Nov. 12, 2008

By Adam Lucas

Since last Monday, Tar Heel fans across the state have been faced with a thorny problem.

Larry Gallo has faced that same problem, sometimes spending hours each day on it, since July.

This Saturday, for the first time in 20 years, the Carolina basketball and football teams will play games simultaneously. There have been other occasions when the two squads narrowly missed playing at the same time--including bowl games in 1995 and 2006--but it's been two decades since hoops and football went head-to-head.

Here's how it happened:

This year the Smith Center is also being used for women's basketball, among other sports, during the Carmichael Auditorium renovation. Carolina preferred to play its home men's basketball opener on Friday or Sunday to ensure there would be no conflict with the Saturday basketball game. But a previously scheduled women's tournament was already locked into Friday and Sunday, meaning those days weren't possibilities.

Television had already picked up the Tuesday basketball game against Kentucky, which meant Monday wasn't an option. That left the basketball game against Penn set for Saturday.

Originally, administrators had hoped to find an evening time for the basketball game to avoid conflicts with a noon or 3:30 football start. But back in the summer, Fox Sports picked up the basketball game and placed it in the 4 p.m. time slot--their only available window on that particular day. The network already had Saturday evening programming they couldn't move.

Tar Heel administrators, including Gallo, a senior associate athletic director who handles much of the basketball and football scheduling, immediately realized there was a potential conflict with the Maryland football game. From that day forward, members of the department regularly contacted the Atlantic Coast Conference office to lobby for a football game time that didn't present a direct conflict with basketball.

Unfortunately, lobbying has more impact in politics than it does in college sports. The ACC's television partners placed the Maryland football game in the 3:30 slot, which effectively splits the UNC audience. By that point, it was impossible to go back to Fox and ask to vacate the 4 p.m. basketball time, because the network had already made it the centerpiece of its basketball coverage on that day.

The situation creates varying degrees of problems.

For fans watching at home, it means navigating the remote control. For fans with tickets to one or both games, it means making a choice.

Those fans include Greg Cauley of Kinston, who has attended 163 straight UNC football games, a stretch that dates back to 1995. He's also attended 341 straight UNC home basketball games.

So what's he doing on Saturday?

"I had already ordered tickets to the Maryland game, and as soon as the basketball schedule was released I got sick to my stomach," Cauley says. "I spent a lot of time agonizing over how to handle the conflict, and in the end decided it would cost more to make the road trip. I also considered that the overall attendance streak for football dates to 1995, while the home basketball one goes back to 1983."

That's the kind of choice it would have been nice if the TV networks would have avoided forcing Cauley, who will be in his usual seat in Section 222 of the Smith Center wearing his headset to keep up with the football game, to make. For administrators and UNC personnel--like the Tar Heel Sports Network crew--it means a choice they haven't faced in a very long time.

Woody Durham will travel with Rick Steinbacher to College Park for the football game (fans in College Park can listen to the Tar Heel Sports Network on the in-stadium feed, on or around 92.7 FM). The football broadcast will include regular basketball updates, as Jones Angell and Eric Montross will be handling the hoops call. The basketball broadcast will be replayed in its entirety beginning at 8 p.m.

Fans attending the basketball game in the Smith Center can tune to 1360 AM in the arena, as well as get football updates on the video boards.

"We've only had this happen twice since I've been doing the games," says Durham, who is in his 38th year as the voice of the Tar Heels. "We've had some close calls before about whether we'd make it from one game to the other, but it's only happened twice like this."

The first was in 1982, when the basketball opener against St. John's went head-to-head with a football game against Duke; the other was in 1987, when the hoops opener against Syracuse conflicted with a football game against Duke. On both occasions, Durham stayed with the football team.

"Sometimes, getting there is the fun part," says Durham, who recalls a basketball game in Madison Square Garden when he slid into his seat 45 minutes before tipoff (in Durham's hyper-prepared world, arriving less than two and a half hours before game time is late) due to a football conflict. "But when you've done as many games as I have, when it's time to throw the ball up and you're not there, there's a certain disappointment."

He'll miss another basketball game on Nov. 21, but then begin a whirlwind segment that includes a football game in Chapel Hill against State on Saturday, a Raleigh-to-Maui flight on Sunday, three basketball games in Maui, a Maui-to-RDU flight on Wednesday night that lands on Thursday afternoon, the Duke football game on Saturday, and a home basketball game on Sunday.

And then what?

"And then I'm going to find a place to put my feet up for a little bit," he says with a smile.

Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of four books on Carolina basketball.