From 1919 to 1950, UNC squared off against UVa. in its regular season finale 28 of 32 times.
North Carolina’s victory in 1927 sparked a string of victories over the Cavaliers, as UNC proceeded to win 41 of its next 54 games against UVa.
But in 1982, the Cavaliers made a coaching change that shifted the rivalry in their favor, hiring George Welsh from Navy.
“I really didn’t know much about the rivalry, but soon after I got here, a couple of our alumni said, ‘We’ve got to start beating North Carolina,’” he said.
“It wasn’t Virginia Tech then, going back to ’82 and ’83, it was North Carolina. That’s the way it was for a while.”
With Welsh at the helm, the Cavaliers went 13-5-1 against the Tar Heels during his 19-year tenure and never dropped a home game to UNC.
In fact, it wasn’t until 2010 that the Tar Heels won again at UVa., breaking a 14-game losing streak in Charlottesville.
North Carolina leads the all-time series against Virginia 62-53-4, and the long history between the two schools is only enhanced by their recruiting battles.
The recruiting trail
As a high school football player at Garden City High School in Garden City, New York, all Don McCauley wanted to do was follow the path of his role model, Frank Quayle.
Quayle, a running back at UVa, from 1966 to 1968, graduated from Garden City a few years before McCauley and went on to a historic career with the Cavaliers.
All McCauley wanted to do was attend UVa. But when the Cavaliers didn’t recruit him, he chose to go to UNC.
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“It always kind of bothered me that that’s the school and originally I wanted to follow in Frank’s footsteps, and they were not interested in me,” said McCauley, who played running back for the Tar Heels from 1968 to 1970 and was a two-time ACC Player of the Year.
“I had an added incentive against Virginia for them to remember me.”
As great as McCauley’s drive was to defeat the Cavaliers, the animosity between the schools has been most evident on the recruiting trail linked between North Carolina and Virginia.
Nine players on UNC’s current roster are from Virginia, including redshirt senior offensive guard Landon Turner.
“I want to beat those Virginia teams because obviously I didn’t choose to stay in state,” Turner said.
“They’re obviously not that happy about that, and I know people I played with in high school who play for those teams.”
Some of the Tar Heels’ best all-time football players are from Virginia. Among the top players who left the state to attend North Carolina are Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor, running back Amos Lawrence and three-time first-team All-American cornerback Dre Bly.
“The state of Virginia probably still don’t forgive me for leaving to go to Chapel Hill,” Bly said.
But perhaps no player faced more judgment for choosing the Tar Heels over the Cavaliers more so than Ronald Curry.
The traitor
They call him Benedict Ronald.
As a two-sport star at Hampton High School in Hampton, Virginia, Curry was considered by many to be the nation’s top football prospect and one of the best basketball prospects in 1998.
The Tar Heels and Cavaliers were frontrunners for Curry. And in the fall of his senior year, he committed to UVa.
But UNC continued to pursue Curry. And while the North Carolina men’s basketball coaching staff tried to flip his commitment, he said the Cavaliers weren’t as aggressive.
“UVa., I think they thought they had it locked because of the school I went to, the ties they had, and I was an in-state kid,” he said. “Everybody just assumed I was going to UVa. Eventually the tide changed. One day I woke up and I wanted to play basketball.”
Curry ultimately flipped his commitment to North Carolina. UVa. fans labeled him a traitor.
“I turned my back on my home state,” said Curry, who was 1-3 in his football career against the Cavaliers. “It added the fire to it, and it gave UVa. a little bit more extra motivation than I would say it gave Carolina.”
Getting on the map
Minnesota and Wisconsin, who have met 124 times since 1890, are the only programs in FBS history who will have met more than UNC and UVa. after Saturday’s game.
With both playing in a conference dominated by basketball, some former players say it’ll be hard for the rivalry to reach the same level as UNC-N.C. State or UVa.-Virginia Tech. But the main way the rivalry can get on the map is for both teams to return to national prominence.
“Once these programs generate more wins, better starts and winning records at the end of they year,” Bly said, “Then that’s something people would look at toward the end of the season with an asterisk beside it, like, ‘Man, this is a game I need to watch.’”
@patjames24
sports@dailytarheel.com
