This post is sponsored by EA Sports NCAA Football 2011.

The last little bit of this whole sponsorship deal is a little bit of corporate language announcing their new game:

When you go to a particular school or grow up around college football, you are more than just a fan. It's who you are. We thought we could leverage this pride in your roots and show that "where you come from" is more than just a statement about geography. By positioning NCAA Football 11 as a game that understands this pride and is authentic to these traditions, the takeaway should be that anything that is in college football is in NCAA Football 11.
And this doesn't just include game play (though that's a huge part of it). It's rivals and mascots; it's legends and stories. It's those things that are at the very fabric of the game itself. Of course the game is great this year as well. With authentic entrances, mascots and specific offenses for each team, the term "where I come from" takes on a much larger meaning. While playing NCAA Football 11 is ultimately a great sports sim, it should also give you a sense of the pride and emotion one has for being a fan of a team they will never not be a part of.    

We had to correct some typos in that, by the way. There's not much you can do with someone trying to sell you a game based on how it's "positioned" however.

All and all, I'm less happy with this whole exercise than I thought I'd be. I got a couple of good posts out of it, but it seemed more geared for listicles and the like. I know scrilla is the new watchword, and this brings it in, but I think I'll pass next time around. Anyway, we now return you to our regularly scheduled blogging.

This is the sixth of a week-long series of posts sponsored by EA Sports NCAA Football 2011. The end is in sight, I promise.

I'm not going to go into extensive detail about my expectations for the 2010 season here; it is, after all, what I expect to spend the next two months mulling over. Suffice to say, I'm not thinking of a 12-0 season like some people. Even 10-2 is less likely than 9-3. Of course, I don't have nearly the expectations for Florida State and Miami either, so I do believe a trip to the conference championship is achievable with a 9-3 record, and a BCS bowl bid is quite possible. I somehow both overly pessimistic and optimistic about this team at the same time, a pretty nifty trick.

I will talk about the first concern I have of the season. It's not Quan Sturdivant's legal troubles or the risk of fire; it's the bye week. UNC's bye week this season comes right after the season opener against LSU, after which they plow through eleven straight games without a break. Unless, I suppose, you want to count D1-AA opponent William & Mary as a break. 

Not only does this mean nothing but Saturday games for the Heels, but it gives them little margin for error. Last season UNC took the bye week midseason to heal a battered offensive line. They were 1-2 going into the week off with that win coming at the expense of Georgia Southern, while they came out of the bye with a heartbreaking loss to FSU and four straight wins. In 2008 they also had the post-first week bye, and faded down the stretch with poor losses to Maryland and State in November. Of course, in 2006 and 2007 the midseason bye did no good, as Carolina lost six straight and three of four, respectively. So perhaps it's not a big deal. However, that November stretch o FSU, Virginia Tech and N.C. State looked pretty difficult before. Coming as it does after seven straight weeks of games, it'll be exceedingly tough.

This is the fifth of a week-long series of posts sponsored by EA Sports NCAA Football 2011. 

The more I think about this, the more games come to mind. Ill try to make it brief, however.

Carolina vs. Duke, 1994. I know no one under the age of twenty will believe me, but there was a time in my lifetime when both Duke and UNC were good at football, and played an exciting game. That time was 1994, when UNC came to Durham with a 7-3 record and angling for a marquee bowl (they would end up in the Sun Bowl), while Duke was in their first year under Fred Goldsmith and had an even better record at 8-2. This game was all offense, with numerous lead changes and came down to a late Tar Heel interception that put the game away at 41-40. We all thought it would be the first of many high-octane games against the Blue Devils; this was obviously not the case.

Carolina and State's Goal Line Stands, 1995 and 1999. Three times in the nineties UNC and State flirted with making their game a post-Thanksgiving tradition, slotting it after the Duke game. The only result was Wolfpack frustration. On a rainy day in Carter-Finley in 1996 State, already eliminated from bowl contention, was only playing to give the Heels their sixth loss and keep them home for the holidays. It looked like they'd accomplished exactly that when they held Carolina on a fourth down goal line stand, only to have the refs rule that UNC did, indeed, make it into the end zone. The Heels won 30-28, and the State fans groaned.

