Brownlow's Twitter Mailbag: UNC's Auburn curse, lacrosse, shower technique and more

By Lauren Brownlow, WRALSportsFan columinst/reporter

Raleigh, N.C. — The off-season continues, and so, too, do your excellent questions. So let's just get right to all of your questions!

This notion, of course, comes from the fact that yet again, Auburn eliminated North Carolina from the postseason this year - this time, in the Super Regionals. The time before also came in the round of 16, so to speak, in the NCAA Tournament.

Both of those wins came with North Carolina as the favorite and Auburn as the lower-seeded team. Both involved offensive explosions.

And the notion of a curse comes from this:

The Tar Heels would go on to lose Game 3 to the Tigers, and boy oh boy was it emphatic - Auburn had 13 runs in the FIRST INNING alone, the second-most in an inning in the NCAA Tournament ... ever.

I mean, what if I told you that UNC's only sport where it is not on a losing streak to Auburn is ... football? Well, it's true. But before this year, baseball had UNC's only losing streak against the Tigers.

The 2001 UNC win over Auburn was its only football win over the Tigers in the last century and change, but to be fair, UNC's last win before that had come in 1901 and they played just twice in the 100 years in between, so. Another fun fact: in six football meetings between the two, Auburn scored more than it did in that first inning alone just twice.

But there's bad news for you yet, Charlie - or for UNC, whichever - but the Tar Heels will open the 2020 football season in Atlanta against .... you guessed it ... Auburn. I would argue that certainly in football and very recently in basketball, the SEC has been a bugaboo for Carolina. In basketball, the Tar Heels have lost three straight to the SEC dating back to March 2018. Carolina had won four in a row before that.

In football, Carolina hasn't played an SEC team in the last two years but has still lost four in a row to current SEC teams and has exactly one win in seven tries against an SEC team since ... that 2001 Peach Bowl win over Auburn. And that win was a bowl game win over Tennessee in the Music City Bowl which has a rule named after it.

There is SOME good news, though. If there's one thing Mack Brown was good at while at UNC, it was beating the SEC. (There was more than one thing Mack was good at, for the record; it's just a figure of speech.) If you take out Mack's consecutive 1-10 seasons in 1988 and 1989, Mack went 4-2 against the SEC from 1990-97 and 2-1 in bowl games, falling only to Alabama in 1995.

A 14-7 final score, even with a 13-point first quarter by Auburn, while weird, does still seem possible in 2020!

But to actually answer your question: no, Carolina shouldn't avoid scheduling Auburn. They should avoid scheduling Alabama in football, for sure, and avoid no one in basketball or baseball unless it's like Cal State-Fullerton.

Well, this isn't an entirely new phenomenon. In fact, as long ago as when I got out of school, it was already happening. So it's hard for me to REALLY say because I never knew a world without it. But back then, as now, the two co-exist in a way that is mostly fine. Because here's the other thing: independent publications exist that cover just one school, and often also cover recruiting (which the school itself can't do). The kind of access and journalism those outlets have and can do is different than even an independent publication, of course, but that's a whole other conversation. You're not going to get an expose from a publication like that, which is fine, but they still might publish a piece critical of a coach, which is also fine. Still, schools had to grapple then - as they do now - with the existence of those types of outlets and the fact that they provide something the schools still can't to their fans, so much so that many are willing to pay. For the most part, with the exception of a slow/mixed acceptance of blogs, schools can and do understand that.

I can't speak for reporters that work on a beat, as it were, because I have never really done that to an extent that I would use sources I would feel comfortable citing (anonymous or otherwise) in breaking news. From what I've seen, though, reporters that come in and work hard don't have an issue getting sources and access, regardless of what publication they represent. Schools, especially in this area, are generally more willing and likely to reward their day-in, day-out reporters who are with them all the time, like a November game against Stetson or something in addition to a top-5 Carolina-Duke game.

There are of course going to be "exclusives" that schools give to the people who cover their teams, whether it's on the video side (more common) or on the written side (less common, but still a thing). And there are going to be programs that are tighter with their 1-on-1 access to their athletes or coaches than others. But I honestly can't think of a time I ever saw a feature on a player that I'd been trying to get and hadn't that was then done by the school itself. (That would have been upsetting!) I have seen schools re-purpose content created by others, but other outlets do that in their own way as well.

