Can North Carolina be a top college football state in 2022?

With several powerful 2021 showings from college football teams based in North Carolina, the state could be a hard one to outshine next season.

Typically when sports fans think of the state of North Carolina, they think of college basketball, not college football. However, 2022 might see a change in the times.

Of the four Power 5-level college football programs located in North Carolina, three saw bowl-eligible records last season (North Carolina, NC State, and Wake Forest). Of those three, two saw win counts of nine or higher.

And while those 2021 facts are respectable by themselves, they are seemingly fixing to bleed into next Fall. NCST and WF head coaches Dave Doeren and Dave Clawson have done outstanding jobs building up their programs, and have shown no signs of slowing down.

As for UNC, the worst of those three aforementioned powers, their head coach Mack Brown isn’t exactly a schmuck, being the only one of the three head coaches with national title-winning experience.

The Tar Heels also currently possess the 2nd-best 2022 recruiting class in the ACC. So while both the Wolfpack and Demon Deacons should stay near the top of the Atlantic Coast hierarchy for next season, the Heels will most likely be by their side this next time around.

Even the Duke Blue Devils–who were the worst team in the ACC last year–have some potential entering their 2022 slate. This is mainly due to the firing of their longtime head coach David Cutcliffe.

While that might not mean much by itself, new guy Mike Elko has currently kept them placed 7th in the conference for 2022 recruiting (the highest that their recruiting haul has been ranked in several years).

All of this goes without even mentioning that Duke dwells in the Coastal half of the ACC, which is consistently the weaker half of the league. If any team were to have a chance of making big strides in ACC football, that is the side of the conference that they would want to be on.

Lastly, the Sun Belt Conference’s Appalachian State Mountaineers deserve some love for their own recent accomplishments.

Despite being a Group of 5 team, the Mountaineers won 10 games last season and made an appearance in their conference title game. And one of their two regular-season losses was to the Miami Hurricanes by two points on the road. Not too shabby for a “smaller” program.

If 2022 will feature the state of North Carolina as the bloodbath that it was last year, then the rest of the college football world better keep its distance.