[7] Both have been members of the Atlantic Coast Conference since 1953, but the Cavaliers and Tar Heels have squared off at least fifteen more times than any other two ACC football programs.

[8] But nonetheless it is so named not only because of the extraordinary age and length of the series, but because of the immense early success of both programs and the great regional importance of their earliest games: between 1889 and 1902, either Virginia or North Carolina claimed a southern championship in twelve out of fourteen years.

When Virginia had first played one of those "Deep South" teams the year prior, a Georgia fullback died in Atlanta.

Virginia had the upper hand overall in the early rivalry with North Carolina, and therefore the entire region, claiming no fewer than twelve southern championships through 1908.

All games played between 1893 and 1916 were at "neutral site" locations in the Commonwealth of Virginia – Richmond and Norfolk – but after a two-year hiatus for World War I, the two programs have played every year since 1919 and have alternated between their home stadiums in Chapel Hill (at Kenan Memorial Stadium since 1927) and Charlottesville (at Scott Stadium since 1931) except for two games during World War II that were played in Norfolk, VA (1943, 1944).

Between 1910 and 1950, the South's Oldest Rivalry was consistently played as the last game of the season for both programs, and nearly always on Thanksgiving Day.

The 2018 meeting marked the 123rd edition of this game (played continuously since 1919), five more than the Army–Navy Game for the longest FBS series in the East, but now only equal to the "Deep South's Oldest Rivalry" (Georgia–Auburn) which was recently played twice in the same year in 2017, for the longest FBS series in the South.

[10] Trinity renamed itself Duke University in 1924, two years after the Blue Devils became an annual rival of the Tar Heels.

In the 1990–1997 period that both sides were consistently near the top of the ACC standings, Welsh and the Cavaliers won five games to Brown and the Tar Heels' three.

It ended what many UNC fans mockingly described as the "Charlottesville Curse" which lasted one year short of three decades.

National Poet Laureate Rita Dove serves on the UVA faculty, and UVA is the alma mater of Edgar Allan Poe and eight winners of the Pulitzer Prize (including Edward P. Jones, Ron Suskind, Virginius Dabney, and five others).

UNC is the alma mater of Thomas Wolfe (who wrote about the 1919 game in his posthumous novel The Web and the Rock), Walker Percy, and Shelby Foote.

When the 1985 Richard Moll book was published listing the original eight "Public Ivies," public colleges with rigorous academic standards, there were only two sharing a common athletic conference: the University of Virginia and the University of North Carolina.

For at least nine consecutive years, U.S. News & World Report has ranked UVA second and UNC fifth among all public universities, and they are first and second in the east.

North Carolina won narrowly, 24–20, over Virginia in the eighth consecutive game in the series to be decided by a single touchdown or less.

It was one of the last of these rivalry games played at Lambeth Field, as Scott Stadium was constructed in 1931 to accommodate more spectators.

Curry was lampooned in the media, earning the title "Sports Jerk of the Year" in the nationally syndicated Tank McNamara comic strip.

[16] He was drafted by the Oakland Raiders[17] and played seven years in the NFL after converting to wide receiver.