I feel very fortunate that we mostly cover schools that are generous in the access they allow us and will address any concerns we might have when we aren't allowed that access. It's not a perfect relationship, but everyone is trying. It is NOT that way everywhere.

I stan for Bonzie Colson so hard that I will gently correct your spelling of his name.

But here's the thing: I have been in this business long enough to know that even people I feel a strong amount of affection or allegiance towards are still capable of letting me down, and such allegiance is dangerous.

For me to be a true, unabashed fan, I'd have to go back to the days before I started out in this profession.

So for it to be someone who I am just almost a blind fan for, it's Steve Smith. He has always been my favorite Carolina Panther and I don't think I'll ever have the kind of affection and love for another that I did for him. I know he's had his issues. And I won't excuse those now (although I would have then). I loved his edge. I loved his tenacity. I loved his ferocity. I loved everything about who he was on the football field. He's said and done some things that I didn't always agree with, but I will always have his rowing the boat celebration, the fact that he had a critique of the Panthers drafting him up in his locker, and "ice up son", among many other great moments.

I covered his final game as a Panther, the playoff loss to San Francisco in 2013. I knew that it probably would be. It was one of my toughest moments as a journalist in terms of keeping my objectivity. I'll never forget it. I almost cried.

Phony is SORT OF joking here, in that he doesn't necessarily think that football is going anywhere, but IF it were to go somewhere, would it fill a lot of the needs of football? It certainly could.

I say this as about as casual of a lacrosse fan as there is, and that's putting it kindly: I don't mind watching it on TV from time to time, but I don't understand the rules. I just don't. I get the basic concept, of course, and naturally there are crossover elements with the other sports that I do understand. But the reason I at least UNDERSTAND most other sports is that I played some form of them growing up, whether it was in gym class or just in the cul-de-sac with my neighbors or whatever. I never played lacrosse. I barely even knew what it was.

That's not to say it couldn't catch on - it certainly could - and it becoming as widespread as it has regardless of geography at younger and younger ages certainly helps. But I think that it faces a lot of the same obstacles as rugby does in the sense that not a lot of people understand the rules. Rugby, too, fills a lot of the gaps that football would potentially leave, should it actually leave.

I also think lacrosse suffers from a little bit of what hockey does in that it's more exciting live than it is on television, but I do genuinely always enjoy it when I watch.

I think the age question is a bigger one than which movie(s). Thinking back to my own childhood, I'm pretty sure the only sports movie my dad made me watch is Endless Summer. (He was REALLY into surfing.)

So, I've already shown my kid Space Jam, because of course. He was only mildly interested. Truthfully? It doesn't age all that well, but whatever.

I don't think that I'm going to *make* him watch a ton of movies anyway, but I'll strongly suggest quite a few. He's only (almost) 3, so the only ones he's close to being able to watch and understand at all that I'd probably insist upon are probably Cool Runnings and ... the Mighty Ducks movies. I'd even save Sandlot awhile.

I will insist on the Rocky movies - like, all of them except Rocky V, which never happened - and probably when he's like ... 9 or 10? Maybe younger? They're not all that racy. I'll insist on A League of Their Own around the same time.

When he's a teenager, I think it'll be time for him to watch maybe the greatest documentary ever made: Hoop Dreams.

After that, I'll probably wait until he's at least 13 to check out Bull Durham, Caddyshack or Dodgeball, and maybe even older than that to watch White Men Can't Jump or Any Given Sunday. But that's pretty much my list.

This is, I'm assuming, an extension of 2019's latest version of how is this even a question: whether or not you wash your legs in the shower.

And the answer, you monsters, is that YES, I wash my legs. Uh, no, I don't just 'let the water run down'. By that twisted logic, I guess I could just not wash any part of my body that shampoo run-off touched either, right? I mean, that's a form of soap.

I honestly have not really thought about the specific order of washing, though, because I think that I always end up rinsing as I go. I wash my hair every other shower, but I use conditioner and deep conditioner every time. But I let my conditioner sit in my hair as I wash my body (it has to be in for two minutes). And I have never really cared much about letting the water rinse me as I go. I don't step away from the stream so as to soap everything before I step back into the stream. I just stay in the stream the whole time. Keeps the lather rich, if you ask me.

I also just realized that I always go from the top down when washing, which I guess makes sense but I also never really thought about it until right this second. The idea of washing my face after I've washed literally any other part of me really bothers me.