The sinking UNC football ship
North Carolina has obviously given up on football.
That much was obvious after the shellacking that the Tar Heels took on Thursday night in Charlottesville.
Mind you, that Virginia team that shut out UNC 23-0 isn't anything close to being a world-beater.
Those 'Hoos beat Wyoming on a missed extra point in overtime, lost to Western Michigan and then got their doors blown off at East Carolina.
They might as well have been the second coming of the Monsters of the Midway as far as Carolina was concerned.
"I can't put into words how disappointed that locker room is," UNC coach John Bunting said after the Virginia game.
"They're a discouraged group of kids right now. I do everything I can to pick them up. Things that happen sometimes out there, we don't have an explanation for. We did some crazy things at times, we also did some good things."
That's the problem with North Carolina football - actually has been since Mack Brown up and left for Texas several years ago.
For every good thing that the Heels do, they do some crazy things - and to me, keeping Bunting on as head coach is the craziest of the crazy things.
I don't see for the life of me how keeping Bunting in that job isn't a sign that the athletics department at UNC just doesn't care about football anymore.
One thing's for sure - the North Carolina football team itself is tired of what quarterback Cam Sexton called "the same speech."
"It's just all about the feeling, sitting around and feeling the same way after these games, it's tough," Sexton said. "It's like always, it's a broken record. You've got to move on, move past it, and work past it. We're not done. We can get to a bowl. I really believe that."
OK, so don't believe that - Carolina is 1-6, and that one came over I-AA Furman.
(Did I mention that it was a 45-42 win over I-AA Furman? Yeah ...)
But at least this is a start.
I mean, somebody has to begin to care before North Carolina can even dream about getting things moving in the right direction again.
- Chris Graham