University of North Carolina Athletics
Extra Points: All Business
February 6, 2014 | Football, Featured Writers, Lee Pace
by Lee Pace, GoHeels.com
CHAPEL HILL -- Two dozen years ago, a safety from the state of Pennsylvania spent the entire day and into the evening wrestling with whether to sign a grant-in-aid from Penn State University or from the University of North Carolina. Omar Brown read one letter from Joe Paterno, another from Mack Brown, considered the dark blue of the Nittany Lions and the sky blue of the Tar Heels, weighed staying home or traveling south. Both schools had supplied self-addressed, pre-paid FedEx packages.
"I couldn't say yes to Penn State, I couldn't say no to North Carolina," Brown said when at 8 p.m. he finally did sign the Tar Heels' offer and called assistant coach Tim Brewster to deliver the good news.
One dozen years ago, the Tar Heels thought they were getting a commitment from a cornerback from Northern Durham High named A.J. Davis and expected to receive a fax with his signed scholarship papers the morning of national signing day. The fax never came, and John Bunting later learned that N.C. State's Chuck Amato had wooed Davis with a telephone rendition of Dean Martin's Return To Me and Davis was now signed and sealed to Raleigh. "Life in the fast lane," Amato said of the topsy-turvy and barbarous world of Division I recruiting.
You win some, you lose some in the high-stakes game of recruiting, and there's nearly always high drama. But in 2014 when the recruiting calendar is moved up with an emphasis on early commitments and when Tar Heel coach Larry Fedora and his staff have had two full years to scout, identify, evaluate, sell, entertain and organize a recruiting class, it's more likely to go off without raising anyone's pulse. Carolina officially signed 22 players on Wednesday (five of them already having enrolled), and the only intrigue was the fact that a Maryland offensive lineman was without power because of winter storms in the Northeast and it took a while for Jared Cohen to venture out and find a working fax machine to deliver the documents.
"We were done by 8 o'clock," defensive coordinator Vic Koenning said. "That's when the staff put Coach Fedora to work. One phone call after another on next year's class. He earned his paycheck today."
"We hit it really hard today," Fedora said late in the afternoon. "There were about 80 guys in the 2015 class I personally talked to today. I've done a lot of talking. I am tired of talking."
This is the last of the scholarship-restricted classes the Tar Heels can sign and they will be back up to 25 for the 2015 class. Of the 22 signees, 19 had committed by early August, and running back Elijah Hood de-committed from Notre Dame and cast his lot with the Tar Heels by the end of the month. All of them held firm to the Tar Heels for more than four months despite onslaughts from rival recruiters and the loss of three assistant coaches to other jobs.
Emblematic of the class is Robert Dinkins, a defensive end from Charlotte who committed after his sophomore year and held off Clemson, Tennessee, N.C. State, Florida, Virginia and others who never took "no" for answer.
"We were able to recruit these kids for two years," Fedora says. "Now, you're starting to talk about building relationships. Now, you not only know Robert Dinkins, but you know his mom, you know his dad, you know the whole family and you know everyone at the school important to him. And he knows us. He knows every flaw I have. He's now been around me enough."
That's another reason the Tar Heel class didn't hiccup when Blake Anderson and Walt Bell left for Arkansas State and Randy Jordan departed to the Washington Redskins.
"We had guys committed for such a long time, they considered themselves Tar Heels," Fedora says. "They were not tied to a coach, they were tied to a university. They felt like this was home."
The Tar Heels addressed a myriad of needs with this class. They signed the best runner and blocker in the state in Hood and Bentley Spain. They got their one requisite quarterback in Caleb Henderson of Burke, Va. They had three offensive linemen committed as 2013 ended and added a fourth when Russell Bodine announced he was leaving for the NFL. They signed three receivers, one of them the son of former Wake Forest and NFL standout Ricky Proehl. They signed three linebackers and three safeties and each has instructions to "come ready to play and earn a position on next year's team," Fedora says. They struck the mother lode in the three most populated regions within six hours of Chapel Hill—six kids from the Northern Virginia/D.C. corridor, four from Atlanta and another from Macon, and five from Charlotte.
