Examining the rivalry(?) between Wake Forest and North Carolina football
by RAJohnston on Oct 24, 2011 5:52 PM EDT
in Wake Forest Football
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Do current Wake Forest players feel the same disdain that I feel for the Tar Holes???
On Saturday at 3:30 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the Wake Forest Demon Deacons will play the North Carolina Tar Heels for the first time in 1,463 days (or 208 weeks, 35,109 hours, 2,106,450 minutes, and 126,392,400 seconds), but who's counting?
My point is that it has been a LONG time since Wake Forest defeated UNC at Groves Stadium 37-10 on October 27, 2007. What a glorious day that was. The Deacs rode an Aaron Curry TD on defense, and the remarkable Kevin Marion 's ability to kick return to a thorough beatdown of the Tar Ho...erm Heels.
I was a high school senior at Mount Tabor, and now I am a college senior at Wake Forest. This is the football game that I have looked forward to the most in my time at Wake Forest. Yes there have been many bigger games for Wake Forest since then (and one or two from UNC), but to me this is the most excited I have been for a game on Saturday.
Read why after the jump.
Growing up in Winston-Salem as a Wake Forest fan, one would assume that I had many fans around me that pulled for Wake Forest. Oh how wrong one would have been. Carolina blue has, and will always be the team around here for bandwagon fans to jump on. For people that are not from North Carolina, Duke is the most hated team in the state, but they just don't understand. Only those that experienced the constant mocking and ignorant cries of UNC fans whenever they won a sporting event can commiserate with me.
Of course there have been basketball games between the two schools since I have been a student here. Somew were won by Wake, and some were won by North Carolina, but because of the way the divisions broke down with the expansion of the ACC, this is the only time in my undergraduate career that I will see Wake Forest play North Carolina in football. It's a damn shame that this is the case, and perhaps an article for another time, but it is the case for now and we must live with it (...and I digress).
The main point of this article is whether or not Wake Forest vs. UNC is still a rivalry in football?
Almost every Wake Forest fan will claim that of course it is a rivalry. Some UNC fans will say that it is, while others will say that only Duke is their rival, while even more will claim that it's almost basketball season. I of course believe that this is a huge rivalry, and one that almost everybody that I grew up with went to, whether it was at Groves Stadium, or Kenan Stadium.
The times have changed, and in the four years since Wake Forest has played North Carolina on the gridiron, the Deacs have made a conscious effort to recruit the states of Florida and Texas hard. This has obviously been successful for the direction of our program, and has also created a natural rivalry with Florida State for the guys that weren't even a blip on the Seminoles radar.
What has it done to the rivalry against North Carolina though?
Playing a team after a break of four years certainly makes it lose its luster, especially for kids that did not grow up in the state and understand the natural rivalries in place here. I am worried that it is just another game for the players, and I don't want it to be that way.
I want them to feel the same hatred that I feel every time I see that awful baby blue color.
I want them all to revel in the fact that UNC-Cheat allowed at least 9 major NCAA violations to happen right under their nose and refuse to do anything about it.
I want our players to be as fired up over this game as they are going up against Florida State or Notre Dame, because this is our state to defend, and our pride is on the line versus an in-state opponent that looks at us as LOWF.
Of course the Notre Dame game in prime-time television is a HUGE game for the program, and I'm not trying to take anything away from that game. I am just very interested in whether or not the oldest rivalry in North Carolina (Wake Forest defeated North Carolina 6-4 on October 18, 1888 in the first intercollegiate football game played in the state of North Carolina) still holds the same meaning to the players as it once did.
I don't want it to lose that feeling that it once had, because after four long years, I still want to see us stomp those goats into the ground at Kenan Stadium and let it echo through all those empty seats!!!
I just hope that in the creation of the new ACC (which is absolutely necessary), that we don't leave behind what matters the most to the fans: the rivalries and traditions with schools around them.
On the line for the Deacs is the 8th ever sweep of the Big Four in one season, as well as looking to become bowl eligible for the first time since 2008. UNC is also looking to become bowl eligible, and break their current two game losing streak against the Demon Deacons.
This is the 104th all-time meeting between the Tar Heels and the Demon Deacons, with the Heels leading the series 64-37-2.
I want your comments on this article as Wake Forest (or UNC fans) as to why or why not this is a rivalry. Really I just want everybody to share stories about how much they hate North Carolina.
