Butch Davis’s days as UNC football head coach are numbered. Mark it down, it is only a matter of time now before he resigns, or failing that, is dismissed for-cause.
Not that it takes an NC State education or a job at NASA to figure that out. Most of us figure out that 2+2=4 when we learn how to count on our fingers, and Davis’s eventual departure is that straightforward.
Bet on the former scenario – that Davis leaves “of his own accord” ostensibly so he “won’t bring any more negative attention to the great University of North Carolina” or something very similar. Be clear about it, he doesn’t want to leave, he had it made at UNC. He will leave because he will be forced out, and he will do so while he can still extract some severance money from the (ironically named) UNC Educational Foundation — aka “The Rams Club.” If he is fired for-cause, he’ll leave with nothing. Davis, being the for-hire mercenary that he is won’t do that.
Why will he be fired, even in the wake of the latest revelations — after a strong vote of support from his AD, from his Chancellor and truly, from the UNC Board of Governor’s and Erskine Bowles?
Because they aren’t going to go down with him. The news that his friend of 30 years, John Blake, was in the employ of agents while he was the Assistant Head Coach of the UNC football program has turned Davis into political kryptonite, and these professional pols and bureaucrats are going to do what’s right.
For themselves, of course.
That’s all they have ever done, and that’s all they will ever do. And if that means selling Butch Davis down the river, so be it. Even if he has naked pictures of them all, they are going to flee like roaches in the light. It won’t be too long before Butch Davis has so few friends in Chapel Hill that he will be lucky if his wife talks to him.
That’s what politicians and bureaucrats do, stick their fingers in the air and determine what’s best for them, and it’s become clear that the tide of opinion has turned against Butch Davis.
The local press, long known for being the Pravda of UNC Athletics has turned on him.
That’s the last sign of his apocalypse.
Tide and time will wash him out of Kenan Stadium likely sooner rather than later.
The program itself has become a laughing-stock and a symbol of corruption, greed and operating far outside the lines.
Carolina may want to be a player in the annual BCS Title sweepstakes, but it hired the wrong man, a man who brought other men long known for cheating with him. Their ambition made them blind to this reality, and it made them stone-deaf to warnings from others of what they were doing to themselves. Instead, they stubbornly believed that their now known to be mythical “Carolina Way” of doing things “right” while flaunting an arrogant self-love not seen since Narcissus stared into a puddle would allow them to lie with the dogs and not get fleas.
It didn’t. But that never stopped them from bush-league attempts to spin the facts that showed wrong-doing.
Consider: from the outset, UNC denied any wrongdoing, and even that the NCAA was investigating their football operation. They called it an “inquiry” as if the NCAA was taking a poll and was curious about whether UNC football home jerseys were powder blue or navy blue.
Then they claimed that all would be resolved very quickly, that a misunderstanding had occurred, and of course, they would immediately set things right.
Even after they were forced — and they were forced — to suspend 12 players for the most important football game they’ve played in two decades, they continued to claim that the inquiry over the misunderstanding was nearly over.
Davis, for his part, has steadfastly maintained that he had no knowledge several of his NFL-bound players were knee-deep with shadowy runners and NFL agents, that he had no idea whatsoever that the very tutor he hired to school his own son in his own home had done his players homework, and that his friend and fellow football coach of three decades — who once worked for agents himself — was apparently funneling his star players towards his old employer illegally.
Right. Sure. The only reasonable conclusion one can draw from this is that either Butch Davis is a pathological liar or a blithering idiot with next to zero control over his players and employees. Take your pick. It has to be one or the other.
Note to Coach Davis: try this link to search John Blake’s background.
Even when it was clear that the chips are down, UNC’s “brain trust” clung to the company line. Just yesterday – seven weeks into the investigation – UNC Athletic Director Dick Baddour told the press and fans in attendance that the end of their troubles was nigh, that the “crisis is nearly past” and that “Coach Davis has got my full support. There’s no reason to wait [until the end of the year to consider his return.] I am where I’ve been.”
Little did Baddour know that Yahoo.com had connected the financial dots from NFL agents to his Associate Head Football Coach and was about to publish that information.
In other words, the other shoe fell, the bomb dropped and it became very clear that Butch Davis’s continued presence in Chapel Hill had suddenly become a radioactive toxin that will not decay into safety anytime soon.
The verdict is in from the press, locally, regionally and nationally: Butch Davis should go.
The press is right. He should go. Carolina is going to pull hard probation for two Tire Bowl losses and three resounding defeats to NC State. That’s pretty bad, considering the Tire Bowl is an afterthought of a post-season contest and that NC State has not turned in a winning record during that time.
That makes Butch Davis a loser on the field, AND a cheating pathological liar or a blithering idiot with zero control over his own players. Just the man you want to head up one of your two flagship athletic programs.
That’s “The Carolina Way?”
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