The Wolfpack seemed to get revenge in the second of two games played in Charlotte in 1999; 1998 had gone the Heels' way as well, 37-34. Down 10-6 on the Carolina one with time for one more play, State just needed to move the ball ever so slightly to earn their seventh win and bowl eligibility. With the porous defense that should have been no problem, as UNC had lost to Furman 28-3 two weeks prior. Instead, the run to the right side was stuffed, Carolina would win the game, and State after a loss to ECU would miss a bowl game and lose their coach. Who immediately took a job at UNC.

Connor Barth Outkicks Miami, 2004. I remember flipping to this game late and being surprised Carolina was still in it, and then being floored when Barth pulled that kick off. I knew this was he beginning of Bunting turning things around. Alas, it was not to be, but that shot in front a home crowd that really needed a win like that – remember the Doherty era had just ended on the hardwood – isn't going to be forgotten any time soon.

This is the fourth of a week-long series of posts sponsored by EA Sports NCAA Football 2011. They're probably not getting their money's worth with this one.

Here's my dirty little secret. I don't have a favorite Carolina football player. Oh, there have been plenty I've enjoyed watching, from Kelvin Bryant to Natrone Means to Holliday, Bly, Crumpler, Curry, Peppers, Nicks and Tate. But I don't really have a favorite. The same goes for basketball, actually. I don't rank these sort of things, I just like what I see and what comes to mind at any given time.

So I'll punt on this one, and leave the field to the commenters: Who are your favorite players?

This is the third of a week-long series of posts sponsored by EA Sports NCAA Football 2011. They really annoy Roger Ebert.

I don't have much to say about tailgating. I've done my share, in various parking lots from down by the Dean Dome to Ramshead to Bell Tower to a couple of parking garages. (And yes, a fair number of those spots no longer exist. I swear I'm not the reason why.) The beverages have run from beer to wine to Coke and tiny airplane bottles, and the food has been anything you care to imagine. I just bob along on the surface, going along with whatever the menu may be.

So instead, I'd like to ask a question about the one tailgating tradition I have seen change since I first hit Chapel Hill. When did cornholing arrive? 

I know it started in the Cincinnati/Kentucky area, and that before I left for California, it was nowhere to be found at Carolina games. For that matter, it was barely known in Cincinnati. Yet by the time I made it back to a game in 2007, everybody was tossing bean bags. So how did it explode? I prone to blame these guys, as I know them and their charity work is good, but the things are everywhere. I'm not sure one group of people could spread these things around so quickly.

Anyone got in ideas? How did this sport catch on?

This is the second of a week-long series of posts sponsored by EA Sports NCAA Football 2011.

I'm not sure exactly what the logo above the title means by the "'Where I Come From' Room." In my head, I picture something white and padded, with bloggers wandering back and forth in straitjackets of team-apropriate colors. Oh, and the guy in orange speaking a lot more than I am.

Let's leave my metaphorical room and move on to the topic at hand: my favorite UNC team. I'll drop the "all-time" qualifier, since I reserve the right to prefer a future team, or to discover something about an older than one that sways my vote. It won't be the 1912 team, though. They lost to Virginia 66-0, a score immortalized in the rafters of Hill Hall by the construction worker who scrawled it there. You're dead to me, 1912. 

For the moment at least, my favorite squad is the 1996 one. To understand that, you had to know the minds of Carolina fans before that season. Beginning in 1990, Mack Brown had slowly dug out from his back-to-back one win seasons, and had improved through the first half of the decade. The first winning season came that year, the first bowl game two years after that, and 1993 had brought the Pigskin Classic win over Southern California and the first ten-win season. 1994 was a slight regression, but still ended with the Sun Bowl game against Texas, and everyone was pumped up for a great 1995 season. Then the opening game against Syracuse introduced us all to some guy named Donovan McNabb, and Carolina never recovered, limping to a 6-5 season topped by a bowl game UNC only reached by a skin-of-their teeth win over N.C. State on Thanksgiving weekend. UNC had peaked, and no one as expecting much from the 1996 team, especially since they opened with Clemson and then had to travel to Syracuse to meet McNabb again.

UNC started the season unranked, facing #25 Clemson who had a 9-1 record against the Heels in the last ten years. And Carolina just destroyed them, 45-0. The Tigers were held to 91 yards, their worst showing since 1964. Then they went to New York and got revenge on the ninth-ranked, then-Orangemen and McNabb. They followed that by knocking off Georgia Tech, setting up a meeting with second-ranked, undefeated Florida State. 

