The North Carolina Tar Heels are the athletic teams for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ("UNC"). The name Tar Heel is also often used to refer to individuals from the state of North Carolina, the Tar Heel State. Being the flagship institution of the University of North Carolina system, Chapel Hill is referred to as "University of North Carolina" for the purposes of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The Tar Heels are commonly referred to as "Carolina," "North Carolina," or simply the "Heels." The University of North Carolina has won 39 team national championships in six different sports, 9 th all-time, and 51 individual national championships. The women's soccer team has won 19 national championships since 1981; the men's soccer team won the national championship in 2001; the women's basketball team in 1994; the men's basketball team in 1924, 1957, 1982, 1993, and 2005; the men's lacrosse team in 1982, 1986, and 1991; the women's field hockey team in 1989, 1995, 1996, 1997, and 2007; the women's team handball team in 2004; and the men's team handball team in 2004, 2005, and 2006. The men's crew (blank">http://www.unc.edu/crew) won the 2004 ECAC National Invitational Collegiate Regatta in the varsity eight category http://www.qra.org/cicr/2004NICR.pdf.

In 1994, the University's athletic programs won the Sears Directors Cup which is awarded for cumulative performance in NCAA competition.

Notable graduates from the athletic programs include Tyler Berg, _Michael Jordan, James Worthy, Lawrence Taylor, Mia Hamm, Kristine Lilly, Cindy Parlow, Davis Love III, Eddie Pope, Roy Williams, B.J. Surhoff, Jeff Reed, Andrew Miller, Daniel Bard and Marion Jones.

UNC's most heated rivalries are with its Tobacco Road counterparts: Duke (See UNC-Duke rivalry), North Carolina State (See UNC-NCSU rivalry), and Wake Forest. In recent years, the UNC-Duke basketball series has attracted the most attention. UNC also has a rivalry with Virginia in college football, known as the South's Oldest Rivalry.

The mascot of the Tar Heels is Rameses, a Bighorn Ram. It is represented as either a live Dorset sheep with its horned painted Carolina blue, or as a costumed character performed by a male member of the Tar Heels cheerleading team.

The North Carolina Tar Heels football team represents the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in collegiate level football. Over its nearly 120 years of existence, the program has won 630 games, boasts an all-time winning percentage of .569, and has appeared in 25 bowl games. The team's most recent bowl victory came in the 2001 Peach Bowl, in which they defeated the Auburn Tigers 16-10. Since joining the Atlantic Coast Conference in 1953, the team has won 5 conference championships, with the most recent title coming in 1980.

One very important contribution to the game of football by UNC is the modern use of the forward pass. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was the first college team to use the forward pass in 1895. Bob Quincy notes in his 1973 book They Made the Bell Tower Chime:

John Heisman, a noted historian, wrote 30 years later that, indeed, the Tar Heels had given birth to the forward pass against the Bulldogs (UGA). It was conceived to break a scoreless deadlock and give UNC a 6-0 win. The Carolinians were in a punting situation and a Georgia rush seemed destined to block the ball. The punter, with an impromptu dash to his right, tossed the ball and it was caught by George Stephens, who ran 70 yards for a touchdown.

The team plays its home games at Kenan Memorial Stadium, located on-campus at University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. At the beginning of the 4th quarter, AC/DC's "Hells Bells" is played and students hold up four fingers indicating the quarter.

While not a perennial powerhouse, the North Carolina football program has had intermittent success and has featured a number of great players, many of whom have gone on to prominence in the National Football League. Among the program's most outstanding alumni are Lawrence Taylor, Jeff Saturday, Alge Crumpler, Willie Parker, Greg Ellis, Dre Bly, and Julius Peppers.

On November 13, 2006, the program took a considerable step toward possible prominence by hiring as head coach Butch Davis, former head coach of the Miami Hurricanes and Cleveland Browns. In addition, the school pledged that they would fund the football program to the same extent that their dominant Men's and Women's basketball teams are funded.

On February 7, 2007, Butch Davis and staff inked one of the top recruiting classes in North Carolina football history, earning national recognition from the recruiting industry's most influential websites, including Scout.com, Rivals.com and ESPN.com. Though all did not qualify academically, this class did include some of the nation's most highly sought after recruits including Marvin Austin, Greg Little, Dwight Jones, Mike Paulus and Tydreke Powell.