An interesting event occurred Saturday afternoon in Chapel Hill...a North Carolina basketball and football game's times intersected. While no one would mistake the popularity of the (as of 11/16/08) No. 25 football team in the NCAA with unanimous preseason No. 1 basketball team, it was interesting to see how the once-obvious distinction has been blurred. On more than one occasion I've been asked to consider if I would rather North Carolina be a football school or a basketball school. And while my answer has usually been basketball due to UNC's traditional finishes in the two sports, the 2008 UNC pigskin action has begun to wet my appetite for becoming a football power.
But I digress.
Many UNC fans were left with a choice: basketball or football? This weekend's choice was a fairly easy one, even if it was the first game of basketball season. Picking to watch North Carolina at Maryland, what some were calling "the most important game for UNC in five years" or "the biggest game for UNC this decade" was the right call since the men's basketball team faced a creampuff (the Penn Quakers). It's become a bit of an overstated cliche to say these things since the exact same things were uttered for the Virginia Tech and Notre Dame games earlier this season, but the sentiment was understandable since UNC seemed to have an ACC Championship appearance within its grasp. It was definitely odd, however to hear "flip it back to football" and "let's see if the commercials are over" when the basketball game was on.
It would have been far more interesting the see what the consensus would have been had the basketball game been a more interesting non-conference matchup (say Kentucky, Michigan State, Texas or Notre Dame), but it was interesting enough to see a sport other than basketball take precedence, even if it was for just one day.
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