The 1997 FSU-UNC game gets more hype, but the 1996 meeting was by far the better showing for the Heels. Florida was the only other team that year to hold the Seminoles under 30 points, and no one shut this team down like UNC. FSU's three scores came on Tar Heel mistakes, two blocked punts turned into field goals and a fumbled interception by Dre' Bly at UNC's 11 that got Warrick Dunn a touchdown. Though Carolina would drop to 15th, they won five straight, averaging 41 points a game to climb back to sixth in time for a trip to Charlottesville to face unranked UVa.

I can't describe the feeling on campus that November; it's the most excited I've ever seen Chapel Hill over football. An Orange Bowl trip was all but assured, with FSU mandated by the Bowl Coalition to play a championship game. With Duke (0-8) and UVa (6-3) remaining, this looked to be a very good month. And with a 17-3 lead in the fourth with the ball on UVa's five, the season was all but assured.

And this is why I like this team; it know pain unlike few others. Because with that lead, Chris Keldorf threw an end zone pass towards Octavius Barnes tat was instead snatched down by Antwan Harris and returned 100 yards for a touchdown. UNC completely melted down, and lost 20-17. The recovered to beat winless Duke, and had a great showing in the Gator Bowl beating West Virginia, but the team with the most promise in fifteen years finished ranked tenth and mostly forgotten on the national stage. There's something about that I just found poetic. That team probably sent more players to the pros than any since, but they remain removed from the bowl game they thought they had. The following year's team would go 11-1, but there wasn't that same atmosphere, of anticipation. Thefans had been burned by that point, and always stayed at arms' length. No, the 1996 team is the one that everybody truly loved, and it's my favorite team at Carolina.

This is the first of a week-long series of posts sponsored by EA Sports NCAA Football 2011.

I've got to say, the story of how I became a Carolina fan is among the shortest and dullest on record. Here it is:

I was born.

There you go. From the moment my name was put to paper by the folks at Rex Hospital, I was a Carolina fan. Hence the blue hat, after all. Both my mother and my father were UNC grads, as were two uncles. Multiple family members have worked for Carolina. I've got relatives buried on Franklin Street. I didn't need to be won over, I am genetically coded to be a Tar Heel. I've cheered in Carmichael, sweated in Wollen and have a piece of turf from the Kenan end zone packed away in my closet. I traced the Rameses logo on scratch paper and kept track of the score of UNC games with the magnetic numbers toddlers had. There was just no other way this was going to go down.

I can recall my first game at Kenan Stadium, though. Not much beyond the fact that it was a crisp fall day and the opponent was Bowling Green. UNC won 33 to 14, but I'd wager we left by the end of the third quarter – there's only so much a six-year old can take, after all – and that the prospect of  blue cup of Coke was half the thrill. I was still hooked, though. I remember being able to walk around the track surrounding the field, to short to see over the hedges; the walk over stone walls from wherever we parked to the visitor's side of the stadium; the smell from beneath the West End Zone and the other kids all dressed up in Carolina Blue. There was just nowhere else I wanted to be.

(My next UNC memory, alas, was of one of my father's friends advocating for a third down punt. The end of the Dick Crum era and the start of the Mack Brown one was a rough time to grow up a Carolina fan.)

So, Electronic Arts would really like you to buy this year's version of NCAA Football. Really. I know this because they're sponsoring the next week of posts, all under the "Where I Come From" rubric. Now, my entire experience with EA's game series is the six months one of my roommates had an Xbox around 2003. If I recall correctly,  I took Akron and UNC to the BCS Championship based solely on a particular play that almost always got the tertiary receiver a good forty yards, an achievement that remains my sole qualification for being a sports blogger. That streak will presumably continue, as the only way I have of manipulating players on my TV is either a Wii or frustrated screaming, and EA doesn't not provide the game that works for either format.

That being said, there are folks out there more excited than I for this, and I have no problem reminding them that the game goes on sale next week, as it also provides me with seven days of topics for posts during the slow summer season. So here's what you can expect, beginning in a couple of minutes:

Today: How I Became a Carolina Fan

Tuesday: My All-Time Favorite UNC Teams

Wednesday: Tailgating Traditions

Thursday: All-Time Favorite Tar Heels

Friday: Most Memorable Moments as a Carolina Fan

Monday: Expectations for the 2010 Season

The same things will be running al over the SB Nation college blogs, so if nothing else, it will be good for some tailgating smack talk.