The North Carolina Tar Heels football program had a big opportunity last Saturday night when they hosted Syracuse in Chapel Hill. They just didn't know it at the time.
UNC entered that game at 4-2 overall and were winners of two straight games. That included a win over Duke to capture the Victory Bell once again. As Bill Belichick's team had been playing well, a date with No. 1 Miami looms on October 31st.
And so was the chance to host College GameDay for just the second time on the Chapel Hill campus.
After Syracuse's comeback win over the Tar Heels in overtime, it dropped UNC to 4-3 and 2-2 in the Atlantic Coast Conference. They will still host Miami on Saturday night on Halloween, but it was Sunday morning where some bad news occurred.
On the latest SVPod episode with Scott Van Pelt and Stanford Steve, they reveal that had North Carolina won Saturday's game, they would have hosted ESPN's College GameDay.
"Major, major, major loss for the Tar Heels that had GameDay implications," Stanford Steve said. "Did you see that?"
Van Pelt then replied no and asked how there were GameDay implications. "We were going to go there next week," Stanford Steve said.
That's tough. He basically admits that ESPN had it planned to go to Chapel Hill for the game, based on if UNC would have won that game.
The very next day, GameDay host Rece Davis confirmed it as well.
Instead, they are heading to Bloomington, Indiana, to see Indiana and Minnesota. UNC and Miami will kickoff at 6:30 p.m. ET with the game being aired on ABC.
College GameDay has been on North Carolina's campus just once, back in 1998 when they hosted No. 2 Florida State at night. The show has been to a UNC game a total of three times, as they were there twice for neutral site games.
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This article originally appeared on Tar Heels Wire: UNC's loss to Syracuse cost them big opportunity with ESPN