Tar Heels are 6-0 for Just the Tenth Time in Program History

CHAPEL HILL – For just the tenth time in North Carolina’s 136-year football history, it has won the first six games of its season.

Ranked No. 10 in the nation, the Tar Heels are off to their best start since 1997, the final season of current head coach Mack Brown’s first stint at UNC. That team won its first eight games before losing at home to Florida State in a matchup of teams ranked among the top four nationally.

This is just the fifth time Carolina has been 6-0 since 1948, which was Charlie “Choo Choo” Justice’s junior year. That is 75 years ago.

“Six-and-0 for the ninth time ever, that shows you how hard it is,” Brown said Monday during his weekly press conference at the Kenan Football Center.

The best start in school history came in 1914, when UNC opened with a 10-0 mark before losing its final game. The longest in-season win streak ever at Carolina is 11 consecutive victories in 2015.

Larry Fedora’s team opened with a narrow loss to South Carolina in Charlotte before reeling off 11 straight wins before falling to Clemson in a close ACC championship game.

The Tar Heels host 1-5 Virginia on Saturday before heading to Georgia Tech and then hosting Campbell. If the Heels get to 9-0, they will be the third team in program history to do so, joining the 1898 and 1914 Carolina clubs.

And for their work, the Tar Heels are in the top 10 heading into the third week of October for just the second time since 2015, and third time since 1997. This is certainly an accomplishment, but the Heels recognize the AP poll for what it is.

“I think they appreciate being where they are,” Brown said. “They’ve worked hard to earn that, and they know that it’s fleeting… This is a mature team. There’s some immaturity on it, obviously. They were not happy yesterday (Sunday) with the way they we played, and the coaches were not.

“We were hard on each other, and really it was one of the toughest team meetings I’ve ever been around after a win.”

The following are UNC’s nine previous teams that started 6-0. Noted is their unbeaten start, final record in parentheses, and average margin of victory through the first six games:

1898 – 9-0 (9-0), 17.8

1901 – 7-0 (7-2), 25.7

1914 – 10-0 (10-1), 47.2

1935 – 7-0 (8-1), 17.5

1948 – 6-0 (9-1-1), 17.3

1980 – 7-0 (11-1), 18.8

1981 – 6-0 (10-2), 35.0

1983 – 7-0 ((8-4), 21.5

1997 – 8-0 (11-1), 20.2

2023 – 6-0 (???), 16.3