CHAPEL HILL — There’s prime real estate where the North Carolina football team has set up shop.
As the Tar Heels (3-0 overall, 3-0 Atlantic Coast Conference) prepare for Saturday night’s road assignment against Florida State (1-3, 0-3), they have gained a growing presence in the national perception that has moved them among exclusive company.
Their ranking near the top of the Associated Press poll at No. 5 has unlocked the high-rent district of college football.
“We’ve talked to the guys about, ‘We need to buy a house in this neighborhood,’ ” North Carolina coach Mack Brown said. “We haven’t been here much.”
It’s a newfound territory and trendy trajectory for the Tar Heels, the program’s highest ranking in 23 seasons, since also holding the No. 5 spot in November 1997. And yet the veteran Brown has been here before. He was in his first stint as coach of the team the last time North Carolina climbed to such a lofty poll position.
Now, another national television audience awaits Saturday night’s matchup with the Seminoles, the third weekend in a row North Carolina has been placed on that stage by ABC.
The Tar Heels will arrive off a statement type of performance on offense, after ringing up their best scoring output ever against a ranked opponent and defeating Virginia Tech 56-45, as Michael Carter and Javonte Williams ran wild and the offense amassed 656 total yards with quarterback Sam Howell operating the controls.
There’s tangible momentum at work in the early stages of this coronavirus-complicated season, with Brown saying “it’s fun, it’s good for recruiting, it’s good for our fans to have some bragging rights” about North Carolina’s fast-rising profile. But along with that there’s the sense of having a considerable amount to prove, too, as the new kid on the block in the top five.
From 3-9 and 2-9 during former coach Larry Fedora’s final two seasons, to 7-6 and the Military Bowl victory under Brown last year, to achieving its first 3-0 start this season in nine years, North Carolina’s rebuild has proceeded quickly.
Brown used “we’re ahead of schedule” this week in describing the progress, while identifying overall depth and experience in certain places on defense as areas for improvement the Tar Heels need to address.
“It’s definitely cool to see that North Carolina is ranked No. 5 in the country,” Howell said, “just seeing how far this program has come in just a couple of years. But yeah, I mean, we definitely are aware that a lot of people probably don’t think we should be that high in the rankings, so we just want to go out there and prove people wrong.
“But really, honestly, it’s really not about what other people are saying. It’s about us. We know inside our locker room, inside our team, that rankings right now really don’t mean anything. We’ve still got to go out there and win all the games we play. So we’re really just trying to take it one game at a time.”
The Tar Heels checked in at No. 18 in the rankings when their season opened last month against Syracuse. Across recent weeks, they’ve vaulted from 12th to eighth after surviving Boston College on the road, and then from eighth to fifth after outracing Virginia Tech, which was ranked No. 19 entering last weekend’s game at Kenan Stadium.
Brown has characterized North Carolina’s defeat of Virginia Tech as a meaningful victory that “gave us a chance to prove that we can be good.”
The Tar Heels’ 399 rushing yards marked their most productivity on the ground in any game since 1993 and best effort against an ACC opponent since 1998. North Carolina scored its most points ever against a Virginia Tech team and stopped its four-game losing skid to the Hokies, who had been 13-3 against the Tar Heels since joining the ACC in 2004.
“It’s pretty cool to see us top-five in the country,” North Carolina linebacker Chazz Surratt said, “but at the same time, it’ll be really quick to get taken away. As soon as we lose a game, people will be on us. So I think just staying the course, playing one game at a time, coming out and practicing hard, playing hard, I think that’s all we can do to manage that.
“I don’t think looking ahead will get us anywhere, and thinking we’re better than we are won’t do anything either. So I think just staying the course, playing hard football, going out there and playing hard every time we come out there, is about all we can do.”
Take a look around at North Carolina’s nearby scenery in the AP rankings. No. 1 Clemson and No. 2 Alabama, No. 3 Georgia and No. 4 Notre Dame, all name-brand programs within the Tar Heels’ reach, at least in terms of their poll proximity.
Ohio State, Oklahoma State, Cincinnati, Penn State and Florida sit behind the Tar Heels to round out the top 10.
“When people put up the top five and they see the other four, they say, ‘Yeah I got it,’ ” Brown said. “And then they see North Carolina and they say, ‘What are they doing in there? Where’d that come from? Come on, man, they’re not that good.’
“We want it to be where when they put us in there, we’ve earned that right. And if we don’t play well, we’ll be out fast. Other people drop a little bit if they don’t play well. That will not be our case, because I don’t think that we’ve earned the right over time. Maybe we are, in the first three weeks, one of the top five teams in the country. But we haven’t been over time, and we were when I was here before.”
This article originally appeared on Times-News: Howdy, neighbor: UNC joins exclusive company with lofty football ranking
