Oct. 28, 2003
How did Carolina Football go from the leader board to the cart shed in six years?
Great question, and it would be fun sometime to sit around the clubhouse, order up some beverages and talk it all over shot by shot. To many in the Tar Heel gallery it seems pretty simple. UNC stepped to the hiring tee in December of 1997, rushed it, and shanked off into the woods. Then, in the three years it took us to find our ball, the world played through.
The entire story is more complicated than that, of course, but for right now, of what real value is it? Right here, right now, in October of 2003, don't we have more important issues to discuss?
For example, the University of North Carolina finally has precisely the correct head football coach. John Bunting is sharp, funny, honest, tough, fair, passionate, hard working and organized. He loves and understands this school. The guy is a total star, but do enough people know it?
Every Carolina fan, from the most prominent Super-Duper Ram to the most anonymous mini-booster, should have the chance to feel the warmth emanating from John Bunting's internal furnace.
Watch him on the sidelines when defeat is certain. He is still coaching, encouraging, cajoling, calling timeouts, and teaching his team that being a competitor is not a destination, it is a journey.
Stand next to a veteran pro scout on the UNC practice fields as the 0-4 Tar Heels prepare for the Virginia game. "The way that group is flying around, no way that is a winless football team," says the scout, who knows how a coach can lose a team when victories are scarce. "You don't see many 0-4 teams practice like that."
Listen to his pre-game interviews and post-game press conferences. Coach Bunting could ford those streams by tiptoeing carefully from one clich? to another, but where is the fun in that? He likes his way better, where he wades right into the questions and thrashes and chops and stirs up a healthy froth. So what if the Athletic Communications Office has to rush to the water's edge and throw him the occasional life preserver, surely the odd controversy is a small price to pay for the entertainment value and pure substance of John Bunting's remarks, right?
Talk with some of Carolina's former lettermen, guys who are truly fluent in football and the special skills the game requires of both its students and its teachers. Those who have met Coach Bunting know him in a way that only they can, and the support he has among this group of men is almost universal.
Observe how quickly the gavel of discipline falls. This will be a program of class, dignity and sportsmanship. Offenders will be dealt with harshly. Period. Then note how compassionately he and the entire Carolina Football family rally around a fallen comrade. Bobby Blizzard's severe viral illness, the death of Jason Brown's brother, the passing of Jacque Lewis's grandfather and similar events are handled with great care and sensitivity.
Watch John Bunting learn from the recruiting naivet?'s of his first year and a half on the job. He reorganized the way the Tar Heels recruit, signed one of the nation's top classes last year and is off to a great start this year.
Notice that this coach uses different tactics to motivate his team. He might tell the squad a game-day joke to loosen them up if he senses they are nervy, or he might have each man turn to the nearest teammate in the locker room prior to a game and say, "I promise you that I will lay it all on the line for you today" to build team unity and trust. Once, he walked into the Carolina locker room before a game, handed every player a separate piece of rope and told them they had two minutes to tie them all together. With ten seconds to spare, the team triumphantly held up one solid piece of rope amidst loud whooping and hollering. Then, when the cheering quieted down, Coach Bunting explained how, like the rope, a football team only knits together when each individual dedicates himself to the common goal.
Innovate or perish; that is one of John Bunting's core beliefs. So not only has he has created new traditions like the popular Old Well Walk, he's also dreamed up some unique (and top secret at this writing) ways to customize specific prospects' visits to campus.
Even after a 3 win campaign in 2002, he was enthusiastic about taking his weekly call-in radio show back out to Lucy's, a Chapel Hill restaurant and watering hole on Henderson Street. Most coaches would have retreated to the safety and convenience of a studio, but not The Great Buntino. He arrives amped up and ready to go each week, and so do standing room only crowds.
So if this guy is so terrific, why haven't the Tar Heels won more? That's a valid question. John Bunting inherited a powerful defense in 2001, but behind that was a serious lack of gifted upperclassmen. Factor in a brutal schedule and a steep learning curve in recruiting and you have what Carolina has now; a young football program on the come but with some severe talent issues on defense.
Losses are so painful in the present that they can obstruct our vision of the future. Coach Bunting didn't create this mess but he is working tirelessly to get the Tar Heels out of it, and he's building a program that will last.
What can you do to help? Plenty. Don't just hang in there, get excited and spread the word, brothers and sisters! Under John Bunting's direction, Big Blue will be out of the cart shed soon and when it happens Carolina won't just be a fixture on the leader board, the Tar Heels will be contending for championships!
You can contact Mick at mmixon@tarheelsports.com . The above column appeared originally in the November issue of Tar Heel Monthly. To subscribe, click here.