Fedora & Co. signed a group that had no qualification issues and has been vetted and scrubbed well enough over two years that off-the-field snafus should be as minimal as can be expected when dealing with athletic, competitive, testosterone-laden teenaged males. And as you watch each of them introduce themselves and say, "I am a Tar Heel" on their GoHeels.com introductory videos, they exude a level of confidence, pride and élan not always found in 17- and 18-year-olds.
"This is an exceptional class," Fedora says. "It's awesome, it's exciting, it's great. We focused on speed, on athleticism, on academic achievement, on character. I think we got all of those things in this class."
The squad that Fedora inherited from Butch Davis and Everett Withers in 2011 has been blessed with offensive luminaries the likes of Giovani Bernard, Jonathan Cooper, Eric Ebron and a strong supporting cast. But linebacker Kevin Reddick and tackle Sylvester Williams had to prop up the 2012 defense, and the 2013 unit was saddled with lack of size in the back seven and limited speed and age across the board.
That Carolina has three new safeties in the 6-foot-1, 190-200 pound range speaks volumes for its talent restocking efforts.
"We've had so many guys 175 to 180 pounds trying to tackle guys running full speed at 225 pounds, and it wasn't fair," Koenning says. "When you're moving toward guys 200, 205, 210 pounds, maybe you give up a little athleticism. But look at what the Seattle Seahawks did this year with big safeties. The big thing is these are solid, smart guys. They have reputations as being hard workers, being coaches on the field, being high football IQ guys."
Koenning compares linebacker Tyrell Tomlin to a "stick of dynamite" when he makes a tackle inside the hash marks. He likes that safety Allen Artis, who enrolled in January, is the son of a former Wake Forest Johnny Artis and "has a good upbringing in football." He says that safety Ayden Bonilla loves football so much "you have to pull the reins in on him a little." He believes the promise of cornerback M.J. Stewart, another January enrollee, will give the staff the flexibility to move senior cornerback Tim Scott to safety for a trial during spring practice.
"We're getting our numbers closer to where they need to be," Koenning says. "We ran out of numbers the first couple of years. Playing more guys will help us in the fourth quarter. And as we play more guys, we'll play faster."
The most intrigue from the entire recruiting process for 2014 came from Hood, the gifted running back whom Gunter Brewer, the Tar Heel assistant who recruits Charlotte, has compared to Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker for his rich mix of brawn and jets. Brewer first saw Hood during the spring of 2012 at Catholic High when his coaches and teammates were running out of weight plates to stack on a bar and give Hood a proper challenge.
"They didn't have enough weights to handle him," Brewer said. "Only a few kids have looked that polished as a sophomore in high school. (Oklahoma State receiver) Dez Bryant was like that. Elijah was the total package of speed, size, strength and durability—a once-in-a-lifetime guy. Good grades, good family, Boy Scout since the age of six."
Hood came to Chapel Hill early last March for the Carolina-Duke basketball game, spent time with the staff and players and got a first look at the new uniform combination for 2013. Brewer said Hood almost committed that night.
"He was with a great crew, it was a great atmosphere, awesome energy," Brewer says. "It was a perfect night—except the outcome of the basketball game. We knew we had the ball rolling. He committed to Notre Dame about a month later, but we stayed after him. We knew there were reasons for us to keep recruiting him, so we kept at it."
"Gunter did a great job staying in contact with him," Fedora says. "Elijah realized he doesn't have to go halfway across the country to realize his dreams and goals. He could do that right here and be close to his family."
That's two years running the Tar Heels have gotten the best tailback in the state—T.J. Logan from Greensboro a year ago and now Hood. Last year Logan surprised Fedora immediately after signing with a hand-written note, thanking Fedora for recruiting him. "In 26 years coaching, I've never gotten a thank-you note from a kid," Fedora says. And this year in Hood, Fedora gets an Eagle Scout. "I don't think I've ever coached one," Fedora says.
Which goes to show there's always something new in the world of recruiting—even if you have a signing day void of high blood pressure.
Chapel Hill writer Lee Pace (leepace7@gmail.com) is now in his 24th year writing "Extra Points" and 10th reporting from the sidelines for the Tar Heel Sports Network. him on Twitter @LeePaceTweet.
