University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Second Year Begins With Buzz
August 1, 2008 | Football, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
Aug. 1, 2008
By Adam Lucas
Officially, the first season of the Butch Davis era of Carolina football will be recorded as 2007. In that year, the history books will show, the Tar Heels went 4-8.
But hang around the Kenan Football Center on Friday, the first day of Davis's second training camp as the Tar Heel head coach, and you start to get the feeling that 2008 might be the real inaugural campaign of the Davis era.
Last year's opening day of camp was filled with players talking about their respect for what their head coach had done in the past, at other places. This year, there was only talk about the past calendar year. No Dallas Cowboys. No Miami Hurricanes. Just this:
"The goal is the conference championship and getting to Tampa," says gregarious tackle Marvin Austin.
Wow.
Granted, you can't build a single brick for the Kenan Stadium expansion on the strength of preseason media predictions. But consider that when the ACC media picked Carolina second in the Coastal Division, it marked the first time since the league went to divisions that the Tar Heels had been picked higher than fifth in the Coastal. This decade, including all the pre-division years, Carolina had never been predicted higher than fifth in the entire league. That includes two seasons when the Tar Heels were coming off bowl appearances and might have had some positive goodwill from the previous year.
In Friday's preseason national coaches' poll, the Tar Heels received three votes; not noteworthy, unless you consider that it had been a half-dozen years since they'd received a single preseason vote. Preseason polls are largely filled out on the basis of habit, as pollsters vote for the same teams that are contenders every season. Breaking into that realm has to start somewhere--perhaps, down in the "others receiving votes" category.
"There's an awful lot of buzz and excitement about the program," Davis says. "Our football program has done a good job to continue from the recruiting class prior to the '07 season, through the '07 season, through recruiting, and through spring practice."
It feels like that initiation period is over. Gone is the wonder at having the same Davis who patrolled the sidelines for the powerful Hurricanes wearing Carolina (and sometimes navy) blue.
How comfortable have Davis and his players become?
"I like to joke with him about his weight," says sophomore tailback Greg Little with a wide grin.
There's more to it than just asking for directions to Nutri-System.
"This year, I already know how Coach Davis goes about practice," Little says. "I know how he wants us to carry ourselves. We're loose around each other, and we need that relationship, but when it's time to get serious, he has our full attention because he knows how to get us where we want to be."
Getting there means mixing the young talent that debuted in 2007 with better gameday execution. Again, it's familiarity that players believe will make a difference.
"We don't have to start from step one this year," senior safety Trimane Goddard says. "You get to process more information."
"From the schematic standpoint, we'll do things today we never did last year in our twelfth ballgame," Davis says. "We've grown to the point that we can challenge them mentally with schemes and protections. The greatest thing is that now they know the tempo and know how to practice. An important part of a football team is how to practice."
And once the Tar Heels took the practice field on a warm Friday afternoon, they officially took control of all those suddenly lofty expectations. Buzz is built on predictions and forecasts and recruiting stars. It can only be sustained by victories.
It's a heady feeling on August 1 to know that someone other than the diehards are finally paying attention to Carolina football. But it also means gamedays now come complete with something that hasn't been seen in Chapel Hill since Julius Peppers was a Tar Heel--expectations.
"There's an obvious sense of urgency and people are excited that expectations are higher," senior linebacker Mark Paschal says. "But it all boils down to what you put on tape."
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of four books on Carolina basketball.
