North Carolina Central’s visit to Kenan Stadium this weekend marks the annual matchup between UNC and a Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) team. In college football’s era of segregated divisions, the Tar Heels typically play one game per season against the FCS. Any more than that is derisively referred to as a “cupcake” schedule.
That’s because FCS games are as close to an automatic win as it gets for most respectable programs in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). Even some of the worst Carolina teams in recent memory have had no trouble in their FCS contests: The 2017 Tar Heels finished 3-9 but still beat FCS Western Carolina 65-10. In 2018, UNC was 2-9 but they steamrolled Western again by a score of 49-26.
Surprise victories between FCS and FBS don’t happen often. In Chapel Hill, it’s been nearly a quarter century.
The year was 1999 and Carolina athletics was going through a period of transition.
Chapel Hill had just two years earlier let go of two key pillars of the campus: men’s basketball head coach Dean Smith and athletic director John Swofford. Smith had announced his retirement just weeks before the start of the 1997-98 season, clearing the way for longtime assistant Bill Guthridge. This came just months after Swofford left to become commissioner of the ACC.
“It was pretty turbulent,” said Art Chansky of Chapelboro. “It was not what we are used to from Carolina athletics.”
On the football field, the Tar Heels were still reeling from the loss of their own legendary leader, Mack Brown, who had left for Texas after the 1997 regular season ended. And like the men in basketball, the football team had to hire from within, promoting defensive coordinator Carl Torbush to head coach. Torbush had led the Tar Heels to a Gator Bowl victory on New Year’s Day 1998, but his program had been on a downward spiral since then.
The 1998 season began with three straight losses, including a shock opening game against Miami-Ohio at Kenan Stadium. Carolina eventually managed to qualify for a bowl, but no such hope existed in 1999. After a 1-1 start, the Tar Heels had lost five straight games, including a 45-7 loss to a Maryland team that finished second to last in the ACC.
Next up for Carolina was Furman, a perennial contender in what was then Division I-AA—later FCS (the FBS was called Division IA). The Paladins were ranked 12th in the I-AA poll and were on their way to the Southern Conference championship.
Still, surely the Tar Heels could flex their power conference muscles all over the football field, right?
“Furman scored one and then another,” recalled Chansky, who was there that day. “And we fell into a hole. (This was) at a time when we weren’t scoring many points. So it looked like we were about to be in trouble.”
In fact, Furman built up a 21-0 lead, which was only cut by a field goal from Carolina in the last minute of the first half. The Paladins scored another touchdown in the fourth quarter. The damage was done and the result was decisive: 28-3 for the visitors.
“It was like a funeral,” Chansky said of the atmosphere at Kenan Stadium.
The final statistics paint a grim picture: Carolina managed just 11 first downs, while the Paladins totaled 461 yards – nearly 300 of them on the ground. The Tar Heels completed six passes and were a meager 3 of 15 on third down attempts.
“It was hard to tell,” wrote Jeffrey Shelman of the News & Observer afterwards, “which team supposedly plays in Division IA.”
After the game, UNC athletic director Dick Baddour admitted that the situation regarding Torbush’s future in Chapel Hill had changed. The loss to the Paladins seemed to be the deciding factor, and Torbush stayed with Carolina for just one more season before being replaced by John Bunting.
“You really shouldn’t lose to a team like that at Kenan Stadium,” Chansky said. “Or anywhere, really, if you’re Carolina.”
To the program’s credit, that’s exactly what hasn’t happened in the quarter century since: This day in late October was the last time the Tar Heels lost to an FCS opponent. Ironically, one of the closest decisions during that span was against Furman, when Carolina narrowly eked out a 45-44 victory. The two teams haven’t met since.
North Carolina Central is usually a strong FCS team, but a 41-19 home loss to Elon last weekend suggests the Eagles may be weaker than usual this year. But if this Saturday’s game stays close longer than Tar Heel fans in Kenan would like, it will be hard not to think back to 1999 and the Paladins’ dominance. It was a tough day in a tough year, all in a tough era on campus.
“Every Saturday is the same for North Carolina,” Shelman wrote at the time. “There’s a loss in football and a lot of guesswork.”
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