North Carolina announced that it was unable to arrange an opponent for next Saturday to replace this past Saturday's game against Charlotte that was canceled due to COVID-19 protocols. That will make two weeks off for the Tar Heels between their 31-6 win over Syracuse and their next scheduled game Oct. 3 at Boston College.
UNC went into scramble mode Thursday when it was informed that Charlotte could not field enough offensive linemen after a number of players were placed in contact tracing quarantine. Most conferences, including the ACC, have stipulations on how many players in a position group have to be healthy in order to play. For the offensive line, that number is seven.
Carolina had targeted a few teams that had games postponed this week. The reason being that COVID-19 protocol calls for a 14-day quarantine, so the thought was if a team couldn't play this week, they may also have to postpone a game scheduled on Sept. 26.
The Tar Heels were set to face the 49ers for the first time in program history, but the game was not just postponed like other games from Saturday moved under similar circumstances. Carolina had two open dates in its schedule including Nov. 14. But in this time of uncertainty, and the amount of games nationally that have been postponed and re-scheduled due to positive test or contact tracing, the school wanted to keep that later date available in case it was needed for a conference game to be moved.
North Carolina (1-0) will now have all ACC opponents remaining on the schedule. The league revamped its scheduling so that members would play 10 conference games and one non-conference opponent. It was designed to help traditional rivalries like Louisville-Kentucky, Georgia Tech-Georgia and Clemson-South Carolina still be played. The caveat was the non-conference game had to be played in state. Turns out that was another factor that narrowed UNC's search to find a replacement, an out-of-state opponent had to be willing to travel.
