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CHAPEL HILL -- The raucous crowd inside the packed arena watched the video screens during a TV timeout.

A parade of familiar faces popped up, one at a time, each voicing the same scripted line. Antawn Jamison and Anson Dorrance. Hakeem Nicks and Sylvia Hatchell. Julius Peppers and Michael Jordan.

The crowd roared its approval, the decibels proportional to the magnitude of the star.

One smiling, cheerful face appeared among the series of smiling, cheerful faces.

"I'm T.J. Yates," he said, "and I'm a Tar Heel."

The crowd booed.

Loudly.

Jeers rained down from the rafters of the Dean E. Smith Center, and they weren't aimed at the nationally-ranked Michigan State basketball team, in town for an early-season showdown with North Carolina.

They were aimed squarely at the home crowd's own starting quarterback, three days after the football team's loss at arch rival N.C. State in the regular-season finale.

In the Big Four's year of the quarterback, N.C. State's Russell Wilson was going nowhere, joining Duke's Thaddeus Lewis and Wake Forest's Riley Skinner on the outside looking in at the postseason.

Meanwhile, Yates, a junior, had started every game in North Carolina's 8-4 season, helping the Tar Heels to their second straight bowl berth -- today's Meineke Car Care Bowl against No. 17 Pittsburgh, the first back-to-back bowls for Carolina in a decade.

The crowd booed anyway.

And Yates was there to hear it.

"That's the only (basketball) game I've been to," Yates said. "It probably happens every game, I imagine. Every time my face goes up on that board. It wasn't just a couple people. It was just about everybody. I laughed, but then it was like, 'Holy crap, I can't believe that just happened.' I put my hat on, pulled (the bill of the cap) down over my face and made sure nobody's around me. It's a good thing I was there with some guys from the team backing me up."

His teammates are just about the only people in Chapel Hill who are still in Yates' corner.

THE BLAME GAME

Bowl game or no bowl game, this has been a rough season for T.J. Yates.

As a redshirt freshman two seasons ago, Yates started all 12 of Carolina's games and his 2,655 passing yards broke the school's single-season record.

Yates started just six games last season because of a broken left ankle, but he completed 60 percent of his passes and threw for 11 touchdowns against just four interceptions.

By Yates' own standards, this season has been mediocre at best. His 60.4 completion percentage is the best of his career, but his average of 162.8 passing yards per game is the worst. In six more starts than last year he's thrown just one more touchdown pass. And he has 14 interceptions to go along with the 12 TDs.

"I'm very tough on myself. I get down on myself, sometimes to a fault," Yates said. "I think you have to be a little bit critical of yourself, but sometimes you also have to just let some things go. I think I've learned that over the season. Sometimes, stuff piles on top of other stuff. When it keeps piling up and piling up, you've got to just let it go and start over. It gets worse and worse every time something else bad happens or fans are booing or something like that. There's just a point where you've got to get it out of your mind because it'll just make you play worse."

The fans have been all over Yates.

They booed lustily in a lackluster loss at home against lowly Virginia. They booed the Thursday night North Carolina squandered a big lead and lost at home to Florida State on national TV. The loss to State is still an open wound.

The thing is, all three of those games were winnable. And in big-time college football, the difference between 8-4 and 11-1 is gigantic.

"When you look back on the season, you think about the games you could've won," Yates said. "You think about the ones you had in your grasp. Florida State's definitely one of them. You think about that. You think about your play in that game and what kind of factors determined that game. I threw an interception, and that was definitely one of them."

North Carolina led the ACC in total defense and finished the regular season ranked No. 6 in the nation on that side of the ball. Because the defense was so good, the offense -- and Yates -- faced even more scrutiny.

"I think there's been some very, very bright moments (for Yates)," North Carolina coach Butch Davis said. "I think a quarterback gets an enormous amount of praise when all things go well. And the quarterback gets a significant amount -- and probably more than he deserves -- criticism when things don't go well. I think it's inherent with the position."

NEW-LOOK OFFENSE

Davis said his offense struggled this year because there were too many new guys around Yates.

The top three receivers from last year's team -- Hakeem Nicks, Brooks Foster and Brandon Tate -- were all selected in the 2009 NFL draft. Freshmen Erik Highsmith and Jheranie Boyd filled two of those three jobs this year.

Injuries to offensive linemen Carl Gaskins, Lowell Dyer and Jonathan Cooper made a mess of Yates' protection. Freshmen Travis Bond and Brennan Williams were pressed into service early, and defensive linemen Greg Elleby and Tavares Brown moved to offense to plug gaps.

Injuries cost the Tar Heels offense 27 missed starts. No starter on Carolina's defense missed a game.

Davis said his offensive line "looked like a M*A*S*H unit most of the season." That, along with an inconsistent running game, contributed to Yates' down season. And the criticism.

Has Yates ever heard as much criticism as this year?

"Never," he said, shaking his head. "Never. It's definitely been an eye-opening experience. I'm kind of just getting it from all angles: fans, critics, message boards. I try as much as possible not to listen to it, not pay attention to it. But when you're hearing it from every angle everywhere you go, it's kind of tough."

LESSONS FROM TEBOW

All the criticism seems to have hardened Yates.

"I kind of take it as I'm glad the fans care enough to criticize me," Yates said. "But it's deserving, you know? Sometimes during the season, the way I played kind of deserves criticism like that. The only thing it's going to do is make me work harder. &ellipses; (The bowl game) is kind of like your final exam. I've got to prove myself. I know I can play better. My teammates know I can play better. I've got to prove it."

Before thinking about his own bowl game, Yates went to the SEC championship game between Florida and Alabama.

What he saw in that day in Atlanta -- where North Carolina plays its first game next season -- opened his eyes.

"I was kind of mesmerized," Yates said. "I had good seats, so I was studying everything (Florida QB) Tim Tebow did, how he carried himself throughout the game. It was definitely a good experience. It gives you motivation to want to play in a game like that on a big stage like that.

"We're not that far away from that," Yates added. "Not at all. A couple games go a different way, a couple plays go a different way, and you're talking about a whole different season. We've just got to do a better job throughout the whole season of being consistent. To play in a big game like that, you've got to win a lot of ball games to be on the national stage."

But first comes today's Meineke Bowl. Yates will face the best defensive line he's seen all season, a front four that anchored a Pitt defense that led the nation in sacks.

On top of that, he'll face the critics one last time this year, the people who jeered his image on the Dean Dome's video screens.

"It's just more motivation for me to prove them wrong," Yates said. "At least they care enough to notice, to know I can play better and I have to play better. People actually care about the football team around here."

They cared enough to boo. Now T.J. Yates the Tar Heel is out to turn those boos to cheers.

Contact Jeff Mills at 373-7024 or jeff.mills@news-record.com