University of North Carolina Athletics
Extra Points: An End And A New Beginning
November 26, 2006 | Football
Nov. 26, 2006
"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."
Roman philosopher Seneca
The Butch Davis Era of Tar Heel football begins this week with a team meeting Sunday night, a press conference Monday afternoon and then a whirlwind of recruiting phone calls and visits and the all-important steps toward building a coaching staff. That beginning, of course, means the end of the six-year reign of John Bunting.
Late Saturday afternoon, Bunting leaned against the cement block wall of the visitors' dressing quarters at Duke's Wallace Wade Stadium. He stood in exactly the same spot he'd taken two years earlier, flanked at the time by Chancellor James Moeser and Athletic Director Dick Baddour. In the wake of the Heels' 3-1 climax to the 2004 season (including that pulsating win over Miami), the Carolina administration extended Bunting's contract and gave him an enthusiastic endorsement.
"Look at what's happened last couple of years ... building, building, building," Bunting said. "Now we've got the program going in the right direction."
Turns out Bunting and the Tar Heels would split the 2005 season with six wins and six losses and then stumble to 1-6 through mid-October of 2006. The Carolina administration decided on a new beginning, effective at the end of the season. Bunting did a remarkable job maintaining his composure and keeping the coaches and players focused during the final five weeks of the season, and the team in fact improved as November evolved. The Tar Heels popped NC State a week ago and then edged Duke 45-44, securing The Victory Bell's rightful place in the Tar Heel lockerroom for the 16th year of the last 17.
Bunting spoke for just over a minute to a phalanx of writers and broadcasters, everyone jostling for position and huddled in a muddy patch around the corner from the dressing room's entrance. He noted the big wins over six years, his pride in how the team and staff continued to grind through difficult times, his resolve to help them in the future.
"As for you folks," he said to the media, "I've always treated you with the greatest respect. I know that sometimes you can't reciprocate, and I acknowledge that. Goodbye. It's been swell. I'm gone."
Someone began to ask a question, but Bunting was turning away. He paused and added, "Unless anyone has a big, big money deal for a book, I'm gone."
Just a few minutes earlier, senior receiver Jesse Holley noted it was time for him to move on as well, hopefully into the NFL. He'd had four good years in Chapel Hill and thanked Bunting for bringing him from New Jersey to Carolina. Holley noted the three young receivers who had made such an impact in the victory over the Blue Devils: Brandon Tate (two kick returns for TDs), Hakeem Nicks (83-yard TD pass reception) and Brooks Foster (39-yard TD catch).
"It's great to end your career on a high note," Holley said. "It's fun to see these guys in here with a smile on their face and enjoying this kind of thing. It's just going to catapult these guys into next year. Coach Davis is going to get a real good bunch of guys."
And so a new beginning takes root in Chapel Hill, a town that has reveled in remarkable basketball consistency since the late 1960s but has seen its football fortunes rise and fall like clockwork since Charlie Justice and pals departed 56 years ago. There's been essentially one peak per decade and one trough as well, such being the molasses-like pace with which a new beginning is planted, sprouts, grows and matures in the game of college football.
It's been one celebration followed by a heartbreak for half a century now, none more emotion-packed than the arrival with much fanfare of coach Jim Tatum in January 1956. The ex-Tar Heel lineman had won a national title at Maryland in 1953 and returned home three years later to right the ship in Kenan Stadium. The Washington Post spread the news of his departure from College Park across the top of Page 1, publishing President Dwight Eisenhower's intentions to seek re-election below the fold. Tatum stood 6-foot-4, weighed 250 pounds, wore a 10-gallon hat, worked 18 hours a day, talked with a booming voice and carried the moniker of "Sunny Jim" for the presence he radiated. A Chapel Hill restaurant reported brisk sales of "Sweet Tatum Pie" at 15 cents a slice, and haberdasher Milton Julian took in an order for three dozen 10-gallon hats. After three years of building a foundation, the Tar Heels in 1959 were set to soar.
"There is no question we were on the verge of something great," says Moyer Smith, a running back recruited by Tatum and a Tar Heel letterman from 1958-60. "By 1959 we had a lot of good players and so much confidence that we knew we were going to win a lot of games. Coach Tatum exuded confidence and took each player's ability level up a notch."
Tatum took a trip during the summer of 1959 to Canada to visit coaching buddies "Peahead" Walker of Wake Forest and Frank Howard of Clemson, and a short time later was hospitalized with a rare virus. He died within a week. An autopsy revealed Tatum had contracted Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and doctors speculated he might have been bitten by a tick during his visit to Canada.
Some Tar Heel fans have referred to Tatum's passing and the subsequent trials and tribulations of Carolina football as "The Curse of the Tick."
Bill Dooley had the Tar Heels poised to beat Nebraska in the 1977 Liberty Bowl, but the ground-oriented Cornhuskers went to the air for two fourth-quarter scores and a 21-17 victory. Days later, Dooley was off to become athletic director at Virginia Tech.
Dick Crum had his Tar Heels unbeaten at 7-0 and ranked third in the nation in 1983 when they traveled to Maryland for a late-October battle with the Terrapins. A two-point conversation attempt failed by the Tar Heels in the game's final minute, and the subsequent onside kick by Carolina was first ruled recovered by the Tar Heels but then overruled. Maryland escaped with a 28-26 victory, and the Crum epoch began a steady decline. It was never the same again.
And of course, who can forget Mack Brown's 1996 team that was 8-1 and potentially headed to the Fiesta Bowl when it traveled to Charlottesville? The Tar Heels took a 17-3 lead into the final quarter, went for the jugular inside the Cavalier red zone, only to throw a pass that Antwan Harris returned 95 yards for a touchdown. Carolina's nerves mushed like silly putty that cold night and Virginia rallied to a 21-17 win. Had the Tar Heels won that game and gone to a Bowl Alliance destination, who knows what Brown's mindset might have been a year later when Texas came calling?
Now it's Butch Davis's turn. The Tar Heels haven't made as dramatic a coaching hire for their football program since luring Tatum from Maryland fifty years ago. Davis hasn't won a national title, but he recruited the team at Miami that Larry Coker rode to a championship ring in 2002. Like Tatum, Davis stands 6-4 and has a presence about him that engenders performance and loyalty.
"I don't know anything about Coach Davis, but I'm looking forward to meeting him," says Hakeem Nicks.
"There's a bit of the unknown, but from everything I've heard, he's a great coach," Kentwan Balmer added in the hullabaloo of the Duke victory. "I'm ready to get started. The 2007 season starts next week."
"Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over."
F. Scott Fitzgerald
