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A rare opportunity for the North Carolina Tar Heels comes with a caveat.

The Heels, precluded from playing home games on Thursday nights by on-campus logistical concerns, take to the field tonight at Rutgers on ESPN's exclusive national stage. They'll need to overcome not only the Scarlet Knights but the emotional impact of time and place.

Seven years ago today and 27 miles from Rutgers Stadium, smoke, fire and anguish filled the air for reasons well known to every American. Rutgers understandably plans various ceremonies to honor the heroism -- a word so often misapplied to sports -- of those who died in and served after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The ACC and Big East conferences have planned ceremonies during the normal pregame and halftime windows, which means the disruption to the teams' routines should be minimal.

But no amount of planning can fully separate the game from history.

"It's going to be special playing up in that area on 9/11," Carolina linebacker Mark Paschal said this week. "We're so blessed to play this game in front of people who want to watch it. It's crazy that it has been that long, but it's still evident in society with the war going on. It's going to have a little more meaning to know we're in that area on that day."

Rutgers will honor the 4,000 members of the New Jersey National Guard currently serving in the war effort by distributing miniature American flags to fans. A corps of stateside Guardsmen will present the colors for the National Anthem, and their commanding officer, Maj. Gen. Glenn K. Reith, will escort the Scarlet Knights' captains to midfield for the coin toss. Halftime will include a video tribute to all service personnel, and a jet fly-over is planned if weather allows.

And after all of that, they'll play a football game.

Rutgers couldn't escape the scope of the tragedy. Nearly 40 of the university's alumni died from the attacks Sept. 11, 2001, and countless students agonized about their loved ones. (A recent survey indicated 78,000 workers from New Jersey commute to Manhattan every weekday.)

"When you grow up around here and when you live here, which a lot of our players do, everybody has their own personal memories and their own personal tragedies that occurred," said Greg Schiano, the Knights' coach.

Among them was current Knights quarterback Mike Teel, whose father was and is a police officer and accident-scene investigator for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the interstate bureau that oversees public transportation in and around New York City. The authority's offices were in the Twin Towers. The family didn't hear from Mike Teel Sr., whose cell phone was rendered inoperable, until 8 p.m. He was OK.

The impact had no bounds, of course. UNC cornerback Kendrick Burney was in middle school in Jacksonville, and he understood what it meant to those in the vicinity of Camp LeJeune.

"It was scary back in eighth grade to see people running around," he said. "You had a lot of classmates whose mothers and fathers would have to take long trips."

Paschal said he wouldn't mind seeing the ceremonies. Burney isn't so sure that's a good idea.

"It's one that will touch you a bit too much," he said. "It's one where I hopefully will be in the locker room because if I were in the crowd, it would be perfect. But getting ready for a game will be pretty tough."

The Heels will try to look at this not so much as Sept. 11 but as a Thursday. Because football fans and UNC Hospitals employees use common parking facilities, playing host to a midweek event with 50,000 off-campus visitors is not feasible for Carolina. The Heels, therefore, have played only five times on the ESPN Thursday package, which is in its 18th season.

"All eyes are on you, and that's not something to make you nervous; it's something to make you excited," Paschal said.

Contact Rob Daniels at 373-7028 or rob.daniels@news-record.com