UNC football seniors 'went out as winners’

Approaching his final game in Kenan Stadium, senior linebacker Shakeel Rashad had a mentality different from the 25 other seniors on North Carolina’s 9-1 football team.

“It was kind of weird,” Rashad said. “I’m not good at the emotion thing all the time. I tried to make (redshirt senior guard) Landon (Turner) cry — it didn’t work.

“I started playing really sad songs (Friday) afternoon when we came to the stadium. No one cried yet, I’m going to see if I can get anyone tonight.”

Despite playing “Closing Time,” by Semisonic, on repeat in the locker room leading up to the game, Rashad was unable to get his senior classmates to break down. They didn’t break down during Saturday’s contest against Miami either in a matchup the Tar Heels won in resounding fashion 59-21.

Given everything the senior and redshirt seniors have been through over the past four or five years — with coaching changes, NCAA scandal questions and the historically bad defense of 2014 — the win spoke to the shift the program has undergone since the first group arrived in 2011.

“My freshman year, what, we went 8-4? And then we went downhill a little bit,” said senior receiver Quinshad Davis.

“I mean (the program has) come so far. We as seniors talk about legacy a lot this year, and we wanted to leave ours here, at Kenan — and I feel we did that.”

For Coach Larry Fedora — who began running the program prior to the 2012 season, the same year the true seniors arrived on campus — the impact of the senior class has been obvious.

“I want to tell those seniors — those 26 seniors who walked off that field for the last time — I want to tell them thanks,” he said.

“For what they’ve done for this team, what they’ve done for this university, what they mean to this program.”

The senior class has helped lead North Carolina to its first nine-win season since 1997, the last great year in UNC football, when Mack Brown coached the Tar Heels to an 11-1 record and a season-high No. 4 ranking in the Associated Press top-25 poll.

But the 2015 team managed something not even the 1997 squad could claim, something only one other Tar Heel team — the 1980 group, which won the ACC — can boast of.

“They had an opportunity to make some history today, and to be one of only two teams in 125 years to win seven games on that field,” Fedora said. “And so it was special. And there was a tremendous burden on all the guys to make sure that happened. That they went out as winners on that field the last time.

“It hit them all in that locker room, and it is bittersweet. It’s a special place to play, and they know it.”

Turner made sure he took a piece of that field with him. After the game, while players, coaches and fans alike celebrated together, he reached down and grabbed some of the grass and dirt he’s spent the past five years on.

“It’s just a symbol of everything that I put into this university,” Turner said. “And just a little something I can take with me for the rest of my life.”

Turner said the dirt and grass would probably wind up in a Christmas ornament, just like the earth he took from his high school football field in Harrisonburg, Va., after his senior year there.

He’ll remember this senior night for the rest of his life. But for a few more weeks at least, he — and the rest of the seniors — will have to forget.

“We’ve come a long way,” Rashad said. “And we’re definitely happy about that. ... It’s a really special season, but it’s still going. We can’t be hung up in here tonight because we’ve got a lot of ball left to play.

“It’s not closing time at all for us yet.”

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