North Carolina strolled into Durham last Thursday and went on to destroy the then-No. 21 Blue Devils' ACC title hopes via a 45-20 beat down. But the Tar Heels did not let the destruction end there.
North Carolina players racked up $25,000-worth in damages to Duke's visiting locker room at Wallace Wade Stadium after they went a little wild with the spray paint used to paint the Victory Bell.
As is custom, the winner of the rivalry game is awarded the Bell and paints it their respective shade of blue on the field. But as the celebration, players and Victory Bell made their way back to the locker room, so did the spray paint.
"When you've got young people and spray paint, I haven't ever seen that be a real good thing" head coach David Cutcliffe said. "What we should do is learn. With this great trophy, and it is a beautiful trophy that brass bell, is that take it back or keep it, but there should be no spray paint on the sidelines. And if both institutions choose that's the way to go—it's not my decision—but that's what I would recommend."
According to the Herald-Sun, the players allegedly tagged the walls and carpets in the locker room with the spray paint, and would go on to write the letters "UNC" on the wall next to the entrance door.
With the incident coming after a blowout loss, the damages seemed to pile onto the already long laundry list of issues the Blue Devils have been having in past weeks. With this in mind, defensive end Dezmond Johnson pointed toward this Saturday's clash with Wake Forest as an important game for the team, as it will look to move past a rough two-week stretch with a win on Senior Day. Although the spray painting incident was unsettling, he was ready to focus on the Demon Deacons.
"It's a little upsetting," Johnson said. "You never want your things to be damaged. You try to take care of it to the best of your ability, but like I said, [we're] kind of overlooking that. It's not our mindset right now."
As upsetting as the tagging may have been for Duke, the sense of disrespect was about as much as the incident affected any of the players.
The Blue Devil locker rooms are located in the Yoh Center, not the Brooks Building where visiting teams are hosted. With this being the case, many players did not know about the Tar Heels' activities—safety DeVon Edwards found out about the incident when members of the media informed him Tuesday.
"[The reactions] were definitely on an individual basis," senior linebacker David Helton said. "There wasn't a team-wide, 'Hey, this is what happened.' I think some of us had heard about it and were like 'That's crazy.' But because we're never in the Brooks [Building] really, unless we're doing media day, it's really not a huge thing."
Tar Heel head coach Larry Fedora and athletic director Bubba Cunningham called their counterparts at Duke to apologize for the incident. North Carolina has volunteered to pay for the damages.
Fedora and Cunningham issued a joint statement through the University:
"We would like to apologize to the Duke Football program and Duke University for some inappropriate actions after last Thursday night's game in Durham. Our team took the celebration too far when they were painting the bell, resulting in damage to some of the facilities at Duke. We take full responsibility for our actions and will be paying for all costs associated with the cleanup. We view this as a rivalry built on mutual respect and we expect our players to behave better in a way that is more befitting of the rivalry."
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