UNC’s band and mascot are wearing shirts that say ‘CEILING. ROOF. GOAT.’

BROOKLYN — If you missed a very important internet news cycle over the weekend because you were doing something other than staring at Twitter on your phone or watching college basketball, the shirts that the UNC pep band are wearing today at the game against Miami won’t make much sense to you. They say “CEILING. ROOF. GOAT,” and they match the chant that the band yelled during one of Miami’s free throws: “The ceiling is the roof.”

UNC is spewing what sounds like nonsense because Michael Jordan spewed it first. On Saturday night at the UNC-Duke game, the human behind the Crying Jordan meme — and also the greatest basketball player of all time — announced that his alma mater will be the next team to wear the Jordan brand in football. And then he said this:

“The ceiling is the roof.”

No one really knows what MJ was getting at here, because, to be honest, I’m not sure anyone ever knows what MJ is getting at. But I take these to be words of supreme inspiration, something along the lines of, “the sky is the limit,” or, “shoot for the moon; if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”

Sure, “the ceiling is the roof” sounds more like your English teacher telling you that you’ll never get higher than a 90 on a paper in ninth grade (just, you know, off the top of my head) rather than “there’s no limit to what you can accomplish.” But in this case, it’s less about the actual words and more about the feeling of the actual words.

And I’m just glad that UNC can see that and lean into it. Someone in their marketing department deserves a raise.