Though Merletti was powerless to play, he was no less an inspiration. It was his goal in rehabilitation to once again lead the Tar Heels onto the field with his nation’s flag.
But this isn’t a story about Merletti. He wouldn’t want it that way.
Not an average childhood
Like most stories, this one begins at childhood.
Merletti was baptized with patriotism from a young age. His father, Lew, worked in the U.S. Secret Service for 25 years and was sworn in as the 19th Director of the Secret Service when Matt Merletti was 8 years old.
“I wouldn’t say I had your average childhood,” Merletti said.
That was the only way to put it. Merletti met three presidents growing up — George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush — and was introduced to the culture of the Secret Service.
Because of his father’s job, Matt Merletti and his older brother Mike once underwent training when their family faced increased risk. For a parent, this might be terrifying. But for an 8- and a 12-year-old, it was child’s play.
“We didn’t know exactly what was going on, but that’s when we first learned how to shoot guns,” Matt Merletti said. “We also had a couple of Secret Service agents come to our house and teach us to look for packaged bombs.”
Merletti was very focused for a child. He garnered a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and kept a running tally of pull-ups from age 6 until high school.
At its peak, he had done 42,000.
But it wasn’t all business for the future Tar Heel. A favorite perk of Merletti’s was meeting all the Super Bowl teams that came to visit the president after they won.
To get the day's news and headlines in your inbox each morning, sign up for our email newsletters.
This was his Neapolitan ice cream: where football and America combined. The best of both worlds.
Merletti’s cousin Chris Funk also lived with the family, and he was a hero to Matt Merletti. Funk was 12 years older than Matt, and played high school and college football, a path Merletti would soon follow.
Both Mike and Matt Merletti were ball-boys for the Cleveland Browns, where Lew Merletti is currently the Senior Vice President. In Matt Merletti’s time chasing the pigskin with the professionals, current UNC football coach Butch Davis was in the middle of his professional head coaching stint for the Browns.
Matt noticed how Browns’ players took to Davis and he didn’t forget it. Neither had his father when his son was a high school senior.
“I knew of his integrity, I knew of his commitment, I knew that he was a man of character,” Lew Merletti said. “I knew that I was turning my son, who I had raised for 18 years and he was on the verge of becoming a man, I knew that Butch Davis was going to turn him into a real man. And that’s exactly what Butch Davis did.”
Beginning the tradition
It was a Friday in November 2008, and it was the day that now-Army Ranger and Captain Mike Merletti returned from Iraq. He flew to Raleigh to watch his younger brother and UNC play N.C. State on Saturday.
With Mike Merletti was the flag. It was the birthday present his younger brother had asked for in an e-mail back in July: “To fly a flag for me over there on a couple of missions, and bring it back when he comes back to the States.”
When Mike and Matt Merletti finally met up after UNC’s team meetings, it was a reunion seven months in the making. The two best friends caught up as best they could in the time they had. An Army Ranger, a football player and a big bear hug.
Mike Merletti handed his brother the flag, expecting him to hang it on his wall at home. But nothing could prepare the older brother for what he saw the next day.
At Kenan Stadium on Saturday afternoon, Mike Merletti watched the tunnel fill with smoke.
But leading the rowdy players bustling through the fog, Matt Merletti ran out, head down with the flag raised high, as if, for one moment, he might be able to carry its burden for those who do it every day.
That’s what the Army Ranger saw.
“I was overcome with emotion,” Mike Merletti said in an e-mail from Afghanistan. “For him to honor all veterans in such a respectful manner made me so proud.
“It’s in patriotic acts like the one that Matt made that honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice.”
Matt Merletti has carried the flag out since — well, at least until a preseason practice last season when the safety felt his knee buckle and heard a crunch.
Once the injury was confirmed, Merletti’s season was over, but the newfound tradition wasn’t.
“I would pick a guy each week to run out with it, and I’d try to pick a guy who the game meant a little bit more to them,” Merletti said. “I think I picked Da’Norris Searcy, he’s from Atlanta, so I think I picked him for the Georgia Tech game.”
UNC’s registered patriot had already garnered a good deal of respect. And when Merletti did return from injury to bear the flag, those weren’t the only duties he took over.
An investigation into improper benefits from agents left UNC without 13 players in its 2010 season-opener.
Against LSU this season, Merletti wasn’t just resuming his flag carrying responsibility — he was making his first career start.
Honoring a nation
Mike Merletti was back from Afghanistan on leave. It was 2008 all over again. The older brother passed the flag to the younger brother the night before the LSU game, this one from Afghanistan.
Merletti’s first start would be one of four straight to begin this season. And he’s made the most of them, recording 16 tackles.
“I was so proud of the way he came back from his ACL surgery as a bigger, stronger and faster player,” Mike Merletti said.
Though Merletti’s childhood dream was to play in the NFL, his goal now is simply to help the team in any way he can.
“He’s obviously a favorite of mine personally,” Davis said.
“You cannot have a good football program without kids like that. There’s a lot more blue-collar kids playing college football than there are the elite superstars.”
But the LSU game was special: Merletti’s first start, in a nationally televised game in Atlanta.
The routine was no different than back at Kenan. Matt charged onto the field with the flag in one hand. The team followed.
It was the one thing all night that both fan bases could agree on.
“I will tell you, every time I see that flag come out, I know that my son Mike carried that flag on combat missions in Iraq and I know he carried it in combat in Afghanistan,” Lew Merletti said. “I am so proud every time I see that come out. I mean, literally, it chokes me up.”
Who knows how many felt, that night, the way Lew Merletti does? Pride for a son. Pride for a nation.
“I just don’t want people to take for granted what we have here,” Matt Merletti says.
Merletti is 5-foot-11, 185 pounds, and the flag isn’t much larger than a big-screen TV. But it dwarfs him, just like he wants it to.
This isn’t a story about Matt Merletti. It never was.
Contact the Sports Editor at sports@unc.edu.
