news-record.com

CHARLOTTE -- The eighth-annual Meineke Car Care Bowl was played Saturday before a sea of empty seats, a development hard to explain but impossible to ignore.

The bands played fight songs that echoed off entire sections of the upper deck as long lines of holiday travelers drove past the stadium on the way home, or possibly to car care centers but certainly not the eighth-annual Muffler Bowl.

Pittsburgh, a school that didn't want to be here, defeated North Carolina, which didn't want to be here either -- 19-17 before an announced crowd of 50,389 fans inside a stadium built to hold a whole lot more than that inside a city never meant to host a bowl game to begin with.

Early in a college football bowl season that seems to get longer every year, this one provided almost nothing toward the storyline. By the time the bowl games end sometime next month, they won't still be talking about this one.

They weren't even talking about it before it ended. A little before 7 p.m., news leaked out of the University of Florida that its coach Urban Meyer would be stepping down after the Sugar Bowl, and ESPN cut away from the game for in-depth coverage of what will certainly become the college football storyline for weeks to come.

The telecast resumed after missing some key plays, but no one seemed to mind.

The players didn't hide their disappointment of playing here in the days leading up to it, and no one expected them to. The players from Pitt were a game away from playing in a major bowl a couple of weeks ago, but a season-ending loss to Cincinnati cost the Panthers a Big East Conference title, a BCS bid and a trip somewhere other than Charlotte.

Carolina's regular season ended with a loss to rival N.C. State, and a year that seemed to have so much promise before it started ended in the exact place the program landed last year.

"When I came in I was looking at a national championship," UNC defensive tackle Marvin Austin said earlier in the week.

"And I still think we have a chance to do that. We haven't even won an ACC championship yet, so we've still got a lot of work to do."

Austin is one of a handful of players in Saturday's game who could end up in the NFL next season, thus Carolina could be rebuilding yet again, destined to end up here again and again in years to come.

He backed off those comments slightly, but most of the players said the goal in coming seasons will be to play somewhere else when bowl season rolls around.

"This wasn't good enough," he said.

"We should be winning bigger games," cornerback Kendric Burney said.

The perception that neither team wanted to be here had as much as anything to do with the lack of fans Saturday. But still, it's a statement in and of itself when the University of North Carolina can't sell out a bowl in Charlotte. The fans from Pitt sent a message more powerful than that. They wanted no part of this game.

Bowl officials cited the economy as a third factor, and that can't be discounted. But for the first time since 1998, UNC was playing in a bowl game for a second straight year. Maybe the Heels' legions of fans are out of practice. Or maybe losses to State and Virginia still resonate, and the idea of a football game in Charlotte on the day after Christmas was not on a lot of wish lists.

Butch Davis said the timing of the game caused problems in the preparations. He cited exams and classwork as impediments to practice.

"A lot of teams who had their finals over with had their kids' undivided attention to meet all day long, the 20-hour rule was out, they didn't have to worry about finals, reading days, exams and all that stuff," Davis said. "I would've liked for it to have been better, but it was what it was and we had to make the best of it."

All that stuff is called college, and that gets in the way of football sometimes, a fact that eludes all those who would institute playoffs and tournaments and postseason pageants for football. There was a time when they didn't play bowl games the day after Christmas.

ESPN gave the bowl a prime-time slot in the afternoon, giving in-state fans the opportunity to make a day trip out of it, a decision that didn't sit all that well with some local hoteliers who remember past Muffler Bowls that attracted more than 73,000 people. One of those was last year when Carolina played West Virginia.

Saturday's was the lowest attendance in the history of the bowl. More than 20 sections of the stadium were entirely empty, including two in the lower bowl. It was a statement hard to ignore, partly because Carolina was here a second straight year completing a second straight 8-5 season and partly because Pitt sold maybe 2,000 tickets total, and partly because of the economy.

All in all, it was a bowl game to forget, which Davis and his college kids said they'd already done less than 20 minutes after it ended.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com