University of North Carolina Athletics
Extra Points Mailbag
November 3, 2006 | Football
Nov. 3, 2006
by Lee Pace, Extra Points
The dust has thankfully settled from last week after all the emotion around the impending coaching change in Carolina football.
The Tar Heels played a respectable game against Wake Forest in a 24-17 losing cause, doing a particularly good job of rebounding from a blocked punt for a touchdown in the game's first five minutes. John Bunting is as focused and positive as ever. The players - well, they just want to play the game.
Meanwhile, University administrators are working behind the scenes to find the next coach. No, I have no idea who they are talking to. And you won't find a list on this website.
But the issue of what the Tar Heel program should aspire to is a legitimate question and one that came into the Mailbag this week.
Why is it so hard to imagine Carolina being a national power in football? You guys continue to sell the University short on what can be achieved. I know that Tarheelblue.com is an arm of the University, so if the prevailing view is we should only be satisfied with 6, 7 or 8 wins a season, then maybe all of the athletic administration needs to be replaced. We as alumni and fans would never settle for "O.K." in basketball, and we should not settle for it in football either.
Bruce Garrison, Gastonia
The reference is to last Friday's Mailbag discussion about what qualities and skills a new head coach should possess, and I mentioned that the "default" for Carolina football each year should be in the eight-win arena.
My point was that with the resources and stature Carolina possesses, winning two-thirds of its games should be a realistic goal, no matter that over the course of more than a century of football all the Tar Heels have managed is a 55 percent winning percentage. That's right - slightly more than one win in every two games.
Carolina needs to get to that eight-win level first. And stay there. That's when you start to draw the kind of players on a consistent basis that can put you into national powerhouse stature.
Carl Snavely got to that level of winning 67 percent or slightly better in the late 1940s. Bill Dooley, Dick Crum and Mack Brown did as well in succeeding eras. But it didn't last - for a different reason in the case of each coach. That's what Carolina has never done: The Tar Heels have been good for a half-decade or so at a time, but then it falls apart.
Carolina didn't hang out in the luxury district of college football long enough in any of those eras to be fully anointed as a fire-breathing, blood-sucking terror, though there certainly were days in 1948, 1980 and 1997 when the Tar Heels played the game as well as any school in the country.
"Just about every coach here has taken the program to the pinnacle," John Bunting said his first week on the job back in December 2000. "It's difficult to get to the level of Florida State unless you've got tremendous continuity ... It's hard to maintain. Eight wins in this business is pretty good."
I was reviewing the UNC football statistics and noticed a couple of bizarre statistics. First, "TEAM" was credited with being 0-1 on passing attempts; and second, "TEAM" was credited with having two punts blocked. I would be most interested in the logic that was used to credit these statistics to "TEAM."
Wayne Killian, Wilmington
Kevin Best, the Tar Heels' expert on all matters statistical, answers your question.
"A `Team' punt is credited on most blocked punts because you cannot assume a blocked punt is the punter's fault," Best says. "It could be any of the protection guys, and if you give it to the punter, it would significantly crush his punt average.
"A `team' pass is credited on the spike play when you are just killing the clock."
With the season long problem Joe Dailey and Cam Sexton have had in throwing picks, I have to ask, has the coaching staff, or for that matter any football coaching staff, thought about using a helmet cam as a teaching tool? Watching baseball games on TV, I really like "seeing" what a catcher is sees during a game. I would think if a small camera is mounted on a quarterback's helmet during practice, the QB could then see his reads and progressions later during a film session.
Bill Spransy, Desert Hot Springs, CA
Chris Allen is the expert in the Tar Heel football office on all matters videotape- and computer-related.
"Helmet cams don't tend to be very good for filming practice/games," Allen says. "They're not a very stable shot, which is why you don't see them used much on television, much less for teaching. As they get more stable and clearer, this could be something we use in the future."
The best angle to show the quarterback what is really going on would be the "Skycam" that ESPN uses for its Thursday and Saturday night games, but they are very expensive and difficult to operate. The next best thing is a camera called the Eagle Cam, which the Tar Heel program purchased earlier this year. It is mounted on an extension apparatus attached to a tripod and takes footage of offensive plays from directly behind the quarterback, about 20 feet in the air.
There is also a computer simulation program on the market from GridIron Technologies. This video game is called Pro Simulator and uses a toggle switch and buttons like those found on games for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. Duke, Wake Forest, Virginia and Maryland are among the 15 Division 1-A teams that are using the program. Allen says he and the Tar Heel coaches have looked at it but feel it needs more development to make the players move more like real life.
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Several readers sent in some interesting memories of past meetings with Notre Dame or incidental information about the rivalry.
I traveled with the team in 1966 to the game and just like Coach Bunting remembered in 1971, their players seemed larger than life, including Alan Page and George Kunz. We were 2-1 (lost to Kentucky, then beat N.C. State and Michigan) when we went to South Bend. We went into the end of the first quarter tied at 0- 0. Then Danny Talbott went back to pass and "wham," here came the Irish, and Talbott was carried off, not to return. In came Jeff Beaver, who immediately dropped back to pass and "wham," here came the Irish, and Beaver was carried off, not to return. We finished up with Tim Karr as QB; he had come to UNC as a QB but was playing defensive end when called upon to take over for Talbott and Beaver. The final score: Irish 32, Tar Heels 0.
Bob Orr, Raleigh
I emailed Jeff Beaver, who lives in Charlotte and is executive director of the Charlotte Regional Sports Commission. He confirmed those details, corrected a couple and added some more color to the story:
After Danny got hurt, I went in and on the first play, Alan Page hit me just as I threw a pass to Charlie Carr (completed for about a 15-yard gain!) and we both landed on my left shoulder, separating it completely. However, it was so cold that I actually played one more play, the cold and trauma keeping me from realizing how bad my injury was, and I handed off to David Riggs on a delay draw and he went for another 15 yards. The first quarter ended on that play, and that is when it became painfully obvious that I was hurt, too. The announcers did not know why I was taken out until halftime, I was told later by my folks. Timmy took over then and finished the game (he was not yet a defensive end; that happened the next year when Coach Bill Dooley became the new coach).
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With the Tar Heels playing Notre Dame once again. I thought I'd bring up an interesting fact. The November 12th, 1955, meeting between the Heels and the Irish is actually in a movie - "Back To The Future Part 2." While Biff is riding down the road looking at his sports almanac that he got from his older self, he is listening to the guy on the radio reading scores from that day and looking at the scores in the almanac - Notre Dame 27, North Carolina 7.
Phil Cox, Spartanburg, S.C.
Send your questions about Tar Heel football to Lee Pace at leepace@nc.rr.com. Please include your first and last names and hometown. Individual replies are not possible because of volume of mail received, and names of recruiting prospects and commitments cannot be published on a school-sponsored site until the national signing day in February . The Q&A column will appear each Friday during the season.
