It’s All About The Benjamins
Just a quick suggestion for the powers that be at the University of North Carolina – pay Butch Davis whatever he wants.
If he wants $3.5 million – pay him.
If he wants his teenage son Drew to be named an assistant athletic director of text messaging – do it.
If he wants to take a trip to Mars – buy a spaceship, build a training facility on the other side of Kenan Stadium and have him ready for orbit in six months.
Simply put, the UNC administration needs to do whatever it takes to keep Davis as the Tar Heels' head coach.
After a decade of post-Mack Brown futility, Davis has a UNC fan base and team on the verge of its best season since Brown saddled up for Texas.
Over the last two weeks, speculation has run rampant from Death Valley, S.C to Knoxville, Tenn., that Davis was the leading candidate for the vacant positions at Clemson and the University of Tennessee.
Certainly those are two attractive jobs, that have much more football history than UNC – both have national championships in football, something Carolina doesn't.
Still, if Carolina – as they showed in hiring Davis – is serious about football again, they must pay the king his ransom.
The John Bunting and Carl Torbush era's at UNC, while only nine years combined, were the equivalent of 1,000 years in the football wilderness.
They combined for a 44-63 overall record.
In those nine years, the Tar Heels went to only three bowl games. Included in those were trips to the prestigious and world-renowned Las Vegas Bowl in 1998 and the Continental Tire Bowl in 2004.
It's not a stretch to say that the Heels have been in only one legitimate bowl game since Mack Brown's departure prior to the 1998 Gator Bowl, that being a 16-10 win over Auburn in the 2001 Peach Bowl.
Carolina had 30-point or more losses to Maryland, Clemson, Florida State, Texas, Wake Forest, Virginia, Louisville and Utah during that span. Also, the Tar Heels defense gave up 40 or more points 20 times in those nine years.
In Davis' almost two full-seasons his teams have had no 30-point losses and has not given up 40 or more points.
Davis has stockpiled UNC's future with a litter of four and five-star recruits – like Marvin Austin, Quinton Coples, Greg Little and Robert Quinn – that would've never signed with the Tar Heels under the previous administration.
That's not to say the previous regimes didn't recruit well. Torbush, with an assist from Brown, signed Carolina's best class in 1998, which included Julius Peppers and Ronald Curry.
Eighteen of the 2008 Tar Heel's 22 starters were recruited by Bunting. It's obvious, however, that Davis is able to get much more out of his players and run program at a staggeringly more efficient level than his predecessors.
Davis probably won't go anywhere. He has said, repeatedly, that he, his wife and his son love Chapel Hill and look forward to being there for near future.
But to prevent Davis from looking around or even entertaining offers in the future (there is no evidence he did this time) UNC needs to pony up.
To quote the great urban philosopher Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs – "it's all about the benjamins, baby."