen before because, all the new guys, they’ve had walkthroughs, they’ve been in some drills with, this is the first time they’ve seen those 25 new team members on the field, plus (recent enrollee) Tony Grimes.”

The pandemic and its many horrible effects have hit every one of us in different ways. From battling through drastic life changes, financial despair and even death, it has been devastating for many. Senior cornerback Patrice Rene’s uncle died from COVID and offensive lineman Triston Miller’s brother died from it. In fact, Miller is taking the season off for family reasons.

Unemployment, social unrest, families and former friends divided as the political rhetoric is seemingly at an all-time high, and the uncertainty of the future is weighing on each of us.

But Thursday was different. Thursday offered a glimmer of hope there will be a football season. Now, football doesn’t exactly make the world go round, but if it’s happening it means so much else is healing and we’re headed in the right direction. So yeah, if the Tar Heels run out of the tunnel on Sept. 12 and a few fans are in the stands and scribes in the press box, it means the world is going round.

And for the 120 players in the program, their coaches and support staff, it will mean even more. This is who they are, as Brown said, and Thursday they got to be themselves.