.png&width=36&height=36&type=webp)
University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Champs To Receive Unique Ring Presentation
August 9, 2017 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
Past national champions will be involved in the 2017 ring presentation.
By Adam Lucas
The 2017 national championship celebration isn't quite over yet.
Earlier this summer, photographs of Carolina's 2017 championship ring made the rounds on social media. But each NCAA basketball champion actually gets two rings; one is a fairly standard ring provided by the NCAA itself. That's the one you might have already seen.
The other is the "big" ring, the one designed and crafted specifically for that championship team. Tar Heel seniors met with a representative from Jostens in the spring and had input into the design, but they have not seen the final product.
That will change on September 9, when the 2017 Tar Heels are presented with their championship rings during the Carolina-Louisville football game (kickoff is at noon). Roy Williams' previous two NCAA title teams also received their rings at Kenan Stadium in what turned into a terrific ceremony.
This year's version will be even better. Director of player development Eric Hoots, who is also the liaison who stays in touch most closely with the former players, had a brainstorm: why not involve some of Carolina's past national champions in the ceremony?
So on Sept. 9, players representing every Carolina national championship team from 1957 through 2009 will return to Chapel Hill to present the players and staff from 2017 with their rings. Some of the former players are journeying across the country to be there, and everyone contacted has been enthusiastic about the idea.
"I played for Coach Smith, and this is something Coach Smith would want the guys to do," says George Lynch, a senior on the 1993 title team. "It's a way for us as former players to show our appreciation for the enjoyment the 2017 team brought to all of us from Carolina, whether we were student-athletes, or students, or alumni, or fans."
The former players attending will be immediately familiar to every Carolina fan, but it's possible some of the current players might not have as crisp a recall of Lynch's key steal and dunk against Florida State or Sean May's incredible senior day performance against Duke or Lennie Rosenbluth's incredible exploits from the drive to the undefeated 1957 title.
Roy Williams says it doesn't matter.
"Our guys are so young," the head coach says. "They probably have a hard time remembering anyone who played here before 2009. But there's a presence about those guys winning a national championship. When you're out there on the field, and everyone out there has won a national title, you have the bond of knowing what it was like in the locker room, and knowing what it was like to drive back to Chapel Hill from the airport, and knowing what it's like to come back on that Tuesday and be in front of the public and the other students."
"I'm really excited about getting to do it," says Marvin Williams, a member of the 2005 champions who has been known to wear his championship ring around NBA locker rooms during March Madness. "We are going to be out there with legends. It will be guys who paved the way for our 2005 team, and then we laid the groundwork for those who won after us. It's important to pay respect to what the guys before us did, and we have a great appreciation for them."
Receiving a national championship ring is one of those lifetime moments you never forget. Getting a championship ring in this fashion? That's even better.
"This," Lynch said, "is what Carolina Basketball is all about."