North Carolina vs Duke Live Stream: Watch Tar Heels vs Blue Devils Online

Here’s how to stream this year’s edition of the classic ACC rivalry between the No. 17 North Carolina Tar Heels (7-2, 5-1 ACC) and the Duke Blue Devils (3-6, 0-5).

If I told you North Carolina and Duke were playing on a Thursday night in prime time on ESPN, your most likely immediate thought would be, “Best basketball rivalry in sports., I’m in.” However, tonight the football teams take center stage in that position typically only reserved for their counterparts on the hardwood.

Carolina enters the game as the obvious favorite with the two teams headed in very different directions. The Tar Heels have won the last two games of the series, including an upset of then-ranked Duke the last time the two met in Durham. Last year, UNC racked up over 700 yards en route to a 66-31 beat down in Chapel Hill. The Tar Heels enter this year’s iteration on a three-game winning streak and on the wrong side of a tiebreaker at the top of the ACC Coastal. A touchdown win in Miami has been followed with much less competitive dismissals of Virginia and Georgia Tech.

Duke is trending in the opposite direction having lost their last three games. However, they have lost close to some of the best the ACC has to offer. The Blue Devils slowed the probable Heisman winner Lamar Jackson and only lost 24-14 in Louisville. The next game they overcame a 28-7 halftime lead to take 35-31 fouth-quarter lead on Georgia Tech, but the home team rallied to keep the Blue Devils winless in the ACC. Finally, last week, Duke once again came back from a big halftime deficit, but a perfectly executed Virginia Tech four-minute drill iced the game.

The Victory Bell Lives

One of the cooler parts of the rivalry is the tradition of the Victory Bell. The winner of the game since 1948 has taken possession of an old train bell on a pull cart. The teams have taken to painting it their specific shade of blue upon regaining possession of the bell. In 2004, after winning back the Victory Bell, the Carolina players spraypainted the bell on the Duke track surrounding their field immediately following the game and thus a new, quicker, tradition of painting the bell was born.

North Carolina has won 23 of the last 26 meetings, so in the grand scheme of things, there hasn’t been much trading of the Victory Bell. Whenever it does get painted it is a big deal for the players and fanbases. In 2014, Carolina pulled off an upset in Durham as six-point underdogs to take the Victory Bell back after losing for two consecutive years. The players got a little crazy with the spray paint and painted the entire bell, not just the cart.

More troubling was the damage they did to the Duke locker room and practice facility that came to more than $27,000. Even more problematic than the accidental damage from overexuberance was someone painting “UNC” on a wall. So in what appears to be a delayed reaction to that incident, on Monday, the Victory Bell received a professional dual team permanent paint job to end the practice. Predictably, fans were upset. By Wednesday afternoon, North Carolina AD Bubba Cunningham had relented.

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Game Info

Date: Thursday, November 10

Start Time: 7:30 p.m. ET

Location: Durham, NC

Stadium: Wallace Wade Stadium

Odds: UNC -10.5, O/U 62.5

Live Stream: WatchESPN

Announcers: Dave Flemming, Jesse Palmer, Laura Rutledge

Which Tobacco Road team will bust out their respective shade of blue spray paint and claim the Victory Bell for their school?