Butch Davis...UNC...

good call vp

i'll take a sharp, hard working plugger who can take a group of kids and have them playing good football on a regular basis. i dont want to seem like a Grobe stalker but that guy whips ass as a head coach. we need to shake the bushes and find somebody of his cut and calibur. thats all we need imo.

 

Nobody in NC really draws well from NC right now, it seems, so taking that, and making another area a battleground (TN, perhaps) couldn't hurt.

 

Butch Davis jumps to top of list for North Carolina job

By Ivan Maisel
ESPN.com

The North Carolina head coaching job has been tacitly offered to Butch Davis, several sources in the coaching business have told ESPN.com.

"It is Butch Davis if he wants," one source said via e-mail Friday. North Carolina, he continued, "would like a commitment soon, [in] two to three weeks from Butch."

The Tar Heels fired sixth-year coach John Bunting, effective at the end of the season, on Oct. 22.

Davis has begun assembling a coaching staff from the ranks of NFL and major college programs should he decide to accept the North Carolina coaching job, according to a coach who has spoken to Davis and two agents whose clients are interested in jobs at Chapel Hill.

"Some of the coaches that would be on Butch's staff have been calling [coaches] in the [Atlantic Coast] Conference, asking questions about players, facilities," one source said.

In Chapel Hill on Friday night, North Carolina athletic director Dick Baddour declined to comment on the search through sports information director Steve Kirschner.

Davis has been performing due diligence on the North Carolina job for several days, inquiring about issues from the administrative (how has the salary structure of assistant coaches changed since he left college football in 2000 to coach the Cleveland Browns?) to the qualitative (how much can he win at Chapel Hill?).

Davis coached the Browns for nearly four seasons, going 24-36 before resigning late in the 2004 season. He coached at the University of Miami from 1995-2000, going 51-20 as he rebuilt the Hurricanes into a national power.

Davis had expressed interest in a return to Miami in the past, but sources said on Friday night that the coach dismissed the possibility of a return to the university.

Davis also is near the top of the list of candidates to replace John L. Smith at Michigan State, but a source close to Davis says he considers North Carolina to be the more attractive position.

Larry Coker, an assistant to Davis, replaced him as head coach and led Miami to the 2001 national championship and to a double-overtime loss to Ohio State in the 2002 championship game. However, the Hurricanes' power has slowly ebbed over the past four seasons. They are 5-3 going into their home game Saturday against No. 23 Virginia Tech.

Ivan Maisel is a senior college football writer for ESPN.com. ESPN college football reporter Joe Schad also contributed to this report.

 

With both Miami and FSU down a little these days, it seems as good as time as ever to try and keep some NC kids home. Once those teams get great again, it'll just be that much harder.

 

I'm not a Butch Davis fan, but that's not really fair.

1) Lots of college turned NFL coaches don't do that well. Pete Carroll whiffed in the NFL but has had plenty of success after coming back to college.

2) He went to Cleveland to coach an expansion team - that's no easy task, and he failed like many other expansion coaches.

I really don't think his performance in the NFL is a particularly large concern.

 

I know that no one has NC locked up right now, but Mack did pretty well here. And I am all for taking the fight to other states. I just don't think that UNC can build a core nucleus - at least a really good one - with guys from other states.

 

State has recruited FL pretty good but it hasn't helped them that much. It's good if you can land one every now and then, but you need to be able to recruit your own state.

 

concentrating on a second state - grabbing TN's leftovers, for instance - as a core recruiting center is what I'm talking about. Couldn't hurt. name recognition and program should help deal with NC but at some point even then you start diminishing returns.

 

it wasn't an expansion team in the literal sense anymore, but it was a four year old team. He did take them to one playoff appearance, right? I'm not stating he did a good enough job in the pros, because I don't feel he did overall. He's a better college coach than Bunting, who had no head coaching experience at that level or above, he's got the name recognition, and he'll have the clout to come up with recruiting players (and coaches - quality coaches from the start, that probably won't leave). Y'all better not fuck this up for you.

 

This "Davis Thing" is hardly a done deal. He may say "No thanks..."