College Football Season in North Carolina was a Challenge in 2024

Unlike the relative success of their neighbors to the south, North Carolina football faced its fair share of adversity and defeat.

By Emmet Mahon * Draft Carolina

If some malevolent force had conspired to curse the football teams in North Carolina, the end result would not deviate far from what was experienced in real life. Those teams experienced everything from natural disasters to disasters on the field. Duke, North Carolina, NC State, Wake Forest, and App State dealt with a continuous string of obstacles to a successful season. By the time 2024 had concluded, coaches had to navigate untimely deaths, on field brawls, transfer portal defections, and for three of them, unemployment. It was a season of unprecedented challenges and for players and fans, one that should be forgotten sooner for the better.

Seventh in conference standings might seem like an odd designation for best of class, but that is the banner Duke carries for the North Carolina teams. Like Larry Kroger of the Delta House freshman, somebody had to come in first. Duke was well positioned for a good season. Former Head Coach Mike Elko left a roster that went 8-5 and featured wins over Clemson and NC State and a Birmingham Bowl victory over Troy before accepting the Texas A&M job. New Head Coach Manny Diaz had previous experience at Miami and arrived in Durham after masterminding Penn State’s smothering defense. He had an exciting QB in Maalik Murphy. Big things were expected from Diaz, and he delivered five wins to begin his Blue Devil tenure. Duke lost three of their next four games and hope of an ACC Championship berth faded. Three straight wins closed out the ACC portion of the schedule to finish 5-3 in conference. The Blue Devils have a date with Ole’ Miss in the Gator Bowl. A win over the Lane Kiffin led Rebels will give Diaz a 10 win debut season. The manner in which the season unfolded with such streaky play, having a New Year’s Six Bowl appearance is an encouraging way to head into 2025.

NC State entered 2024 harboring no illusions of an ACC Championship. It was 1979 when their last championship occurred. Head Coach Dave Doeren has been at the helm for 12 seasons and has never reached double digit victories with the Wolfpack. He is 3-5 in bowl games. NC State lost the 2023 Chuck Bednarik Defensive Player of the Year, LB Payton Wilson, to the NFL. It was hardly shocking that they went 6-7 overall and 3-5 in conference. What was shocking is that their middling record was good for a tie for tenth place in the twenty team ACC. Half of their victories came against non P4 out-of-conference opponents. Even their feel good story had a bitter ending. WR Kevin Concepcion electrified fans at Carter-Finley Stadium and earned the ACC Rookie of the Year Award. Concepcion transferred to Texas A&M in December. The Wolfpack’s appearance in the Military Bowl was a fiasco, as well. NC State surrendered a touchdown with 1:33 remaining in the 4th quarter to lose to ECU in a game that had a brawl erupt resulting in eight player ejections. The embarrassing end to the season and the loss of Concepcion caused the media to speculate that Doeren’s time in Raleigh was over. However, Athletic Director Boo Corrigan announced he would return. It is reasonable that the leash on Doeren will be very short in 2025.

No program’s woes typified the plight of the NC group more than North Carolina. They lost QB Max Johnson, who was making his first start after transferring to Chapel Hill, to injury in the team’s first contest. Despite his absence, the Tarheels won their first three games. On September 21st they suffered a season altering loss to James Madison. North Carolina didn’t lose, they were obliterated, 70-50. Confidence in iconic Head Coach Mack Brown evaporated quickly. The JMU loss was the start of four consecutive defeats. The last, on October 12th, was the cruelest of all, coming hours after teammate Tylee Craft lost his two-year battle with cancer hours before kickoff. The Tarheels showed remarkable resiliency in claiming their next three contests and making them bowl eligible. Once again, the football fates turned on Brown and his team losing their last two ACC tilts and then an uneventful 27-14 loss to UConn in the Fenway Bowl. Brown was fired before the bowl game, but it was his replacement that stole all the sports headlines. Six-time Super Bowl Champion coach Bill Belichick was hired to get things moving in the right direction. South Carolina may have gotten the better of the play on the field, but the Tarheels won the headlines for all of North Carolina.

The 2021 ACC Championship game must feel like ancient history to Wake Forest and its fanbase. The Demon Deacons were coming off a 7-1 conference season and an Atlantic Division title. They followed that up with a respectable 8-5 season, but the conference record of 3-5 started displaying leaks in the dam. 2023 produced a dismal 1-7 ACC record and 4-8 overall. Wake Forest was hoping for a turnaround in 2024. It did not occur. They finished with one more conference win than in 2023, but the same 4-8 overall record. If there was a silver lining, it was that almost nobody noticed because of Florida State’s mind boggling collapse from conference champion to finishing dead last at 1-7. Head Coach Dave Clawson noticed Wake Forest’s plight and resigned at the conclusion of the season. Washington State’s Jake Dickert was named to replace him in December. Dickert faces a laundry list of challenges in rebuilding the Demon Deacons, not the least of which was losing three offensive starters to the transfer portal. The climb back to respectability will be steep but the expectations will be minimal.

Even everybody’s favorite underdog, App State could not escape the bad vibes floating across the state of North Carolina. A 38-10 win over East Tennessee State was a good way to begin play. The joy was short lived. The following week, the Mountaineers traveled to Clemson to play rent-a-victim and played their role well in losing 66-20. A victory at ECU and a loss at home to South Alabama had App State at .500. Unimaginable circumstances sent the program reeling. In late September, Hurricane Helene wreaked devastation upon western Carolina. App State’s home of Boone was among the areas that suffered severe flooding. Their game against Liberty on September 28th was cancelled. Boone became virtually uninhabitable, and the team had substantially greater worries than practicing and playing. The emotional toll and disruption to routine made it difficult for the Mountaineers to establish any consistency and they reached the end of an season unforgettable for all the wrong reasons with a Sunbelt East Conference record of 3-5, placing them in next to last place. Like North Carolina and Wake Forest, App State made a coaching change following the season. Dowell Loggains replaced Shawn Clark at the head coaching helm. Next season will be better if only for the lack of distraction.

Football records are a year-to-year proposition. Unless one is an elite program, record fluctuations are common. Bragging rights are transitory and the team on the wrong end hopes for a quick reversal of fortune. It is hard to imagine that North Carolina teams could be dealt a worse hand in 2025 than the one they were handed in 2024. In sports, hope springs eternal. In North Carolina, hope will be a much needed commodity.