Davis on 620AM: ‘How Should I Know?!’ [3:00P UPDATE]

UPDATE AT BOTTOM OF POST

In the work lag due to the impending doom falling from the sky, I got a chance to hear the Butch Davis interview with 620AM’s Sports Talk.  Well… I say interview, but that implies one individual is asking questions and someone else is answering.  From what I heard, the totality of Davis’ responses was “I dunno”.  I swear, how an individual with the intelligence of Davis makes it to a place that reveres itself as UNC does is beyond me.  Then again, this is the same school that decided to make another famous moron their poster-child.

Unbelievable.  But I digress…

So Butch Davis was asked about the recent exposure of credit card records from Austin and Balmer and if he thought that the head coach of the team should be aware of who is giving money to his players for trips.

‘How can I know what credit cards the kids use?  I don’t know what credit cards you use.  You don’t know what credit cards I use.  Plus, I don’t even know if the claims are true or not.’ (Paraphrase)

Butch…. *sigh*… let me see if I can’t explain this to you.  You are the coach of a “major” D-1A football program at a highly public university.  Part of that job description is that you need to have a general idea of where your players are and what they are up to.  From the records released, Austin took time off to head off to Cali-Cali from March 7^th to March 14^th of last year.  This means that for 7 days, Davis didn’t know where one of this most highly acclaimed recruits was, if he was training, if he was doing anything illegal, or if he was studying.

“But NCStatePride, they were on Spring Break.”  You have got to be kidding me, token Carolina fan!  A head coach of a D-1A program shouldn’t be concerned about where his star defensive players are on Spring Break?  I tell you what;  We’ll give Butch a pass on that question and go on to his second gaff.  Davis was asked about whether the reputation of Blake or his history/personal connections were known before he accepted a position at UNC.

”Carolina does an extensive background check of every coach.  They do it for all of our employees and coaches.  They did it for me, they did it for everyone.’ (Paraphrase)

Butch you are so #%$^ing dumb.  The question was “shouldn’t you have been aware of some of the previous histories and relationships of your assistance coaches”, specifically talking about Blake’s connections to Wichard that recently broke.  So your response to “shouldn’t you have been aware” is basically that you were aware of Blake’s history?

Ladies and gentlemen, you heard it from the horse’s mouth: Davis knew exactly what was going on and he just… I suppose… didn’t care.  As the first caller stated “Davis sounds like a walking dead man and I think he knows it.”

Most infuriating of Butch Davis’ comments is that he shouldn’t “have” to know what’s going on.  He feels students have private lives and… hey… he can’t be responsible for what they do in their private lives.  News flash, Butch: the subject of ‘their private lives’ is your livelihood!  If they are misbehaving, legally or ethically, it will turn on you in a flash.  Maybe he became arrogant because of the UNC PR shield that you are given as a Carolina “official”.  Either way, Butch Davis’ excuse that ‘he doesn’t know what’s going on’ and ‘this is completely not his responsibility’ is getting petty and tiresome.

The fact that Butch Davis is not being immediately dismissed is beyond me.

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UPDATE
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3:00PM 9/30/2010

Recently, Carolina AD Baddour released a statement regarding the financial records proving a connection between Blake and Wichard:

“We became aware of some of the information through the NCAA investigation when John Blake was interviewed on Aug. 31. But financial transactions in and of themselves don’t establish a violation, and at that time we did not have enough information to dismiss him with cause.

“Nevertheless, we weren’t comfortable with what we learned. That, combined with the distraction that Coach Blake was becoming to the football program, led us to the conclusion that it was not in our best interest for him to continue to bepart of our program. He offered to resign, and we agreed to terms on Sept. 5.”

So it appears Baddour disagrees with Butch Davis.  According to Davis, “I am not my brother’s keeper.”  Davis basically states in his interview earlier today that the university does everything they can do to flush out the rift-raft.  What I read out of Baddour’s release is that they knew there were large sums of money being transferred between Blake and Wichard… they just didn’t think that proved anything.  What a load.  From one Carolina official you get a response of “we’ve done all we can do and if we had any way of knowing what people do in their private lives, we might take action.”  What you have from Baddour is “we know what goes on in their private lives, we just didn’t think it meant anything bad was going on.”

As some of the commenters have stated, simply because a rule isn’t broken doesn’t mean the spirit of the rule isn’t being broken.  If Baddour saw large sums of money being passed between an agent and an assistant head coach, and if integrity was really a top priority, he would have quickly dismissed the assistant head coach and issued a public statement that they are attempting to flush out the corruption in their program as quickly as possible.  Instead, Baddour chose the “Carolina Way” which is to stonewall the public, protect their ‘homers’ as much as possible, and pray the problem goes away.