The Bill Belichick era is off and running at North Carolina, and the eight-time Super Bowl champion’s arrival in college football brings a new stanza to the storied rivalry between UNC and Duke. While the series between the Tar Heels and Blue Devils is more synonymous with college basketball than football, the gridiron battle in 2025 should be one of the higher-profile installments in recent rivalry history as Belichick squares off against Manny Diaz for the first time.
Diaz embraced the coaching change that occurred earlier this offseason in Chapel Hill. With an all-time legend patrolling the sidelines on Tobacco Road, more eyeballs promise to be trained on the 112th meeting between Duke and UNC than in years past.
“Whatever gets more people watching, right?” Diaz said on ESPN’s College GameDay podcast. “Anything that’s good for ACC football is good for all of us in the ACC. That was a big win for us a year ago. We got a really, really neat feature to our football facility down there. That’s what makes college football amazing, is those type of rivalries.”
While UNC boasts the all-time advantage with a 64-41-4 mark, Diaz opened his Duke tenure with a victory in last season’s clash. The Blue Devils claimed the Victory Bell with a thrilling 21-20 triumph in which they scored three unanswered touchdowns in the second half to rally from a 20-0 deficit. Peyton Jones scored the decisive touchdown on a 20-yard run with 5:42 remaining as the Blue Devils snapped a four-game losing streak in the series.
“We always assume — look, the guy that was there this past year had won a lot of games, too, you know what I mean?” Diaz said. “I had worked for him, too. The expectation is that game should always be amazing. Our belief here is it’s always going to come down to the last play, and we’ve gotta be built to win the game on that last play. We’ll be excited.”
Despite the off-field drama that largely defined the early months of the Belichick era at UNC, the Tar Heels have palpable momentum under their new coach. The longtime NFL celebrity constructed a colossal recruiting class ahead of his debut college football season with 40 transfers and 29 incoming freshmen set to reshape the roster.
“Coach Belichick has always been great to me,” Diaz said. “I would always go up and visit him up in New England, and he even had me speak to the team the last time I was there. Got to see him for the first time [at ACC spring meetings], and it was good to catch up with him. And like I said, let’s get ACC back and rolling.”
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