University of North Carolina Athletics
Extra Points Thursday
November 29, 2001 | Football
Nov. 29, 2001
By Lee Pace
candidate for the SMU job in 1996. |
It would not be a far stretch to say that John Bunting could have been coaching this week against his former team--the Southern Methodist University Mustangs.
That's right. Bunting was a candidate for the SMU head coaching job in December, 1996, when SMU Athletic Director Jim Copeland eventually hired Mike Cavan.
Bunting was finishing his fourth season as linebackers coach with the Kansas City Chiefs late in 1996 when Mustang coach Tom Rossley was fired. Copeland, a former athletic director at Virginia, was getting some candidate ideas from Carolina AD John Swofford (today the ACC commissioner), and Swofford recommended Copeland talk to Bunting. Swofford and Bunting are former teammates Carolina, and Bunting sought counsel from Swofford on occasion since 1987, when Bunting began fashioning a coaching career at Division III Glassboro State College. Copeland also knew of Bunting because Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt was then and remains a major benefactor of SMU athletics.
Copeland flew to Kansas City and interviewed Bunting for about two and a half hours.
"It was an attractive situation for me," Bunting says. "SMU has high academic standards, so you'd be around good kids. It's a nice campus in a nice city. I always had an eye on college ball. I also wanted to interview just to get a feel for what the Division I market was like. At that point I'd never really given any thought to who I'd hire for my staff if I did get a job like that. Even though I didn't get the job, it got me thinking of who I'd hire if I was ever in that position."
Copeland later told Bunting that his lack of college coaching and recruiting experience at the Division 1 level were the knocks against his candidacy.
"He suggested I might get into the Division 1 level as a coordinator," Bunting says. "Problem was, that didn't make sense financially. I was nearly a coordinator in the NFL at the time. To become a coordinator in college would have been a step down."
The scenario prompts an interesting muse: Had Bunting gotten that job and been successful, would he have been the lead candidate for the Carolina job in 2000 instead of getting the job when Virginia Tech's Frank Beamer turned the job down? Or would he have been positioned a year earlier if Carolina had indeed fired Carl Torbush after two seasons?
Or if Bunting had not been successful--and SMU's stringent admission criteria make it very difficult to recruit--could he have been black-balled from moving up the ranks to Chapel Hill?
We'll never know, of course, but it's another interesting study in the cosmic flow of individual lives.
Copeland eventually hired Cavan, who had been head coach for six years at Valdosta State and five at East Tennessee State. Cavan led the Mustangs to a 6-5 record in 1997 and was named Southwest Conference coach of the year by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Since then, he's gone 5-7, 4-6 and 3-9 and was fired two weeks ago. SMU is 4-6 this season.
"They're sure playing hard for him," Bunting says. "Watching them on film, I can't figure out why they fired him."
Cavan and Bunting have another connection in that both played for Dooleys in college--Mike with Vince Dooley at the University of Georgia from 1968-70 and John with Bill Dooley at Carolina from 1969-71.
They have a common denominator in John Montgomery, the first-year president of Carolina's Educational Foundation who had been at SMU prior to his move to Chapel Hill.
"Knowing Mike as well as I do, knowing John like I do now, and having just met Bill Dooley last weekend, you can see the similarities in all of them," says Montgomery. "They were tough, hard-nosed players and bring the same mindset to the programs they coach. There's no quit in this SMU team, I'll promise you that."
Meanwhile, Copeland is underway with his new coaching search. So far, he's interviewed South Carolina assistant Skip Holtz, former LSU head coach Gerry DiNardo, and ESPN analyst Mike Gottfried (a former head coach at Kansas and Pittsburgh). Auburn offensive coordinator Noel Mazzone has also expressed interest in the job.
One coach who's off-limits, though: John Bunting.
The pieces appear to be falling in place for the Tar Heels to get a Peach Bowl berth if they beat SMU on Saturday. ACC champion Maryland is committed to a BCS bowl, likely the Orange Bowl. The Gator Bowl announced Monday that Florida State was its choice to play Virginia Tech of the Big East, regardless of the result of Saturday's Georgia Tech-at-FSU game. And Tech is now headed to the Seattle Bowl to meet Stanford, one reason the first-year Seattle Bowl is interested in Tech is that Boeing, which is headquartered in Seattle, employs several thousand Tech alumni.