Breakdown by Decade (stats are from UNC perspective)
Per decade
W L T UNC WFU
2000's 3 4 0 23.7 28.0
1990's 9 1 0 33.2 16.1
1980's 6 4 0 26.0 17.5
1970's 7 3 0 23.4 10.8
1960's 4 6 0 16.7 13.0
1950's 5 4 1 12.0 14.5
1940's 4 5 0 12.0 11.0
1930's 9 0 1 20.3 2.6
1920's 6 4 0 23.8 3.8
1910's 10 0 0 22.0 1.2
1900's 2 0 0 17.5 0.0
1890's 1 1 0 20.0 0.5
1880's 1 2 0 15.0 8.0
Last 10 Games (5-5)
All games 2007/10/27 North Carolina 10 - Wake Forest 37 W 2006/10/28 North Carolina 17 - Wake Forest 24 W 2004/11/13 North Carolina 31 - Wake Forest 24 L 2003/11/08 North Carolina 42 - Wake Forest 34 L 2002/10/26 North Carolina 0 - Wake Forest 31 W 2001/11/10 North Carolina 31 - Wake Forest 32 W 2000/09/09 North Carolina 35 - Wake Forest 14 L 1999/11/06 North Carolina 3 - Wake Forest 19 W 1998/10/24 North Carolina 38 - Wake Forest 31 L 1997/10/11 North Carolina 30 - Wake Forest 12 L
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YES!
For people that are not from North Carolina, Duke is the most hated team in the state, but they just don’t understand. Only those that experienced the constant mocking and ignorant cries of UNC fans whenever they won a sporting event can commiserate with me.
This is so true it isn’t even funny. Everyone at my high school was a UNC fan it seemed like. I know 1 fan who actually had connections to the school. If they win, there’s UNC stuff everywhere. If they lose, they pretend like it never happened. It’s one of the most annoying things, pretty much ever. I can’t stand UNC.
The worst would be asking who they played...
“Oh I don’t know, I just know we won and Wake lost” hahahahahaha.
Great stuff you’re bringing to society there bud.
Wake Forest '12
Mother So Dear
I have heard that so many times....
So bad memories. There would be good ones too, if it wasn’t for the blatant denial when they lose.
by willisb_rad2 on Oct 24, 2011 6:13 PM EDT up reply actions
Wake and UNC is definitely a football rivalry. I wish we could get a video that the Wake video coordinator Al Franklin made before the game in Chapel Hill in 2006. It was about winning the “state championship”. Al interviewed former players about the rivalry. Ricky Proehl was interviewed. So was Bill Faircloth (true Deacon Deacon) and a former football player who was in his 90s. Some of the men showed anger. One was almost moved to tears. It was really good stuff.
By the way, UNC fans in Charlotte are even stranger. I meet Tar Heel fans who say, “I went to UNC”. What they mean is they went to UNC-Charlotte.
YES YES YES DEATH TO CHEATER HILL!
Sorry for yelling, but yes this is the only game that matters! Defeat the forces of Darkness from Chapel Hell (although I am having fun calling it Cheater Hill these days)… I too am an alumni from the Winston-Salem area, and I hate Chapel Hill. I hate Duke too, but if the entire campus of Chapel Hill was swallowed up by the earth, I would do a little dance…
My wife went to wake too but hates Duke more than UNC… She is obviously ignorant…
I suspect UNC made sure that we would suffer the most in the rivalry matchups cause its doesnt look so sexy getting their a** kicked by Wake Forest. Arrogant bunch of Carolina ##@#….
Im not from Winston-Salem
And I started off seeing UNC as Wake’s biggest rivals, but then hearing all this talk that it was actually Duke who WF hated most. Are you saying I should revert?
Once again Top of the BBV fantasy league! Team Figging lives on
I hate Duke more than UNC, for sure. Why? 1) Football – I love our dominance over Duke and I dread the year that we lose to them. They always play us tough but somehow we pull it out. 2) Basketball – Duke always has one or two players that I just can’t stand. It’s easy to hate them 3) Alumni – The Duke alums that I have known and worked with are pretty awful. Carolina alums tend to be far less annoying and pretentious.
When it comes to non-alum fans, both teams have awful non-alum fans. UNC just tends to have more of them (especially in North Carolina).
So Duke is my most hated rival, but Carolina is a close second and I want to see them suffer a little more right now because of the NCAA violations.
1) Duke, 2) UNC, 3) NC State...
