University of North Carolina Athletics
Extra Points Thursday Now Available
August 23, 2001 | Football
Aug. 23, 2001
Editor's Note -- In addition to writing his weekly Extra Points newsletter on Mondays covering the Tar Heels' weekend action, Lee Pace begins a new, exclusive Internet column beginning this week. Extra Points Thursday will appear throughout the football season at TarHeelBlue.com. Questions from readers are invited. Please email your questions to him at leepace@earthlink.net and look for his column each Thursday.
If you're enamoured with the sights, sounds and traditions of college football ...
If you're counting the days until a whisk of brisk air crosses your face ...
If you see a remarkable combination of smarts, substance and machismo in John Bunting and are anxious to see his regime move from theory to reality ...
Then the next three weeks are going to be a time like never before in Carolina football history.
On two of the next three Saturdays, the Tar Heels will venture into furnaces of college football heat--Oklahoma Memorial Stadium in Norman and Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin.
There are the mascots: Boomer Sooner and Bevo.
The colors: Crimson & cream and burnt orange.
The legends: Royal and Broyles, Earl Campbell and the Selmon Brothers.
The accompaniments: Boomer Schooner--the covered wagon pulled by white ponies named Boomer and Sooner, and Big Bertha, the Longhorns' 500-pound drum, and Smokey the Cannon.
You have to go back 35 years since the Tar Heels have such an ambitious cluster of non-conference games. On Oct. 1, 1966, the Tar Heels traveled to Ann Arbor and upset Michigan 21-7, then after an off-week, visited Notre Dame and were soundly whipped by the Fighting Irish, 32-0.
Would anyone take one win out of these two trips?
Only now Carolina doesn't have an off-week. There's another road trip--Sept. 1 at Maryland, against a revitalized program led by first-year coach Ralph Friedgen.
"We've got a schedule that lets us compete for the national championship," says senior defensive tackle Ryan Sims. "There's a surprise team every year. We've got that chance. Who picked Oklahoma to be the national champions last year? It can happen."
Bunting is actually relishing the heavy underdog role the Tar Heels are playing and, unless the Heels get beaten up and/or blown out Saturday at Oklahoma, sees no real downside to adding the 12th game.
"Am I expecting to be 3-0 after Oklahoma, Maryland ant Texas? No. Let's be realistic," he said this summer "With the schedule, am I expecting we'll learn a lot about where we are and where we want to go? Yes."
Carolina's trip west this weekend summons memories of its journey to Oklahoma in 1980. The Tar Heels were riding high that year, 7-0 and ranked No. 4 in the nation. The Sooners of coach Barry Switzer were having an off-year--they were 4-2 and had fallen out of their resident status in the nation's Top 10.
"We really thought we'd win that game," Carolina QB Rod Elkins remembered this week. "We were very, very confident."
Tar Heel coach Dick Crum left nothing to chance in preparations for the game. Artificial surfaces were in vogue at the time, particularly in the Big Eight and Southwest Conferences, and Oklahoma's turf at Owen Field had a pronounced crown running down the middle of the field.
"The joke was that they got that wishbone running downfield and there was nothing you could do to stop them," Elkins says.
So Crum sent Elkins, QBs coach Cleve Bryant and four receivers to Norman a day early so they could get some extra time adjusting to the field and its curious design.
"We were a sprint-out passing team, so the thinking was that if you're sprinting out to throw and you launch it running downhill, the tendency will be to throw it high," Elkins says.
So Elkins threw for about an hour on Thursday and then again Friday to Mike Chatham, Jon Richardson, Victor Harrison and Mark Smith. Everyone pronounced themselves pleased with the results.
"Obviously, it didn't work," Elkins admits 21 years later.
Carolina kept the game close for one half, trailing 14-7 at intermission. Then the Sooners got a long kickoff return to open the second half, scored quickly and were off to the races. They won handily, 41-7.
The offensive line will be a frequent topic of conversation in this space because its resurrection is the key to getting Carolina back into the national spotlight.
