University of North Carolina Athletics
A Q&A With Coach Hal Hunter: Part I
March 13, 2002 | Football
TarHeelBlue: Before you took this job, what would come into your mind when someone mentioned the University of North Carolina?
Coach Hunter: "Besides the fact that it's a great academic institution, the first thing that would come to mind is the basketball program. However, after having arrived here, it's been gratifying to discover the fan base and the enthusiasm and the priority placed on football. It's not that way at most of the other schools that are perceived as basketball schools.
"As far as North Carolina football in concerned, the first thing you think about is all the defensive players going on to the NFL. Guys like Dre' Bly and Lawrence Taylor.
"Another thing that makes me feel good about the University is that early in Mack Brown's career, when he had a couple of 1-10 seasons, the people had the foresight to stick with him, and he ended up turning the program around.
"You don't come in and turn a program around in two or three or four years. It doesn't work that way, it takes some time to turn it around.
"Another thing that college football is now is that it's a business. Everybody looks at the bottom line, as you try to generate revenues to support your athletic department. The number one revenue-generating sport is football.
"When those programs are winning and people are in the stands, you're generating income. That's the nature of the beast now. You have to realize that you can do a lot of great things in your program, but the bottom line is, you have to win.
TarHeelBlue: When you build an offensive line, do you focus first on the left tackle or the center? Is there some priority in the importance of each position?
Coach Hunter: "There are strengths and weaknesses for every position. Everybody's gotten all caught up in what the NFL considers the premium offensive lineman, the left tackle. He's the guy that protects the quarterback's back side.
"It also depends on the type of offense you're running. Personally, I think it's a toss-up between left tackle and center, but I would say that center is a more critical position because there's so many more things you have to do.
"When you're building your offensive line, you better get your center first, then your tackles, then your guards. I say guards last because, when you look at all five of those positions from a technique standpoint, guard is the easiest position to play.
"(Laughing) Now, the guards don't want to hear that, but it is the way you go about building an offensive line.
"Center is the hardest position to play on the entire football team, bar none. You've got to do everything an offensive lineman's got to do, and offensive line is one of the harder positions to begin with, but first you've got to take that ball and snap it between your legs every time with this guy right on your nose.
"It's a very difficult position to play, very under appreciated. You can't win unless you have a quality center."
TarHeelBlue: You played linebacker in college, but began your coaching career as an offensive line coach. How do you make that transition?
Coach Hunter: "People go to school to learn to become different things, lawyers, accountants, whatever. If you can learn to become whatever you're going to be, you can study and learn and become an offensive line coach. The difference is there's no school you go to to learn offensive line play.
"What you do is that you first decide what position you want to coach. There's three premium positions to coach. There's the offensive line, quarterbacks, and defensive backs. You can ask anybody you want, those are the premium positions.
"That's not to take anything at all away from the other positions, that's just the way it is.
"Offensive line coach is also the only position where you coach five guys, and on a given play, no two of the positions are exactly the same.
"I was very fortunate that I had a great resource in my father (Hal II) when I made this decision, as he was coaching the offensive line in the NFL with the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was a tremendous asset.
"Offensive line play was really changing back in the early eighties. There were some guys on the cutting edge. The Steelers were really leaders in terms of offensive line play. They were the first team in the late seventies and early eighties that really went from all man blocking to zone combination blocking.
"Then in the mid-eighties Howard Mudd up at Cleveland took it to another level. There's always a few guys on the cutting edge of offensive line play, guys who break out of the norm, and Howard was one of those guys.
"I was coaching at Akron when Howard was at Cleveland, and I was fortunate enough to be able to drive down and have access to their practices and facilities, which is pretty amazing since my dad was coaching at one of the Browns' bitter rivals."
TarHeelBlue: There's obviously no comfort zone when you're a football coach.
Coach Hunter: "It's been a real learning process for the entire twenty or so years I've been doing this, because you can never think you've got every thing figured out. The game of football evolves. Football's different now than it was in the late nineties, the early nineties and the eighties.
"As football evolves, you have to learn to evolve with it.
"Another thing is that kids are different now than they were in the past. As society evolves, player's personalities evolve. They don't know that, because all they know is right now, but they're different now.
"Not only do you have to learn to change your coaching technique, you have to learn to change your coaching personality to evolve with the way kids are today. There's a lot more to being a coach than just knowing the proper technique.
