University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Hectic Days In Football Center
January 15, 2009 | Football, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
Jan. 15, 2009
By Adam Lucas
With national signing day just three weeks away, mid-January is often exclusively about recruiting for college football coaches. But Butch Davis found time on Wednesday to do something critically important: clean out a file cabinet.
The Tar Heel coaches' offices will be displaced immediately after Signing Day (Feb. 4) because of the impending renovations to Kenan Stadium. A new fifth floor will be added to the Kenan Football Center, and the initial part of that construction means the existing offices on the fourth floor will move to the Pope Box for three months. At the conclusion of those three months, the coaches will move back into their offices and renovation will continue on the first, second and fourth floors of the Football Center.
Before that game of musical office chairs can begin, however, there's still some recruiting work to be completed. Because of attrition from a variety of sources--several players have taken medical hardships, some will graduate in May, and others left the program in the fall--Carolina will sign a full class this year (Fans can follow all the action on Feb. 4 on Signing Day Live here on TarHeelBlue.com. Details will follow next week).
"A lot of these things actually transpired back in the fall," Davis said. "Zack Handerson, for example, didn't practice the last two months of the season. We've known about most of these situations long before National Signing Day, and that's why we knew we would have the availability to sign a full class. Some of these situations are news to outsiders but they haven't been news to us for a long time."
The graduation of players like Richie Rich and Kenton Thornton highlights the recent academic success of Carolina football, as the program has been honored by the American Football Coaches Association for a graduation rate above 70 percent for five straight years.
"We've got great academic support here," Davis said. "We've got professors and tutors and mentors and a system that we have proven works. The hard work by our players combined with all of those people allows us to continue to have those graduation rates that earn us those honors."
It's possible that some of the players on the signing day list on Feb. 4 might not enroll until the spring semester. It's a process known as "gray-shirting," and it was recently used with great success by Bruce Carter, who took a semester to continue rehab from a knee injury and then arrived at Carolina in January, when he immediately began climbing the depth chart.
Recruiting is currently in a dead period, and most of the Tar Heel staff just returned from the annual coaches' convention. They'll hold a staff meeting Thursday to gameplan the final recruiting sprint.
Once all the signed letters of intent have arrived, the focus will turn to the 2009 season.
"We've started some preliminary discussions on changes we want to make to our existing program with schematic things on offense, defense and special teams," Davis said. "We have a list of places we want to visit to study what they are doing. During the whole month of February, we'll be focusing on our program and what improvements we want to make."
It's commonplace for college staffs to visit other programs in the offseason to get a crash course on certain offensive or defensive schemes; John Shoop, for example, might visit Oklahoma to gain a better understanding of the way the Sooners run their no-huddle offense. It's also possible that programs with in-demand schemes could send an assistant to Chapel Hill to speak at a coaches' clinic, providing an opportunity for hands-on instruction with the Carolina staff.
Davis has also fielded calls from other staffs that want to visit UNC. The Tar Heel offense generated 51 plays of at least 20 yards in 2008; that explosive style naturally piques the curiosity of other coaches.
"People see those explosive plays, and they want to come in and find out how we got those plays and what protections we used to create them," Davis said. "We've also gotten some calls because right now there is a lot of discussion about the 4-3 defense vs. the 3-4 defense and which is best against certain types of offense. We may have coaches come in who want to find out how we teach our defense and how we use it."
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of four books on Carolina basketball.
