By: David Pérez (@davidclimb3)
Winning a National Championship in the CFSL isn’t easy. Heck, just getting a win can be monumental. North Carolina, however, put everything together to make a winning run this season. That championship didn’t come easily, though. They were the third seed in the playoffs after narrowly winning the ACC. Seeing this compared to the domination of conference champions Oklahoma and Auburn, who were both undefeated in their conference and had only one regular-season loss between the two of them, begs the question: What was different about this UNC team that got it done?
To understand any winning team, you need to understand how they got there. In Season 22, North Carolina went 4-4, winning two playoff games before getting knocked out in the semi-final against Miami. This left them hopeful for Season 23, but they still had a lot of work to do. They started by bringing in quarterback Cole Mantell from the waived Michigan State, and had a great recruiting class highlighted by tight end Frankie Frederick and cornerback Dave Axis. This meant North Carolina had the talent; now they just needed to execute.
North Carolina had no easy schedule. They had to open against one of the hottest teams in the league in Oklahoma, which didn’t go so well for the Heels. Oklahoma won that game 37-20, giving North Carolina a bit of a reality check. “We knew the Oklahoma game was going to be a huge test for us this season,” Athletic Director Daniel Gunn told me in an interview. “But we used it as motivation to get better… We learned who we were as a squad and where we needed to get better.” The rest of the out-of-conference games went fairly smoothly for Gunn’s Tar Heels, with three-score wins over both Florida and Oregon. This left them at 2-1 going into ACC conference play.
Now I’ll be the first to tell you that the ACC is no joke. Generational powerhouses like Florida State and Miami are always good, while relative newcomers Virginia Tech and Clemson were taking blood whenever they could.
Conference play went much like the start of the season for UNC. They dropped their first game to Clemson by three points, a heartbreaker for the hopeful heels. “The Clemson game helped the coaching staff recognize some of the flaws in our settings, and we were able to adapt and improve after that game,” coach Gunn told me. Despite the setback, the Tar Heels adapted and ran away with the conference title. The other four teams went down with only Virginia Tech coming within three points, and the Tar Heels had punched their playoff ticket!
The Tar Heels had a choice to make as the third seed in the playoffs. They had their choice of opponents and ended up settling on Penn State. The Nittany Lions consequently received the 14th seed, but they put up a fight. North Carolina escaped in a 48-45 victory, pitting them against the Colorado Buffaloes in the second round.
The Buffaloes handled business against USC and had momentum going into the quarterfinal match, but UNC once again escaped in a one-score game, 52-47.
In the semifinal, the Tar Heels got a small break from the thrillers, beating Alabama by ten, putting the Heels in the final against the reigning champions, the Miami Hurricanes.
When talking about what went into gameplanning, Coach Gunn told me about how they “had a couple of settings that we knew would perform well and decided which set to use based on how we wanted to exploit our opponents.” He even said that “Towards the back quarter of the season, we stuck with the same offensive settings and rode those to the championship.”
After going through the gauntlet and finding the perfect settings for the squad, the Tar Heels made it to the ship, and they put on a show. QB Cole Mantell threw for 367 yards and had two total touchdowns with no interceptions. HB Carver Clark continued to be the bellcow back. He had 30 touches, 133 rushing yards, and two total touchdowns. The Heels won 39 to 25, winning their first-ever CFSL National Championship.
“This year felt different from the beginning,” coach Gunn told me, “…the team rallied all offseason and were determined to make it all the way. Between our core group that we brought back from Season 22 and the key off-season additions, this was the best Tar Heel team to hit the field.”
The morale was high, the talent was there, and the Tar Heels delivered. To answer the question from the start, though, it wasn’t the exceptional talent or hype that won it for North Carolina; they dropped two games in the regular season after all. It was the combination of everything happening at the right time. I’ve learned a lot about this league throughout my first five seasons, and the biggest thing I’ve learned sums up this North Carolina season perfectly. The biggest key to victory, both for North Carolina and past champions, is persistence and hard work; with those, any team can win any game. Congrats to the Tar Heels.
