Upon first glance, the North Carolina student section represented itself quite well at Monday night's national championship game at University of Phoenix Stadium.
North Carolina fans are LOUD and proud tonight. pic.twitter.com/QOgca0kiSm
— ABC15 Sports (@abc15sports) April 4, 2017
But if you looked a bit deeper -- actually, just a few rows behind the rowdy students in the above video -- you'd notice something a bit odd.
Namely, you'd see a great deal of fans in the UNC section -- over two-thirds of them, in fact -- wearing nothing but white shirts, without a hint of Tar Heel blue.
You can spot of few of them in the background here, just over an hour before the game began.
Turns out the white-clad North Carolina fans weren't North Carolina fans at all; rather, they were Arizona State students brought in to fill up a severely underpopulated Tar Heel student section, according to USA TODAY.
"ASU got us tickets for free because UNC didn't sell out their student section," one ASU student told USA TODAY, adding he and his friends who were given tickets were simply told to stand in the North Carolina section and wear white.
To be fair, Glendale is a long way from Chapel Hill -- 2,155 miles, in fact -- which doesn't make for an easy trip. And the North Carolina fans who did make the trip did their best to make as much noise as possible.
Still, this isn't not a great look for a university synonymous with college hoops, not to mention Michael Jordan's alma mater.
Approximately 70% of UNC's student section at the #NationalChampionship was comprised of Arizona State students. ? pic.twitter.com/dDDvji38MJ
— Campus Insiders (@CampusInsiders) April 4, 2017
