The Game Operations department is ready for Saturday and the Tar Heels’ game against Notre Dame: Staffing from concessions to parking has been ramped up post-Covid, gatekeepers have brand new ticket scanners, and the Revel XP tailgating consortium is five years into presenting tented villages around Kenan Stadium for its biggest year ever. Former Tar Heel offensive lineman Harris Barton is even helping host a gathering for Tar Heel lettermen in the quad around the Bell Tower.
The retailers on Franklin Street are ready: Sutton’s Drug Store is stocked up on hamburgers, and Alumni Hall is ready with jerseys, hats, face paint and temporary tattoos. The Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership is blocking off Henderson Street beginning at 12:30 Saturday with live music, games and food from Linda’s Bar & Grill.
Lower level seats across various online ticket brokers are going for four and five times face value. And that weather forecast is sublime: Seventy-six and sunny for Saturday afternoon in the Southern Part of Heaven.
“There’s definitely more of a buzz around campus, you’re playing a national program, one everyone knows about,” Tar Heel safety Gio Biggers says.
“Notre Dame, it’s a storied program,” adds defensive tackle Ray Vohasek. “They have movies, Rudy, who didn’t watch that stuff? It’s exciting to play them the third year in a row. ABC game, it’s what you wish for growing up as a kid.”
The hors d’oeuvres of a home opener against an opponent from the SWAC and road trips to Boone and Atlanta to face Sun Belt teams have been dispatched. Now the main course of the 2022 football season commences with the arrival of pseudo-ACC partner Notre Dame in Kenan Stadium this weekend and then Virginia Tech the next Saturday.
The Tar Heels have had an open date to rest and rehabilitate a handful of injured players, self-scout themselves and continue to fine-tune what’s working (they are No. 4 nationally in scoring offense and No. 1 in net punting) and develop what’s been up-and-down (the defense has been stout at times, porous at others). And Coach Mack Brown and his staff have hammered home the idea of finishing—when you’re ahead 41-21 against Appalachian State and 21-3 against Georgia State, seal the deal.
“Both of those games, we could have taken over,” Brown says. “We had the momentum both games. You have…
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