I spent the opening Saturday of the football season watching North Carolina lose to Rutgers with a hundred or so close friends. Well, maybe not close friends, more like a large group therapy session. ABC-TV provided the video and a UNC football message board provided the commentary.

College sports message boards are fun. Thousands of people united by a single vision-"I know what we should be doing. We aren't doing it. The referees are cheating us. Change quarterbacks. Lower academic standards. Fire the coach." Outside of Texas and USC every single board is the same. Even at Texas and USC the team can be up 30 and still the partisans believe every single official is gunning for them.

Part of the problem is that watching the opening game at UNC each year is like watching a music video for "Paint It Black" by the Rolling Stones. "I see people turn their heads and quickly look away. Like a new born baby it just happens every day." It's always the same on opening day. A beautiful blue sky afternoon in Chapel Hill, high hopes, a slogan ("The New Blue") and then the kickoff. It is akin to how Custer must have felt as he led the 7th Cavalry down the rolling hills to the Little Big Horn under the billowing clouds.

The University of North Carolina is one of the oldest, and most highly regarded, in the country. Its basketball teams are legendary. The women's soccer team has dominated the game in the way Russia used to control eastern Europe. That's part of the problem. In olden days in Europe they believed in the divine right of kings and in modern day North Carolina it's believed that any UNC team in any sport should contend for the national championships.

So it follows logically when North Carolina loses it must be because of dark conspiracies among the officiating crew (a touchdown called back on review today when a runner's knee touched before the ball broke the plane) or incompetent coaching. Or, in this case, coach. Coach John Bunting, UNC alumnus, former Eagles linebacker. Owner of a 24-36 record over 5 seasons.

There are four basic schools of thought regarding Bunting. Some people want him fired after the season. Some want him fired immediately. Some want him fired, his house burned down, and for him to be ridden out of town on a rail (this being Carolina they wouldn't be able to find a rail and would have to ride him out in an old Volvo with a Gore-Lieberman bumper sticker). Finally, there is the critical group. The wealthy alumni who don't care who that dreadful fellow with the mustache is, but are thrilled, just thrilled that he graduated from Carolina and isn't doing anything to take attention away from the basketball team.

An additional burden for the football program is the public relations image of the school, built around legendary coach Dean Smith who not only won but won "the right way". Therefore, it is not enough to win, but victory must be with the right sort of student-athlete. Not the sort, for instance, who gravitate to places like Virginia Tech and Miami. As a Southerner the best way I can sum it all up is to say that the old boys that run the place (UNC) want to hunt, but think they're too good to run with any old houndog. Surely a recipe, if not for disaster, at least frustration.

With the team settling into a 5-6 win groove each year and no prospect of change on the horizon, there has developed an intense tension among Tarheel football fans. When Carolina went down 7-0 this afternoon there was great disbelief on the message board, even though Rutgers won 7 games last year and finished 3rd in the Big East. Pitchforks began to be sharpened at halftime, with some posters conceding the game to Rutgers. Then it got ugly.

Rutgers offensive line pushed Carolina off the ball all afternoon. One Rutgers running back, Ray Rice, rushed for more yards (201) than the entire North Carolina offense. Some posters questioned how a coach hired on the basis of his defensive expertise had assembled a defensive line which looked like Polish infantry falling back before a Panzer division in 1939.

At the end, a rally. Nebraska transfer Joe Dailey had thrown for 239 yards and was marching the team down the field with under two minutes. Then on a short pass to a running back who inexplicably stopped running his route, overwhelmed by the complexity of having to both turn back toward the quarterback and run simultaneously, an interception that ended the suffering. And which, naturally, led to calls on the message board for Dailey's replacement with his freshman backup.

It will likely end, as it usually does, with five to seven wins. Six wins will buy a lesser bowl, five widespread discontent but not enough to cost Bunting his job. There does seem to be real progress on recruiting, and the prospect of better days (even today over 400 yards total offense). For today, though it was "Meet the new Blue, same as the old Blue". In Carolina we won't get fooled again. Until the next season.