… 716) Georgia Tech.
I grew up in Winston, followed the same academic track as the author of this fine piece (Mount Tabor, Wake), and started out hating UNC more than Duke. My take is predominantly basketball-oriented. This was back when all three programs were typically strong year-in, year-out. But a couple of things happened to shift my hatred more towards the darker blue:
1) When I was growing up, both UNC and Duke had a large number of annoyingly good/easily hate-able players. Laettner. Cherokee Parks. Rasheed Wallace. Jerry Stackhouse. However, whereas Duke maintained the line of hated players (Wojo, those horribly unlikeable Jay Williams teams), Bill Guthridge basically didn’t recruit people for awhile. Sure, it was fun to mock Kris Lang, but ultimately there wasn’t the vitriol behind it because he was just inept.
2) When I went to Wake, UNC was in its Doherty downswing. Yes, it had Rashad McCants, but it also went something like 6-20 one year. Duke, meanwhile, had a 15 game win streak against us. They broke Justin Gray’s jaw. They ran out J.J. Redick and Josh McBob and Dahntay Jones (my least favorite ACC player of all-time). It was CLEAR that the Wake and Duke players at the time hated one another.
3) And then… bliss. The double-OT foul-a-thon to break the losing streak (aka, the Trent Strickland game). I have never been to another sporting event like it; I doubt I ever will. That was the moment where Duke solidified as the most hated for me.
4) Since then, not much has changed. It seems like Roy has generally recruited fairly likeable players (Harrison Barnes played wheelchair basketball for charity this summer, for Pete’s sake), while K has… Scheyer and 18 different Plumlee’s all of whom talk a huge amount of crap considering they average 2 points a game except when they play us when they both somehow morph into the second, third, and nineteenth comings of Wilt fricking Chamberlain…. GAH. I’m done.
5) My sister ended up going to NC State. Now we have a nice family rivalry, and I admittedly have hated some NC State players over the years (Julius Hodge comes to mind), but the Woofies are so ineptly run that they almost seem lovable in comparison to the twin Death Stars orbiting 15-501.
Lastly, I’d just like to say a big “Eff You” to John Swofford for giving us Georgia Tech as our second basketball “rival.” No one on either side cares about these games. I know that everyone wants to play Duke and UNC twice a year, but we actually SHOULD play Duke and UNC twice a year. I didn’t have a problem with ACC expansion except that it took away our annual home-and-homes with them. Duke is historically our rival, even more than NC State is. Hopefully with this latest round of expansion, Swofford can right this wrong.
I wish we played Duke and UNC twice as well.
But I’m not sure exactly how Swofford is going to work this out. Hopefully he finds a way, but it seems like adding more teams would decrease our games with them.
by willisb_rad2 on Oct 25, 2011 4:25 PM EDT up reply actions
From what I understand...
A couple of basketball options are being tossed around, it seems:
If the ACC stays at 14, then it’s likely to split into two 7-team divisions, with teams playing home-and-homes within the division. It seems a decent bet that we would be placed with Duke-Carolina-State, who have a large enough voting bloc to ensure that they stay together. If geography is used, there are 4 teams south of NC (GT, Clemson, FSU, Miami) and 6 north (VT, UVA, UMD, Pitt, ’Cuse, BC). However, most analysts are speculating that it makes more sense to send Miami north (previous rivalries, everyone has to fly there anyway) than us as the 7th team.
If the ACC expands to 16, then it can split into two 8-team divisions or four 4-team divisions, but either way it’s likely we’re staying with the other three.
4-team divisions: South (GT, Clemson, FSU, Miami), NC (Duke, UNC, NC State, us), Mid-Atlantic (VT, UVA, UMD, Pitt or team to be determined), New England (’Cuse, BC, Pitt or team to be determined, team to be determined).
8-team divisions: Combine South and NC into one division (South) and Mid-Atlantic and New England into one division (North).
Honestly, I’d rather just kick a bunch of schools out to get back to 8 or 9, go to being somewhat (more) irrelevant in football, and go back to a either a true round robin.
I should like to add...
… that the above is pure speculation, but that it seems to be logical and I did, in fact, read it. somewhere on the internet by someone who gets paid to write about college b-ball (although I forget exactly who at the moment).
that would make a lot of sense.
I hadn’t even thought about splitting into divisions.
by willisb_rad2 on Oct 26, 2011 8:24 PM EDT up reply actions
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