Douglas: Fun day despite Pitt in stomach

A downside of owning season tickets for UNC football games is that I find myself in Kenan Stadium on multiple fall Saturdays watching the Tar Heels play football, being exposed repeatedly to the mediocrity that defines the program, historically and now.

The challenge is to make the best of it, which I rose to last weekend with a little help from my friends, Ward Clayton and Sammy Batten. The Heels dropped their third straight game. Not only do we three share the Tau chapter Pi Kappa Alpha experience, but also time at this newspaper in the 1980s with Ward being the visionary who hired me as a sportswriter, and I being the genius who hired Sammy.

Of course, the late John Fish was at the head of that line, and more than a few of the recycled stories involved John J. We may be getting old, but the stories never do.

It was homecoming at UNC, and the day began with a visit to the School of Journalism, from which Sammy and Ward graduated, leaving me to crash that party. They spelled Sammy’s name wrong, so I told the greeter who distributed the nametags she received a zero. J-school grads know what I mean.

We got a tour of the school, including a stop at a room named for the late Lorry Williams, a beloved and talented journalist with whom I worked at the Fayetteville Observer.

From there, it was a short walk to the Pika house, and what I realized quickly was that the number of young ladies dressed in cowboy boots and little else outnumbered the guys by a factor of about five.

Free Modelo, an effective prophylactic for UNC football if administered in proper doses, and free food from Smithfield Chicken ‘N Bar-B-Q were among the rewards for the mile-long trek across the middle of campus, which looked remarkably the same as a half century ago. Yep, a half century.

There we joined Phil Ragazzo, another fraternity brother who played football at UNC when we would win the ACC now again, met some of the current brothers, and retraced our steps across campus to Kenan.

Rag and I went to the letterman’s tent, where former football players gather, me posing as a walk-on linebacker, and administered some more Modelo. From there it was on to our seats in Section 207, which sit squarely on the 50-yard line.

The view was good, but not what we saw. The Heels teased us briefly by taking the lead and threatening to stretch it, but lost 34-24 to Pittsburgh, and the sting of a loss just is not what it used to be.

It was back to the Pika house where the party was just beginning, with a band that was butchering rock ‘n roll tunes. I considered taking up a collection to pay the band to stop, which would have been easy. I met some former, as well as some of the current brothers, including a couple who endeared themselves by saying they are Facebook friends and read this column each week.

It was a great couple of hours, and again I noticed that unlike my time there, there were pretty women in pods of six to eight, making it a wonderful time to identify as a male undergrad at UNC. I am not a dirty old man, checking just two of those three boxes, but I do enjoy God’s work.

From there we made the short walk to Franklin Street, visiting Maxx’s Tin Can, a recently opened bar that is owned by a former Pika, and then it was upstairs to Time-Out Restaurant, renowned for its biscuits and fried chicken and owned by Eddie Williams, my big brother back in the day.

Neither Maxx’s nor Time-Out disappointed.

It was a great and full day, unless you kept score, and this weekend I will be back in Kenan for the game with Georgia Tech. Sammy and Ward have better things to do. One way or another, however, my plan is to have fun.

With that in mind, Modelo is back on the menu.