That leaves Carolina, N.C. State and Clemson to scrap for the ACC's slots in the Peach and Tangerine Bowls.
The Peach gets the first pick after the BCS and Gator Bowls. The Tangerine gets the next.
The Peach Bowl recognizes that it has a bird in the hand, so to speak, in the Wolfpack. State is 7-4 and would travel well to Atlanta. But the fact it has not moved to lock up the Wolfpack is significant. N.C. State officials have publicly acknowledged that Peach Bowl officials, in comparing the merits of inviting the Tar Heels or Wolfpack, have noted Carolina's one-game advantage over State in the ACC standings (5-3 for the Heels to 4-4 for the Pack) and the fact that Carolina beat State, 17-9.
Meanwhile, the administrations and fan bases of both State and Clemson are pitching the Tangerine Bowl to invite their teams. A representative of the Silicon Valley Classic will also attend Clemson's season finale Saturday against Duke. The San Jose, Calif., event is considering the Tigers as an opponent for Fresno State.
It all hinges, of course, on the Tar Heels beating SMU.
Potential opponents include Georgia, Auburn, Ole Miss and LSU.
The Peach takes a team from the SEC following the BCS, Cotton, Citrus and Outback bowl selections. It appears that Florida and Tennessee will go to BCS bowls. The winner of the SEC West division will likely go to the Cotton Bowl. The Citrus Bowl wants to invite South Carolina, 8-3, to play Michigan, and the Outback Bowl, which has already taken Ohio State, would like to take an 8-3 Georgia team if the Bulldogs beat Houston on Saturday.
It could very well be that the Peach Bowl's SEC entry will be the loser of this Saturday's LSU-Auburn game or Ole Miss.
Auburn and LSU are each 7-3. The winner Saturday will play the winner of the Florida-Tennessee game in the SEC Championship game Dec. 8. Ole Miss is 6-4 with a game left at home against Vanderbilt.
So why were the Tar Heels able to reel off five straight victories from the Florida
Carolina's five-game winning streak from Sept. 22-Oct. 20. |
* The Carolina defense held those five opponents to three-and-outs on 75 percent or better of the opposition's offensive possessions.
* The defense held the opposition to 3.6 yards or less per rushing attempt and allowed no one runner to get 100 yards in four of those five games.
* The defense created three or more turnovers in four of those games.
* The defense set up a score in all five games.
* The offensive line had 25 or more knock-down blocks in four of those five games.
The Tar Heels won the first two of those games, against Florida State and N.C. State, without prolific offensive showings. One of Carolina's offensive goals every week is to get 400 yards or more of total offense. They've done that five of the last six games. Another goal is to convert 45 percent or more of third-down conversations, and they've done that as well five of their last six games. The exception to each of those objectives in that run was the Georgia Tech game.
Former Carolina coach Carl Torbush recognized the Tar Heels were thin along the offensive blocking front when he took over in 1998 and made a wholesale effort to sign quality players in his first recruiting class. Those seven signees form the backbone of today's O-line. Two of those players are no longer on the team and one has been slowed by injury. But Greg Woofter, Jupiter Wilson and Jeb Terry are starters today, and Marcus Wilson is a key reserve at guard and center.
"We're making a lot of progress," O-line coach Robbie Caldwell says of his unit's rebuilding process. "We're more physical and a lot smarter today than we were at the beginning of the year. They're getting a grasp of it. It's a beautiful system we have, and it's simple if you'll listen and learn and not get excited in the course of a ballgame. But the young ones, they get excited and nervous playing for the first time and make mistakes. They're more settled now."
The Tar Heels lose senior center Adam Metts for 2002 but will return reserve Isaac Morford, the four juniors listed above, as well as first-year players who've seen action in 2001--Jason Brown, Chase Page, Willie McNeill and Skip Seagraves. Three more true freshmen are being red-shirted this fall.
Add to that what Bunting and Caldwell feel should be an outstanding recruiting class, with up to five O-linemen signed, and Carolina appears on its way to solving its problems along the all-important offensive front. Another off-season of weight-room and conditioning work under strength coach Jeff Connors and his staff will pay dividends as well.
"We're going to get the best prospects in the country in here," says Bunting. "I will not settle for anything less than being outstanding on the offensive line."
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