CHAPEL Hill – It is game day at Kenan Stadium where Clemson looks to win their first ACC game of the season.
The Tigers hope to come out of the bye week strong and get another win streak started.
Location: Kenan Stadium
Kickoff: Noon
Television: ESPN
Announcers: Mark Jones, Roddy Jones, Quint Kessenich
2025 Record: Clemson 1-3, North Carolina 2-2
ACC Record: Clemson 0-2, North Carolina 0-0
Series History: Clemson leads series 40-19-1
Last Meeting: Clemson defeated North Carolina 31-20 on November 18, 2023
Teams led by two marquee names in the annals of football history will square off when the Clemson Tigers and North Carolina Tar Heels face one another in search of each team’s first conference win of the season on Saturday, Oct. 4. Kickoff at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill, N.C. is set for noon ET on ESPN.
Though Saturday’s game will be the 61st in the all-time series between Clemson and North Carolina, it will be the first matchup between two coaching legends, Clemson’s Dabo Swinney and North Carolina’s Bill Belichick.
The contest will represent only the second time in college football history a coach with multiple FBS national championships as a head coach will face one with multiple Super Bowl titles as a head coach. The lone other qualifying matchup in history came on New Year’s Day in 1993, when Bill Walsh, a three-time Super Bowl champion with the San Francisco 49ers,
led Stanford against two-time national champion Joe Paterno and Penn State in the Blockbuster Bowl.
Overall, Clemson is 1-0 all-time against Super Bowl winning head coaches. On Jan. 2, 1989, Danny Ford’s Tigers ended the collegiate career of Oklahoma’s Barry Switzer with a 13-6 win in the Citrus Bowl. Switzer
would later go on to win Super Bowl XXX as head coach of the Dallas Cowboys.
WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEK
– Clemson facing North Carolina Head Coach Bill Belichick for the first time. Belichick is one of four head coaches slated to face Clemson for the first time this season (Troy’s Gerad Parker, Syracuse’s Fran Brown and Boston College’s Bill O’Brien).
– Clemson attempting to improve to 171-76-3 all time (and 54-10 since 2011) when facing a coach for the first time.
– Head Coach Dabo Swinney coaching against Belichick in the second matchup in college football history between one coach with multiple FBS national championships (Swinney) as a head coach and another
with multiple Super Bowl titles (Belichick) as a head coach. The only other such matchup came at the end of the 1992 season, when three-time Super Bowl head coach Bill Walsh led Stanford against two-time national
championship head coach Joe Paterno’s Penn State squad.
– Clemson attempting to improve to 2-0 all-time against head coaches whose careers include a Super Bowl title as a head coach. Clemson ended the 1988 season with a 13-6 Citrus Bowl win against an Oklahoma squad led by Barry Switzer in his final game as head coach of the Sooners before he later won Super Bowl XXX as head coach of the Dallas Cowboys.
– Swinney attempting to join a list of head coaches to defeat both Nick Saban and Bill Belichick that includes Bill Cowher, Gary Kubiak, Eric Mangini, Mike McCarthy, Dick Jauron, Tony Dungy, Herm Edwards, Dick Vermeil,
Romeo Crennel, Jim Harbaugh and Steve Spurrier across the collegiate and pro levels.
A HALL OF FAME COACHING MATCHUP
Two of the preeminent coaching figures of the last two decades will lead their teams against one another on Saturday as multi-time national champion Dabo Swinney leads the Tigers against multi-time Super Bowl
champion Bill Belichick and North Carolina.
Belichick enters the game with eight Super Bowl rings (six as a head coach and two as an assistant) and Swinney enters the game with two national
championship rings (plus an additional national championship as a player) and nine ACC title rings.
While several national championship winning head coaches have gone on to win Super Bowls as NFL head coaches after their collegiate careers (e.g., Pete
Carroll, Jimmy Johnson, Barry Switzer), Bill Walsh and Bill Belichick are the only coaches to return to the college ranks after winning a Super Bowl as an NFL head coach.
Prior to Saturday’s game, there have been eight games all-time between one head coach with at least one Super Bowl title as a head coach and another head coach with at least one FBS national championship as a head coach. All eight of those contests featured Walsh’s Stanford Cardinal from 1992-94.
Saturday’s game will represent only the second time in college football history a coach with multiple FBS national championships as a head coach will face another with multiple Super Bowl titles as a head coach. Walsh, a three-time Super Bowl champion with the San Francisco 49ers, led Stanford against two-time national champion Joe Paterno and Penn State in the
Blockbuster Bowl on New Year’s Day in 1993.
TCI Predictions
Robert – Clemson 28, North Carolina 20
Will – Clemson 21, North Carolina 13
JP – Clemson 23, North Carolina 17