Although there is still one game left in the 2019 regular season, there was some news surrounding the Tar Heels 2020 schedule on Monday afternoon.
The Tar Heels have dropped what was scheduled to be a home matchup with Old Dominion on September 26th for a meeting with Connecticut that will now take place on November 7th. The switch from the Monarchs to the Huskies is a lateral move, as the teams are just a combined 3-19 in 2019, with Connecticut owning a slightly better record of 2-9 (0-7). The meeting with the Huskies will be the fourth meeting all time between the Tar Heels and Huskies and the first since the 2009 meeting up in East Hartford.
With this swap, the Tar Heels 2020 opponents and out-of-conference schedule are officially set. The season will open on the road at Spectrum Stadium in Orlando, FL on Thursday, September 3rd or Friday, September 4th, as the Tar Heels will play the second scheduled game of a home-and-home series with Central Florida after the first game of the series was not played in Kenan Stadium last year because of Hurricane Florence. The following week, the Tar Heels will head to Atlanta for one of the three Chick-Fil-A Kickoff Games of the 2020 season, as they will meet Gus Malzahn and the Auburn Tigers in what will be the Heels' third Chick-Fil-A Kickoff Game appearance since the events inception. The Tar Heels will host James Madison in the 2020 home opener in Week 3 and then close out the out-of-conference schedule at home later in the season with the game we talked about above. The Heels' conference dates have not been set, but the locations are in place at this time. Georgia Tech, NC State, Pittsburgh and Virginia Tech will all travel to Chapel Hill, while the Tar Heels will take road trips to Boston College, Duke, Miami and Virginia.