"A few years ago I saw Don Shula being interviewed on ESPN. He was asked what was the most important thing he had learned in coaching after 300 wins. He said that the most important thing you can do is to find out everything that you can about the players you're responsible for, then once you find that out, use that information to find a way to get your players to perform.
"That really hit home because coaching is a process of knowing your players, knowing which buttons to push, and adjusting your personality to ever player for whom you're responsible.
"As I'm getting to know my players here, I know they're all different, they all come from different backgrounds. You have to adjust your coaching personality to get each of those individuals to perform, then you have to coordinate those five positions into one on the field."
TarHeelBlue: The offensive line positions are not very glamorous. What methods do you use to motivate your players?
Coach Hunter: "It takes a different type of guy to play on the offensive line. It takes a unique personality. It's not a fun position to play.
"When your running back is running up and down the field, who's getting all the credit? The running back. When the quarterback is throwing the ball down field and they're catching it, who's getting all the credit? The quarterback and the receivers.
"But, whenever there's a sack or the running back gets stopped for no gain, how many times have you ever heard somebody say 'They blocked it great, but the running back made a wrong cut or the quarterback held the ball too long.'
"It's always 'The offensive line didn't block anybody.' That's what you face, because most people don't understand offensive line play.
"What you have to do is find something for your players to shoot for, something to motivate them. I try to have some personal goals, and I try to have some group goals.
"As long as our personal goals are in line with our group goals, and our group goals are in line with our team goals, it's OK to have those goals.
"Once you become a starter, you ought to try to become all-conference. Once you become all-conference, then you try to become all-american.
"The goal of the group should be to become the most productive unit in the conference. Once you're the most productive group in the conference, then you should try to become the most productive group in the country.
"Trying to find empirical data to evaluate that is hard, so you get down to the nuts and bolts. What we talk about is, one, can you run the football? Two, can you protect the quarterback? Three, does your running back lead the conference in rushing? If he's rushing for over 1,000 yards and he's all-conference, somebody must be blocking for him up front.
"When it's all said and done and the season's over, we'll look at where our running back ranks, how many sacks we gave up and how many yards per carry our running backs averaged.
"If we finish in the top one or two in the conference it means we've taken a big jump. If we finish in the bottom half of the conference, that means we're not getting it done.
"Another way to evaluate is how many guys are going to play at the next level. If they're going on to the NFL, they must be doing something right on the field.
"It's been a while since North Carolina has had a 1,000 rusher or an all-conference offensive lineman, but it doesn't matter where you start, it's where you finish. Wherever we're at right now, you can't look at it as a negative, it's just where you're at.
"You have to know where you're at to know where you want to go. If you don't know where your starting point is, how are you going to know where your finishing point is going to be?
"I know no other way to evaluate."
TarHeelBlue: How has your interaction with the players been?
Coach Hunter: "Every one of my guys have come in and sat in my office. You know what I asked them, I asked them what's your goal?
"If you don't have any goals, how can you improve. If you don't lay out a methodical plan, how can you ever have a chance to improve?
"I've gone over with them how I worked with some of my players in the past and how we laid out goals for them.
"Another part of the problem is that I asked these guys, 'Who's your mark? Who do you want to be like? Who have you watched on the offensive line thay you want to be like that player?' They don't have an answer.
"Then I say 'If you were a defensive end or a defensive back, who would you like to be like?', and they come up with a name immediately.
"The few who could name an offensive lineman they'd like to emulate didn't name anyone who's played here. They named guys like Orlando Pace.
"We need to establish an offensive lineman culture here. We need to establish a tradition. We need to establish some guys that people will say they want to be like. If that happens, then you're doing something right.
"You actually try to do that at every position. I think they have some of that on defense now. I'm sure there was a time they had it at running back. I sure remember all those 1,000 yard running backs.
"We've got to get it back. We talk a lot about that.
"We're coming off a good year, eight wins and a Peach Bowl victory. I asked my guys, 'How do you feel about what you contributed to what we did, or is some other group referred to as the strength of the team?'
"When you're part of a group that feels like it is one of the strengths of the team, it's a pretty good feeling. But, when you're a part of a group that's kind of a lame-duck part of a team, that's not a good feeling.
"We can talk about goals, both individual and group, but there's a little four-letter word that comes after those goals, and that word is work. We can lay out all these goals, but it comes down to work.
"We talked about the two premium positions earlier, center and left tackle. We lost our center and left tackle. Before we can take any steps forward, we've already taken two steps backward, so we're going to have to take a couple of steps forward just to get where we were last year before we go on from there.
"That's where we're at right now."
