The legend of undefeated Wake Forest continues Saturday as the No. 9 Demon Deacons head to Chapel Hill to take on the North Carolina Tar Heels in a non-conference game.
Yes. You read that correctly.
Despite the fact that both schools do, in fact, play in the ACC, their game on Saturday will not count toward the conference standings, meaning a Wake loss wouldn’t do anything to prevent what will almost certainly be one of the stranger conference championship matchups in recent years.
So, why are these two in-state rivals playing a non-conference game? Well, the answer ultimately comes down to conference expansion.
Wake and UNC played annually (with the exception of a few years during the World Wars) from 1888 to 2007. But with expansions in the ACC — initially to 12 teams in 2005 and then to 14 in 2013 — the two teams were placed in opposite divisions and given different protected rivalries.
Though they’re scheduled to play an ACC contest next year and ended up facing each other last year with the altered schedule due to COVID-19, they hadn’t previously played a conference matchup since 2015. In an attempt to keep the rivalry prevalent, the schools agreed to play a pair of non-conference games in 2019 and 2021, with Wake Forest taking the first contest in Winston-Salem.
“This is a unique opportunity to play a regional rival in years that fall outside the normal conference rotation,” UNC athletics director Bubba Cunningham said at the time. “We have a long history with Wake Forest that has historical value and will generate interest within our fans.”
Since this is a Very Normal Year in the ACC, we expect that there will be absolutely no shenanigans of any kind during this strange quirk of college football scheduling.