As the North Carolina Tar Heels and Baylor Bears prepare to meet in the Russell Athletic Bowl — one of the more attractive matchups of the bowl season — it’s worth recalling a time when both schools stood tall.
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The previous two seasons, Baylor won the Big 12 Conference, but North Carolina had not yet emerged from its slumber to become a force in the ACC. In the 1970s, North Carolina won ACC championships in 1971, 1972, and 1977. Baylor won the Southwest Conference in 1974.
This 2015 season is notable in that it has brought Baylor and North Carolina together on the same bowl stage. The quality of this matchup is noticeable, but this is a clash which is appetizing because of its novelty; it’s not a game enhanced by the brand names of its participants.
This isn’t USC versus Ohio State in the Rose Bowl. This isn’t Nebraska versus Florida State in the Orange Bowl. This isn’t Notre Dame versus Alabama in the Sugar Bowl.
That’s okay.
The newness of UNC-Baylor is a feature, not a bug. What this newness shows, however, is that these schools have rarely enjoyed a shared year of prosperity akin to 2015.
In fact, they’ve shared a better college football season only one time.
As shown above, Baylor and North Carolina narrowly missed sharing a triumphant season on a few select occasions in the past. If North Carolina’s 2015 season had instead taken place a year ago, the 2014 season would have been the best in the unified histories of the Bears and Tar Heels. As it is, the schools — which couldn’t quite synchronize their most successful seasons in the 1970s — have found it hard to be great in the same calendar year. This season is an exception, and only one year stands out even more in this regard.
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In one beautiful year, Baylor and North Carolina produced 10-1 regular seasons, complete with outright conference championships forged by perfect records in league play.
No, this wasn’t 1922.
In that season, both the Bears and Heels won conference championships with perfect league records, but UNC’s was not an outright title in the old Southern Conference. Baylor did well, but finished at 8-3.
The only year better than both 1922 and 2015 for Baylor and North Carolina as a tandem of college football schools was 1980.
The Bears threw in an odd clunker of a loss to San Jose State, but they drilled the Southwest Conference to make their way to a second Cotton Bowl under longtime coach Grant Teaff. The Tar Heels got smacked by one of Barry Switzer’s great Oklahoma teams with J.C. Watts at quarterback, but they ran the table in the ACC. Carolina and Baylor didn’t play each other in a bowl game at the end of the 1980 season, but as is the case in 2015, their bowl games occurred within a 20-hour period in the same football-mad state.
There are more points of symmetry between 1980 and 2015 when comparing UNC and Baylor in the postseason. For one thing, North Carolina received the shorter end of the stick in terms of its bowl placement.
In 1980, Carolina’s ACC title didn’t lead to a New Year’s Day game. The Tar Heels played in the Bluebonnet Bowl on New Year’s Eve against Texas. They defeated the Longhorns in Houston. Roughly 15 hours after that game ended, just up the way in Dallas, Baylor played on the big stage in the 1981 Cotton Bowl against Bear Bryant and Alabama. The Bears were thrashed, but they got a moment in the sun, something Carolina lacked.
In 2015, Baylor’s 9-3 record appropriately landed the Bears outside the New Year’s Six, behind the top three teams in the Big 12. North Carolina’s 11-2 record and ACC Coastal Division title ought to have given the Tar Heels an NY6 ticket, but North Carolina became yet another victim of a now-familiar pattern in college football: A team which lost its conference title game suffered in a chase for an at-large NY6 (formerly BCS) bowl bid. A competitor which did not play in (and therefore, didn’t lose) a 13th game leapfrogged UNC in the ACC’s bowl pecking order. Florida State is in the NY6 and the Peach Bowl versus Houston.
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There’s one other primary way in which the 1980 Baylor and North Carolina seasons — championship seasons — are brought together.
Two of the greatest defensive players in football history powered each team to a lofty height.
Before he won Super Bowl XX with the 1985 Chicago Bears (man, I can’t wait for the 30 for 30 on that team in late January), Mike Singletary led the 1980 Baylor team to the Cotton Bowl and the Southwest Conference title.
Baylor allowed more than 15 points in only two regular season games in 1980. One was the loss to San Jose State. The other was a game against the SWC team which would rise to prominence in the 1981 and 1982 seasons, thanks to an influx of cold, hard cash: SMU. Baylor managed to fend off Southern Money, 32-28, en route to its unblemished conference record. Singletary set the standard which enabled the Bears to remain a step ahead of standard-bearing Texas, defending champion Houston, and the rest of the SWC.
North Carolina’s defensive legend was none other than Lawrence Taylor.
North Carolina couldn’t solve Oklahoma’s wishbone attack and Watts, one of the offense’s greatest practitioners. There’s no shame in that — few teams ever managed to slow down the Sooners at that point in time. Other than that decisive loss against the Sooners, North Carolina’s defense didn’t suffer a single bad game in 1980.
The Tar Heels had what could best be described as a bad 20-minute stretch against Duke (three touchdowns allowed), but they dominated the first and fourth quarters of a 44-21 victory. UNC didn’t quite smother a Clemson team which was one year away from ripening into a national champion, but the Tar Heels’ defense still did well to earn a 24-19 win on the road in Death Valley. In every other non-OU game from 1980, including the Bluebonnet Bowl win over Texas, Taylor and the rest of Carolina’s defense flourished. UNC held every opponent but one — Furman — to a single-digit point total. The Paladins scored 13 points.
North Carolina allowed an average of 10.8 points per game in 1980, including (not excluding) Oklahoma’s 41 points. Beaten by a truly elite team — the Sooners finished No. 3 in the final poll following an Orange Bowl win over No. 2 Florida State — North Carolina had no reason to regret its performance against Oklahoma. The Tar Heels, in their other 11 games from 1980, exhibited one brief lapse on defense and barely made any other mistakes on that side of the ball.
No wonder North Carolina finished its season 11-1.
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In 1980, Baylor recorded the first 10-win season in school history. North Carolina went 11-1 for the second time in its existence.
Baylor rose to prominence behind Mike Singletary, North Carolina thanks to Lawrence Taylor.
Both teams answered every challenge in their respective conferences — for Baylor, this was the Bears’ last outright conference title before the 2013 team broke through. In Chapel Hill, 1980 remains North Carolina’s last outright ACC football championship.
Two schools face each other on Tuesday, trying to make a special memory in football histories largely devoid of mountaintop moments.
In 1980, however, Baylor and North Carolina fulfilled their potential. Over a third of a century later, the Bears and Tar Heels hope they won’t have to wait nearly as long for another period of prosperity.
