Turner's Take: Ebron In His Own Words
December 16, 2013 | Football, Featured Writers, Turner Walston
Eric Ebron is nothing if not confident. The junior tight end has the numbers to back up his boasts. A second-team All America and finalist for the Mackey Award, Ebron led Carolina with 55 catches for 895 yards and had three touchdowns on the regular season. Prior to the season finale with Duke, he announced that he would enter the 2014 NFL Draft. So next Saturday's Belk Bowl will be his final appearance as a Tar Heel.
Ebron knows that it's difficult to plan for a bowl game, what with Christmas obligations, budgets stretched and travel involved. But he thinks Tar Heel fans ought to make the trip to Charlotte. “Why not?” he said last week. “I mean, I've been exciting all season. Who wouldn't want to come watch Eric Ebron in his last game in a Carolina uniform? I mean, I would pay.”
Despite that confidence, Ebron said he doesn't have anything special planned for Cincinnati and the Belk Bowl; he's just going to let the game come to him. “I just go out there and do what I do best. Whatever special happens is built up inside and already packaged for the game. I can't justify that or make something spectacular happen, it's just going to happen. It's a bowl game; I'm here to have fun.”
Though he won't be in a Carolina jersey next season, Ebron knows that he's been a part of building something, the first steps of the Fedora Era in Chapel Hill and a continual work in progress. The Tar Heels weren't eligible for the postseason last year, though had they been, they'd have played for the ACC championship. An 8-4 regular season without a bowl game has been followed by a 6-6 season with one. Carolina lost some tremendous leaders and contributors after 2012 and spent the first half of 2013 finding its footing under difficult circumstances. Ebron said this season was about “setting a standard for what they need to build on next year, and what can happen. Understanding how they can make things better is really all we tried to accomplish,” he said. The team liked the taste of winning (going 5-1 in the second half) much more than losing (1-5 in the beginning), and the prospect of a bowl game helped motivate the Tar Heels to finish strong.
So Ebron appreciates his role as a program-builder, and not necessarily one who'll get to enjoy the pinnacle of what Carolina football is working toward. Not as a player, at least. Still, he'll be watching. “I'll definitely always be connected to Carolina, the football team, the football facility,” he said. “I can't wait to see it keep changing. My freshman year is when they first built Loudermilk, and as a recruit I was seeing it get built. I will always love to come back and see the changes, the players I played with and the players that are up and coming that I won't get a chance to play with. Hopefully I'll enjoy watching as much I did playing Carolina football.”
There's something of a chicken-and-egg scenario with sports fans. Fans want to see wins, but programs need proven fan support to build themselves into winners. As a student-athlete, Ebron would like to see Tar Heel fans turn up their support, so that those who saw the program through difficult times can enjoy the rewards to come. “You can't have your cake and ice cream and eat both of them at the same time. You've got to pick one. Do you want your ice cream now, or do you want your cake now? You can't be a fan when we're winning and a different fan when we're losing,” he said. Then, it stops becoming an analogy. “We go through a lot. We don't need extra noise, extra attention, we just need people that are there that understand what we go through. This year, we went through a lot, being so young and having players having to step up. And they did, later in the season, and that's when you see more fans start to come out. You start seeing people cheer more, and when we lose you see them fall back again. You just have to stay consistent. If you want us to be consistent, y'all have to be consistent, and that's toward the fans.”
Fan support is needed, sure, but Ebron understands there comes a point when it's up to the student-athletes and coaches to execute. “If they want to be on ESPN all the time, you've got to earn it. If you want to get talked about on College Football Daily and stuff like that, you've got to earn it, and it's up to them to stop asking and stop wanting and start earning things.” Though he won't be in Chapel Hill, he believes the pieces are in place for a football renaissance - if the players grab the opportunity before them. “You've got Coach Fedora, you've got a good staff, you've got great coaches and now everything you can ask for is here. You've got new jerseys, you always look good every game.There's nothing more that you can ask for, it's just up to them to go out there and perform and practice hard and lift hard and train.”
Like his quarterback Marquise Williams, Ebron was a Carolina recruit when the Tar Heels traveled to Nashville for the 2010 Music City Bowl and played Tennessee in the Volunteers' home state. Carolina fans were outnumbered at LP Field on that day. Ebron would like to see the tables turned next weekend.
“It would be so terrible to go to a bowl game in an NFL stadium and it looks like the Pitt game. It looks like there's five people here, three people here, four people here, and it just doesn't look complete. We need a complete Carolina blue wipeout. We need Cincinnati fans to be terrified. We need Cincinnati to be terrified. We need our fans to bring everything they've got. We know it's a few days after Christmas. We know people are traveling, but we're out here working to put on a show for Carolina, and we need support. We need people to help us.”
So in the meantime, with exams complete, the Tar Heels are practicing and working toward not only the Belk Bowl, but beyond. For Ebron, there is no beyond, not in a Tar Heel uniform. The confident young man wearing number 85 is looking forward to putting on a show in Charlotte, but internally, he knows he's only got a handful of moments remaining with his “boys.”
“I'll look back after the game. I enjoy playing with my boys. . . Jabari, Tre, Tim, T.J., Marquise, Blue, my boys. We're like in unison. Romar, Rankin . . . I've got a lot of people on this team I'm really close to and that I'd do anything for. That all disappears once you go to the NFL. Then you have your friends. They're not really your boys as tight as they were in college because it can never be. It's a business. Your boy might get traded. It is what it is. It's a journey that I didn't know what was coming but I always dreamed for, and now it's here and all I can do is live it up.”
