After a tough lesson at Wake Forest, UNC had better be ready for App State's 'football culture'

The Tar Heels had better get up for an experienced, talented App State team

Of all of the curious things that happened surrounding North Carolina’s loss at Wake Forest might have been this quote from safety Myles Dorn.

“I think getting up for the teams that don’t have much football culture is the biggest thing,” he said. “I don’t think it will be hard no more.”

That’s a heck of a statement from a player in a program that went 5-18 over the past two years and perhaps illustrates some of the attitude that led to two straight last-place finishes in the Coastal Division.

The Deacons, meanwhile, have won three straight bowl games while navigating a perilous Atlantic Division. BB&T Field isn’t always known for a rowdy environment, but on Friday night, it was at its best, with fans on their feet until the final whistle.

Football culture or not, everyone’s program in the state certainly has a culture of wanting to beat the Tar Heels as badly as anyone.

It was a tough lesson, but a necessary one for a Carolina program in the midst of shifting its culture under Mack Brown.

“I think that the biggest thing is as coaches and as players, we all have to grow together and understand that we're not good enough to beat anybody unless we're playing with passion,” he said. “We had the chance to come back, but at this stage in our program, we can't roll it out there against anybody and that's hard.”

That’s an especially important lesson to have learned going into Saturday’s game against an Appalachian State, which has built the premier football culture in the entire state over the past five years. The Mountaineers have certainly had the premier winning culture, going 40-11 over the past four seasons with three Sun Belt championships and four bowl victories.

“Look at what their seniors accomplished the last few years, it's the best in our state,” Brown said. “App State’s good enough they could be in the ACC. They're that talented.”

And App State has built its program with 2- and 3-star recruits. Some got looks from Carolina and other ACC programs, while others were told they weren’t good enough to play at the Power Five level. It would be awfully easy for the Tar Heels to take a look at recruiting rankings and the Sun Belt schedule and a 30,000-seat stadium and dismiss the Mountaineers.

Brown, who began his first head-coaching job at App State in 1983, won’t allow it.

He knows the program’s history, from Jerry Moore building the program into a national powerhouse to Scott Satterfield leading the transition to FBS, where the Mountaineers haven’t skipped a beat.

He also knows that App State fans have waited decades for this matchup, with the only meeting between the programs coming in 1940. ACC programs have largely done their best to avoid the Mountaineers, and chances like this don’t come around often.

Passion was lacking for Carolina on Friday night in Winston-Salem, and if it’s lacking again on Saturday, the Tar Heels are in for a harsh lesson in football culture.

This is a program used to playing — and winning — in the postseason. App State has gone to Penn State and Tennessee and pushed them to the limit in their houses in the past two seasons.

Plenty of Mountaineer fans have shown up in those houses, too, and they'll show up in Chapel Hill on Saturday with dreams of two Power Five victories leading to a New Year's Six bowl berth.

Brown is confident that won’t be the case again after his team learned a tough lesson against the Deacons.

“Sunday's meeting was really, really good,” he said. “No finger pointing and there was no, ‘You should have done this and you should have done that. The offense couldn’t score early.’ It was all about, ‘Coach, we tried, we just didn't have the same spirit that we had in the first few minutes.’

“I think we'll see this weekend how much we learned from last weekend. Appalachian State's got really good players that are going to come in with high energy.”