Three years ago, Carl Torbush and his staff looked at the O-line depth chart and realized it needed a major infusion of recruits. Over the 1996 and 1997 signing classes, the Tar Heels brought in only two offensive linemen. At no position are age and experience more important than the O-line, so it was clear that the 2000 and 2001 teams would be bereft of fourth- and fifth-year linemen.
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Unfortunately, recognizing a problem on the O-line and solving it are tasks at least three years apart.
The first football season you identify the problem, target the recruits and sign them.
The second year, they're true freshmen and you don't want them anywhere near the playing field.
The third year, they're red-shirt freshmen, good only for backup and mop-up duty.
The fourth year, hopefully they're ready to play. That's where Greg Woofter, Jupiter Wilson, Marcus Wilson and Jeb Terry are today. Three or four could be in the starting lineup Saturday in Norman.
A party of 165 will travel to Oklahoma City on Friday. The Tar Heels charter Delta jets for all of their travel, and this plane seats 182. Why the 17 vacant seats?
Can you imagine being the poor guy put in the middle seat between Julius Peppers (6-7, 270 pounds) and Jupiter Wilson (6-5, 285)? The math doesn't work.
Those 17 rows of three seats across are devoted to the big guys--one player by the window, one on the aisle, the middle seat vacant.
Carolina will travel with 70 players this year, down from 74 they've traveled with in the past. How are those 70 picked?
To start with, Bunting and administrative aide Rick Steinbacher, who coordinates team travel, take the two-deep rosters on offense and defense. That gives you 44 players.
You add the two-deep punter, place-kicker and deep-snapper. That adds five more, since the second-team snapper, Skip Seagraves, is on the offensive two-deep as the No. 2 left tackle.
Since quarterback and tailback are such key positions, you add a third player at each. The Tar Heels are also taking a walk-on quarterback who will signal plays to the huddle from offensive coordinator Gary Tranquill, who'll direct the offense from the press box. Now you have 51.
Add two more receivers since the Tar Heels will employ four-receiver sets on occasion, then another offensive lineman trained at more than one position. That puts the total at 54.
Then the coaches look at the two-deep special-teams rosters--kickoff and kickoff return, punt and punt return, field goal and field-goal block. Many of the players on those two-deeps are listed elsewhere, but there'll you'll pick up another 10-12 players.
Now you're around 65 players, more than enough to play a game. The additional players traveling will be rewarded with the trip for outstanding scout-team effort during the week or because they have roots or connections to the travel destination.
The Mailbag:
Otis Fisher of Greensboro wants to know why the Tar Heels' kicking game always seems so unpredictable. "Are there too few quality kickers or have we made poor choices in the ones we have signed?" he asks.
The problem has been that since the early 1990s, when punter Scott McAllister and place-kicker Clint Gwaltney both made second-team All-ACC, there has been one facet of the Carolina kicking game that has stood out like a sore toe.
In the mid-1990s, the lack of a kicker with power led Mack Brown to favor the infamous sky-kick that had patrons leaping off the top of the upper deck in Kenan Stadium.
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Then there was the awful run of punt protection in 1996 and 1997 that led to eight blocked kicks and made punter Brian Schmitz grow to dread having to walk onto the field.
The Carl Torbush era saw assistant coach Ken Rucker shore up the punter's release and the unit's protection scheme, leading to a significant drop in blocks. But Carolina was decidedly mediocre in kick returns over those three years.
So there's always been something to fret about.
There's no question that, as NCAA scholarship limits neared 85 in the early 1990s, Brown and his staff decided to lean more toward walk-on kickers, particularly after a poor recruiting decision on a kicker after Gwaltney graduated. Add that to Mike Thomas's gradual decline in productivity as a punter from 1992-95, and it's no wonder the Carolina kicking game as a source of major frustration.
Jeff Reed has turned into a tremendous find as a walk-on place-kicker,
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The overall kicking game has been a major emphasis of Bunting's since spring practice. His coaching mentor, Kansas City Chiefs coach Dick Vermeil, was the NFL's first special-teams coordinator (serving under George Allen in Los Angeles in 1969), and their importance has followed Bunting his entire career.
"Special teams and conditioning are two areas we think we can get an edge," Bunting says.
