Tar Heel Blog
Tar Heel born, bred, and working on that third thing
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Which Diamond Heel landed in the best spot?
The 2026 MLB draft wrapped up last weekend, with six Tar Heels getting selected by a major league team. Somewhat surprisingly, Gavin Gallaher wasn’t one of them; the clutch-hitting junior wasn’t selected, and will return to UNC next season to further hone his skills (and presumably make some decent NIL money). Five different MLB teams […]
Michael Malone adds Gonzaga assistant Jorge Sanz to UNC coaching staff
It’s been three-and-a-half months since Michael Malone was announced as UNC’s head men’s basketball coach, and it looks like the NBA champion has finished assembling his staff. Gonzaga beat writer Theo Lawson of The Spokesman-Review reported on Thursday that assistant coach and director of basketball operations Jorge Sanz is set to join the Tar Heels. […]
Should UNC leave the ACC if offered?
Congress is in the process of trying to solve the problems that the NCAA refuses to fix — leveling the NIL/transfer portal playing field, and figuring how to navigate realignment. Focusing on realignment specifically, one of the options on the table is capping the Big Ten and SEC to a certain amount of schools per […]
Where the “Protect College Sports Act” currently sits and how that might impact UNC
Congress loves nothing more than a chance to aim legislation at targets less popular than, well, Congress. Senators Ted Cruz (TX) and Maria Cantwell (WA) think they’ve hit paydirt in that respect, putting the NCAA in general — and the SEC and B1G in particular — in their legislative crosshairs. With the help of self-styled […]
What UNC football game are you most excited for in 2026?
While it’s probably still quite hot and summer-y wherever you are, we aren’t that far from the start of the college football. The North Carolina Tar Heels’ season will begin in just a little over a month, when they take on TCU in Dublin, Ireland. Last year, infamously, things did not go as planned for […]
Where do you think Carolina Football will finish in the ACC?
It’s “talkin’ season,” as Steve Spurrier used to call it, and to riff on an old NASCAR adage, “if you ain’t provokin’, you ain’t talkin’.” In the wake of the ACC’s media event last week, pundits start rolling out various predictions and hot takes. Al on Monday highlighted ESPN’s most aggressive agent provocateur, Paul Finebaum, […]
What quirk of a college sport do you find most notable?
Like many of you I’m sure, I spent a lot of my last month watching the Men’s World Cup. One of the knockout games in particular — I don’t remember which and it doesn’t really matter — I was watching with some friends, and the game went to extra time. And if you watched the […]
UNC wrestling adds highly-ranked recruit to 2027 class
UNC wrestling head coach Rob Koll got a late pickup for his 2027 class when Braylon Reynolds committed to the Tar Heels this past weekend. Reynolds, a senior out of Brownsburg, Indiana, has mostly wrestled in the 144lb category; he last competed in the Fargo Nationals in July. He made it to the championship match […]
ESPN names Caleb Wilson “most electric rookie” from NBA Summer League
The NBA Summer League has officially concluded after the Golden State Warriors took down the Memphis Grizzlies to win the Summer League title. Less than 24 hours after the final game ended, outlets began dropping their mild to hot takes from what they saw over the last few weeks, and naturally Caleb Wilson has come […]
Center Christo Kelly will be key for UNC’s offense to thrive
Two players touch the ball every play: the center and the quarterback. A bad snap can kill a drive, and that assumes the QB or a running back manage to recover it. A bad line call can kill a drive, and that assumes the QB survives the missed assignment. An inability to stand up a […]
The optics for UNC Football this season could be horrible
It was just your basic, boilerplate question at ACC Kickoff. One where a reporter just tries to get the coach to talk positively about their team, and one that just about every coach gets during these types of events. This was the answer Bill Belichick decided to go with. Not “a much better commitment on […]
Bill Belichick is talking a better game in 2026, but he and UNC still need to prove it
Earlier this week, the annual ACC Kickoff media days event was held and, as all coaches are, Bill Belichick was in attendance. Following his infamously bad debut season in charge of North Carolina, Belichick was talking up improvements the team has made going in 2026, saying they were “night and day” ahead of where the […]
Is Pat Narduzzi right about the ACC?
