It may not be the same thing as basketball — not by a long shot, or by 20 yards — but the Duke-UNC football rivalry is real and steeped in the tradition of competition between the two neighboring schools.

So this afternoon, when Duke makes the short trip down U.S. 15-501 to Chapel Hill, both teams and their fans will be primed for an emotional game.

This year, the game may take on particular intensity (not that it isn’t always intense). For the first time since 1994, each team enters the game with a winning record. UNC has had far more of those in the past 15 years than Duke, but under second-year coach Dick Cutcliff, the Blue Devils have been invigorated, as has their fan base.

And one team will come away from this afternoon’s conference with its bowl chances greatly enhanced — while one will come away with its hopes for post-season play dangling by a thread. Both have overall records of 5-3, and each needs two more wins to be bowl-eligible.

Today’s loser can afford only one more loss in the final three games.

Of course, Carolina fans are not foresaking the chance to remind Duke that it was this matchup 50 years ago this month that the Tar Heels won, 50-0, the greatest margin either team has ever marked against the other.

So, head out to Kenan Stadium this afternoon or settle down in front of the television (ESPNU, 3:30 p.m.) for what promises to be another in a long line of exciting Duke-Carolina contests.

n The folks at GlaxoSmithKline’s sprawling research facility in the Research Triangle Park spend a good bit of their time and talents searching for new and improved drugs that will benefit millions.

Fortunately for Durham, they also spend their time in ways large and small benefitting the community. Executives serve on important local boards, and they and the firm are generous in their financial contributions to philanthropic projects and civic campaigns.

But employees from every level of the company also pitch in in many other ways.

One of those was this past weekend, when approximately 100 GSK employees volunteered to undertake a number of projects to help Durham’s E.K. Powe Elementary School.

They painted, landscaped, built bookshelves and otherwise undertook a number of projects to improve the West Durham school.

For giving up their time on a fall weekend to lend such a needed helping hand, the GSK volunteers share this week’s Durham Grit Award.

n Some of us at Week’s End are a little leery of something around 30 years old being declared historic (where does that leave us?), but we can’t fault the designation of The Original Q-Shack’s iconic sign.

Iconic, perhaps, but a bit down at the heels, too.

It was the Q-Shack owners’ desire to overhaul the somewhat dilapidated sign that led to their asking the Durham Historic Preservation Commission to label the sign an historic landmark.

The owners, Dan and Amanda Ferguson, think the sign was erected at the site where University Drive flows into Durham-Chapel Hill Boulevard when the Long Meadow Dairy Bar was there. The ice cream shop operated from 1954 to 1976, and Amanda Ferguson thinks the sign’s rotating top may originally have been an ice cream cone.

The Fergusons plan to replace the sign’s panels and lights, and the motor that turns the top.

“We’re returning it to its former glory,” Amanda Ferguson told The Herald-Sun’s Monica Chen.

We’ll be glad to see it.