It sounds like a natural bowl pairing and might still come about, but the odds are beginning to mount against North Carolina facing South Carolina in Atlanta’s Dec. 31 Chick-fil-A game in the Georgia Dome.

With the second pick from the ACC pool of bowl qualifiers, the Chick-fil-A committee will take the Tar Heels (7-3), if they can defeat either N.C. State this weekend or Duke in the Nov. 22 regular season finale. There’s still the chance Carolina could reach the ACC title game and, with a win, go to the Orange Bowl on Jan. 1.

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ECU: The oft-ignored Pirates beat the ACC's best team at its own game and have humbled their reeling ACC neighbors. They have consecutive wins over two of the top-five winningest programs of the past 10 years (1, Boise State; 5, Virginia Tech). Given two extra shots — the Conference USA title game and a bowl — Skip Holtz has ECU in line to win 12 games for the first time in school history.

Pregame festivities: Aerial Adventures was supposed to deliver the game ball via skydivers for UNC's opener at Kenan Stadium. The parachute team descended on Duke's Wallace Wade Stadium instead.

Clemson had a similar plan for its offensive line, but the Georgia Dome roof kept the players out.

N.C. State hasn't seen Steve Spurrier on the opposite sideline in 16 years. Back then, the quasi-Evil Genius was just the Middle-aged Ball Coach, still drawing up ball plays for Florida.

The Gators outclassed the Wolfpack 27-10 in the Gator Bowl at the end of the 1992 season. The game was notable for two reasons:

1) It was played in a dense fog, which made the game basically unwatchable.

2) It was Dick Sheridan's final game at N.C. State.

Tom O'Brien holds his first weekly press conference today at 2 p.m. (we'll keep you updated). It was before this press conference last season that O'Brien revealed the starting quarterback for the Central Florida game.

Actually, N.C. State released its game notes with a depth chart hours before O'Brien's pre-UCF press conference. There will be no such surreptitious announcement today, N.C. State's sports information department said in the print edition.

O'Brien is even unlikely to reveal the starting QB during his press conference.