CHAPEL HILL – While North Carolina’s football team was technically off this past weekend, the Tar Heels still had a homework assignment: Watch Syracuse’s game.
UNC’s next game is this Saturday at home versus the Orange, so head coach Mack Brown told his team to not only watch Clemson at Syracuse, but to takes notes, too.
“We asked our players to watch the game, and we actually gave them some things to look for during the game to write down like a review or study plan for a test,” Brown said Monday during his weekly press conference.
The Tigers took advantage of Orange mistakes in a 31-14 victory in the JMA Wireless Dome, but the Heels took away more of the positives from what Syracuse does. The method in which they soaked in their next opponent varied.
Homework assignment, really?
Sort of.
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“It was kind of refreshing to watch it this weekend as a spectator,” senior linebacker Cedric Gray said, indicating he flipped around to different games, including the USC-Colorado contest, which was on at the same time as Clemson and Syracuse.
Gray also watched Georgia’s narrow win at Auburn and LSU’s high-scoring loss at Ole Miss. It was a rare college football Saturday for college football players, so he watched and watched and watched games, including Notre Dame’s late win at Duke.
“That was a good game,” Gray said, before being asked if he rooted for the Blue Devils.
“No,” he replied, laughing and accidentally bumping a microphone placed in front of him by a TV crew.
It was kind of a good question given that the Tar Heels host Duke next month, and beating a Duke team with wins over Clemson and Notre Dame would bolster UNC’s resume. But that rivalry stuff mattered too much to Gray, and probably the rest of the Heels.
Drake Maye is a football junkie and surely embraced the homework assignment.
“I don’t listen to announcers,” he said. “I don’t love doing that just because they’ll say some extra stuff, or I feel like it kind of gets you out of the locked-in mode because you’re kind of listening to things and they’re off ranting about something.”
Carolina’s quarterback teamed up with his buddy and starting center for much of the afternoon, even though they weren’t actually in the same place.
Corey Gaynor had an epic setup to indulge of college football all day and night.
“I was like a kid in a candy store,” he said. “I had four games on my YouTube TV, I had my iPad out. There’s nothing like football, man, I love it so much.”
He and Maye wore headsets so they could “hang out” all day and talk about the games.
“We were on the mic together doing commentary, we were doing our own commentator,” Gaynor said, smiling. “So, we’re watching the game at the same time talking about what we see.”
How much of their conversation was strategy, identification, and how much is just having fun?
“Thirty-three-point-three all the way,” Gaynor said, generating laughter in the room. “You said three things, right?”
The No. 14 Heels (4-0, 1-0 ACC) saw plenty of Syracuse (4-1, 0-1) on film Monday, and maybe even some Sunday. But for a day, anyway, they got to be football fans watching the game the way so many others do.
So, whatever grade they may get on the homework assignment may not really matter. It’s the test this Saturday at 3:30 PM that does, though.