There’s a healthy debate to be had about the usefulness of conference media days. Yes, they give outlets a chance to generate fresh content ahead of the season, but so many coaches and players fall back on the same generic soundbites each year that we rarely learn anything of value. Every now and then, though, […]
A 24-team College Football Playoff could be cool, but the system they’re going to pick won’t be
Basically ever since the first ever edition of the College Football Playoff, the powers that be have been plotting — secretly and sometimes not so secretly — on how to make it bigger. They eventually succeeded a few years ago when it went from four to 12 teams, and in the past couple months, the […]
What should UNC do if the SEC breaks off from the NCAA?
Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger reported on Friday that the SEC is considering breaking off from the NCAA and operating as its own entity if the conference isn’t satisfied with legislative action to regulate the college sports landscape. Dellenger writes: “Plan B,” as some have referred to it, is a self-governance model in which the conference […]
Tar Heels in the NBA: Las Vegas Summer League Recap 2.0
The Las Vegas Summer League has finished its “regular” season, and all that is left is the four-team playoff and a bunch of consolation games for the other 26 squads. As mentioned after the weekend, the North Carolina has quite a few players represented, so lets take a look at Tar Heels (and former Tar […]
ABS Coming to College Baseball?
The thing about technology is that when one entity sees something work well, then everyone wants it. For a few years Major League Baseball has been experimenting with Automated Balls and Strikes — some call them Robo-umps — to try and figure out a way to create consistency throughout a sport where subjectivity can creep […]
How UNC’s football schedule looks through the lens of the predictive metrics
You’d think computers, looking at the same set of returning and departing players, production gained and production lost, would tend to agree on the prospects of a team heading into a season. For example, the three most prominent predictive metrics, SP+, FPI, and FEI, all rank Louisville at 27th preseason. Not so with UNC football. […]
ACC changes up football tiebreakers
Think back to last football season. Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to think about North Carolina’s season, which was somehow both unforgettable and very forgettable. I’m more asking you to think about what happened in the ACC as a whole. As you might remember, a very weird conference season ended with a […]
Jim Phillips speaks at ACC Kickoff
The vibe around the ACC’s annual summer kickoff event is very different than last year. The best way to describe the 2025 ACC Kickoff was “all Belichick all the time.” The rooms in Charlotte were teeming with anticipation over the Super Bowl winner’s arrival into college football, and it created arguably the largest press conference […]
What Tar Heel story do you want to see told next?
I’m going to say something maybe a little controversial: most sports documentaries are really, really bad. It’s nobody’s fault in particular, and maybe I’m a little too exacting because I’m a writer who loves a well-told story, but it’s true nonetheless that while sports are chock-full of great stories at every level, the people who […]
Caleb Wilson is proving he’s a winner on and off the court at NBA Summer League
It’s no secret that former UNC star Caleb Wilson is a winner. We’ve knew that before he committed to UNC, we knew that while he was at UNC, and now he is proving it at the next level. Setting aside the Chicago Bulls win/loss column in the NBA Summer League (seriously, you don’t want me […]
Looking ahead to 2027’s men’s professional drafts for UNC athletics
In the past, especially for the NFL Draft, I’ve written look-ahead articles that preview the pro prospects still on UNC rosters and what their outlook is for the next 365 days. With no UNC players picked in the 2026 NFL Draft, such an article didn’t make sense, but now that UNC has produced 2 NBA […]
Should Drake Powell have stayed at UNC?
First things first: this sort of question tends to generate answers based on one of two perspectives: what we as fans would prefer for our own viewing pleasure versus what we as fans think is the best outcome for one of our own. Both are valid perspectives, up to a point. Last season as a […]
2026 Preseason rankings don’t know what to make of UNC football
Whatever your hopes and expectations for next season, there’s a respected preseason ranking out there for you. Last week, we reviewed the first two sets of power rankings to drop, Phil Steele’s and Bill Connelly’s SP+. Steele and Connelly are in rough agreement on UNC’s preseason ranking, both in the ACC and the FBS division. […]
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