North Carolina Can Make the CFP Pure Chaos—If It Can Finally Win a Big Game

Six seconds and six yards to go. That's how close North Carolina football was in 2010, playing LSU on national TV, with Brent Musburger and Kirk Herbstreit and America watching. This was it. And? North Carolina dropped two passes in the end zone.

And lost.       

"I can't talk about that," said Ryan Taylor, a tight end on the team that year. "You can watch it [on YouTube], but I'm not going to talk about it."

That team had entered the season in the Top 20. If it beats LSU in that season opener, who knows how the season goes? Instead, it lost again the next week and was on its way to another of what's been a string of nondescript seasons.

"If we would have won the LSU game, that would have been a springboard for us to a bigger spotlight," he said. "It was so close."

There are breakthrough moments in sports, moments where a team has to get through a barrier before finally getting to the top. It can be agonizing when a team gets to that moment if it can't break through.

North Carolina football has felt that agony for decade after decade after decade, getting to the point of breakthrough so many times during its history. And then losing.

Now, it's back, Saturday against No. 1 Clemson in the ACC Championship Game. This could finally be that moment for North Carolina. A win could put the Tar Heels in the College Football Playoff.

Could.

School	W-L
1. Clemson	12-0
2. Alabama	11-1
3. Oklahoma	11-1
4. Iowa	12-0
5. Michigan State	11-1
6. Ohio State	11-1
7. Stanford	10-2
8. Notre Dame	10-2
9. Florida State	10-2
10. North Carolina	11-1

One thing a victory would do for sure, though: It would take what appears to be a nice, neat setup for the College Football Playoff and throw the whole thing back into chaos.

North Carolina is the last dark horse standing.

It has been a bumpy year for the CFP, with no dominant teams and a bunch of smaller names trying to go undefeated: Houston, Temple, Memphis. Eventually, they all fell. Utah was the top dark horse for a while. Then it lost.

Now, North Carolina is it—the last team with a chance to really mess up the playoff. It all seems so clear. Oklahoma is going to the playoff. The winner of the Michigan State-Iowa Big Ten title game is going. Alabama, assuming it beats Florida as it is heavily favored to do, is in.

Then there's Clemson, the unbeaten and top-ranked team in the country. It has to defeat one-loss North Carolina, the AP poll's No. 8 team, to get in. And there's a real shot that won't happen.

And if North Carolina wins, then what? Then who? The playoff selection committee doesn't believe in the Tar Heels, who are 11-1, ranking them two spots lower than the AP does. But with one loss, a win over Clemson and the ACC title, they would have a case.

Ohio State has just one loss, but isn't a conference champ—and the loser of Michigan State-Iowa might have a better case than the Buckeyes. Stanford would win the Pac-12 if it beats USC but would have two losses.

Would North Carolina belong in?

"Yes, I do feel that way, yes," North Carolina coach Larry Fedora said. "If we beat the No. 1 team in the country—which Clemson is the No. 1 team in the country, and it's a consensus No. 1, and they've been No. 1 for a long time—I believe if that happens, our team is deserving, yes."

Gerry Broome/Associated Press

The problem with convincing people of that is all about sales. This team is possibly three wins away from a national championship, but have you ever heard anyone even talking about it? Do you know the names of its best players on offense and defense?

This is a major university in a major conference, but no one looks at the Tar Heels as a national title threat. In basketball, yes, every year. In football? Never.

It comes back to their past, which shouldn't matter but does. Their past paints a defining image.

So does the nation still need to be introduced to Carolina football?

"I would say that everybody does know that we're out there, but if you want to get on that, I'd appreciate it," Fedora said, laughing. "That would be awesome. I mean, we're not going to turn down any publicity."

The season started with the low point, a loss to South Carolina that included quarterback Marquise Williams throwing three interceptions, two in the end zone.

"I felt devastated, honestly, from my side of the play, how bad I played in that game," Williams said this week on the ACC media teleconference. "I knew I had to move on as quickly as possible, but it was just going downhill the whole game."

But that was it. Carolina hasn't lost since. It started with nondescript wins against teams like North Carolina A&T—making sure no one noticed, making sure the perception was that this was one of North Carolina's usual good-but-not-great teams—but on and on the winning went.

How? What's different? A big part of it has been defensive coordinator Gene Chizik, who instilled a meat-and-potatoes feel to the defensive schemes and attitude. Chizik won a national title at Auburn but was fired when the team quickly fell off. He joins a list of former big-time head coaches—Lane Kiffin at Alabama and Will Muschamp at Auburn—rebuilding names as assistants

"The way we went about it this year is we preached physicality," linebacker Shakeel Rashad said. "We went out and did it every day in practice all through camp and managed to do that throughout the season, too. Now when we get in the games, it's not like 'What was it like to tackle when we were tackling in camp?' or 'What was it like last week the last time we tackled, the last time we were wrapping up?'

"It's not like in past years we've gone out and decided that we were going to be a soft defense."

Jeremy Brevard-USA TODAY Sports

Always, it comes back to the past.

Back to Taylor, the former North Carolina—and then NFL—player who grew up in the state watching the program and eventually participating in its last potential breakthrough moment in 2010.

Taylor said it's the togetherness that really stands out about this team over North Carolina teams of the past.

"I don't think they have the same talent we had, but they play better as a team," he said. "No doubt about that. For our team, we had a lot of external distractions."

Thirteen players, including 10 on defense, missed that LSU game while the NCAA investigated allegations that included academic fraud.

Taylor said he still has the poster of the 1999 team that he had on his bedroom wall when he was a kid. He talked about the recent history of the program, and all the NFL draft picks who have come from North Carolina. Three Tar Heels—Greg Ellis, Brian Simmons and Vonnie Holliday—were taken in the first round in 1998. In 2011, nine North Carolina players were taken in the draft.

But there is always something stopping the team from breaking through.

Mack Brown led the Tar Heels to an 8-0 record and a Top Five ranking in 1997, but then they lost at home to Florida State, 20-3. In 1981, they were 6-0 and ranked No. 3 when they lost to unranked South Carolina. In 1948, they were ranked No. 1 and got to 6-0 before tying unranked William & Mary, got back up to No. 4, then lost to Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl.

But those were different times. Wouldn't Taylor like to see the Tar Heels get some attention now? He said it isn't all bad to go unnoticed: "In Green Bay, we started off my rookie year going 13-0. Then the media started coming around, and we ended up losing in the second round of the playoffs.

"You don't always need the media barking down your back. Sometimes when everyone tells you how great you are, 19-, 20-year-olds start to believe it."

No need to worry about this team being too cocky. The past is filled with the Tar Heels losing this game, and no one is even talking about them now. It actually might be the perfect setup to go those last six yards for that breakthrough more than six decades in the making.

Greg Couch covers college football for Bleacher Report. Odds provided by Odds Shark.