North Carolina Tar Heels: Heading to El Paso facing Stanford
The North Carolina Tar Heels will be finishing their season in EL Paso, TX facing the Cardinal of Stanford
The North Carolina Tar Heels are going bowling. They just aren’t going to the bowl that I thought they would be going to. The team accepted a bid to the Hyundai Sun Bowl, which will be played in El Paso, Texas. The last time the Heels played in the Sun Bowl they lost to Texas in 1994.
Why the Sun Bowl? It had a little something to do with the Virginia Tech Hokies. The Hokies just went down to Orlando where they lost to Clemson in the ACC Championship Game. As a result, a return trip to Orlando seemed unadvisable since the team and its fans had just been there. The deal was struck for the Belk Bowl to get the Hokies and thus the Charlotte game could not host the Tar Heels.
The good thing about the Sun Bowl matchup is the quality of the opponent. Early in the year, the Stanford Cardinal of the Pac-12 looked like a team in the mix behind Heisman contender Christian McCaffrey. The season did not end up that way that way but Stanford (9-3, 6-3) was still eighteenth in the final College Football Playoff rankings.
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So North Carolina will get a good opponent. Unlike Baylor last year, the Cardinal will not likely change their entire game plan to face the Heels. The bad news is that they already play a power running style that has given the Tar Heel defense fits in the past. Ever since the Jim Harbaugh days Stanford has utilized a pro style system to compete with the more spread oriented schools in its conference.
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So it could be a long day for the Heels. Or if they can grab an early lead and commit few turnovers, it may be a good day. The team certainly has plenty of players would want to leave a good last impression to wash out the bad taste of losing to State on the final game of the season. Ryan Switzer, T.J. Logan, and Bug Howard are just a sample of those players. It will also be interesting to see if this is Mitch Trubisky’s last game as well.