UNC Butch Davis is re-commited to College football

[TyBull]

orlandosentinel.com/sports/orl-acc2407jul24,0,6804018.story

OrlandoSentinel.com

Davis recommitted to college football

North Carolina will benefit from having Butch Davis as coach, and probably quickly.

Andrew Carter

Sentinel Staff Writer

July 24, 2007

PINEHURST, N.C.

Things are fine now in his world. Butch Davis is Coach Davis again, back in college football, the South, at North Carolina. He'd been out of the game almost two years, and he did some TV -- "stealing money," he called it -- but he never could quite get the smell of the locker room out of his nose.

He became a coach for the first time in 1973, at Fayetteville High in Arkansas, an assistant who worked with receivers and did it for free, because Davis loved the idea of teaching young men about football and life.

He thought back then that he might remain a high school coach forever because that's what his dad was for a quarter-century, and it seemed noble. Yet the allure to move up and move on became too strong. The younger Davis advanced to high schools in Oklahoma, and then to colleges, bowl games, the pros, the Super Bowl.

It had been his dream, and he was living it. And then one day it was over.

It was the fall of 2004. Davis, the man who in five years turned the Miami Hurricanes into a national power once again, was mired in another miserable season with the Cleveland Browns. He resigned with five games left. And he awoke the next day without a locker room to call home, or players to call him "coach."

"When you don't do something or you're not able to do something that you love with a passion, you really miss it," Davis said.

He sat at a table here Monday afternoon at the Pinehurst Resort, site of the annual ACC Football Kickoff. He wore a shirt with a blue hue, and a Carolina blue tie, and spoke of grand things.

How he plans to turn the Tar Heels into contenders. How his new home, Kenan Stadium, will become larger, better, more sparkling. He spoke of his hair, which is growing back a bit brown and grayish, finally returning after disappearing during his recent treatments for cancer. And he spoke of those days at Miami, where he rejuvenated a once extraordinary program that had become ordinary.

The Hurricanes won the national championship the year after Davis left.

They had won with a roster that Davis recruited and coached.

Did he wish in recent years that he had stayed, wondered what might have been?

"I've never really been one to look back," Davis said. "One of the things I talk to my players all the time about is that you don't want to live your life with regrets. It was a very, very good opportunity [in Cleveland] . . .

"And when I look back on it, I don't really have any regrets. I have disappointments about the way it ended."

Forget endings. Davis these days is about beginnings. He became UNC's 33rd head coach last Nov. 13, and he went to work. First he waited a while, scouted the land for the assistants he wanted, and went after them. Then it was off to recruit a class that would wind up among the best 20 or so in the country, according to the experts.

He met, too, of course, with North Carolina's leftovers, the ones who had grown accustomed to losing and disappointment while they played for John Bunting, who was fired before the 2006 season even ended. Davis sat his men down and talked about things, some little and most big -- including his desire to make Carolina a national championship contender.

"The biggest thing we were surprised about was him mentioning a national championship," said Hilee Taylor, a senior at UNC who will start at defensive end.

"Because we never thought about that."

Instead, Carolina's players might have been thinking too much. In past years, Taylor said, he and his teammates were too concerned with attempts for perfection. They were unable, Taylor said, to relax and just play because they knew that the tiniest of mistakes could land them on the bench, or on Bunting's bad side.

For several years now, UNC has had some of the nation's best facilities.

The program hasn't been without talent. So what was missing?

"The mental aspect," Taylor said. "We were a physical team, but it's just the mental part. Sometimes when you don't know what you're doing out there, then you look weak."

Now, though, Carolina appears strong, or at least stronger, and it's all because of Davis, who wore on his right hand the Super Bowl championship ring he earned while an assistant coach with the Dallas Cowboys during the early 1990s.

Around Chapel Hill, N.C., site of the UNC campus, people speak of Davis as if he's the long-awaited savior of a program that hasn't shined since Mack Brown left for Texas in 1997.

And around the ACC, folks have taken notice, too, of that guy that roamed the home sideline at the Orange Bowl from 1995 to 2000.

"Butch Davis? Everybody has the utmost respect for that guy," said Derrick Morse, a senior offensive lineman at Miami. Morse, of course, didn't play for Davis, but he has heard the stories about him from past UM players.

"People going back said how crazy he is about football and just loves what he does and does everything full tilt. And I think him going to North Carolina -- they've got the athletes and now they've got the coach."

During that first meeting with his new players after he was hired, Davis stood at the front of the room, said Joe Dailey, a senior receiver at Carolina, and "talked about his history -- what's he's done. Where he has been, his successes."

He talked about that Super Bowl ring, and those great teams in Miami, and by the end of the talk, he had guys who have suffered losing season after losing season believing they too could be winners.

"Butch Davis has won," Dailey said. "He's won on the high school level. The college level.

"He's won in the pros. I mean, this guy's a winner. He has a track record of winning football games. How could he not win football games here?"

It seems the only things in the way might be Carolina's losing tradition, which Davis has vowed to change, or a core of players far less talented than the ones Davis led while at Miami.

And then there's the health. Back in March, Davis announced a dentist had discovered a growth within his mouth during a routine check-up in February. The growth was removed. Turned out it was cancer -- non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He underwent chemotherapy, went bald, and a couple of UNC's players and assistants shaved their heads in support.

Throughout it, Davis promised that everything would be OK. The chemo is over now. He's running about four miles three or four times a week, getting in shape. His hair is growing back.

"I feel great," Davis said here Monday.

And it's easy to understand why. After going almost two years without doing what he loves most, he's back, a coach again, and his world is right.

Copyright © 2007, Orlando Sentinel

[E.T.]

I'm ready for them to visit Tamplona.

[Rizman]

Bring it on Butch

[Bulls 8_va]

Yeah, butch! BRING IT!!!

GO BULLS!!!

[smazza]

he will have a tough time

[smazza]

unless davis out recruits leavitt  in florida

[twillybull]

I sure am glad we play them this year and not 3-4 years from now.  Davis will bring that team around, but for now he has quite the mess to clean up.  I still wouldn't be surprised if these guys give us some fits during this year's game.

[BULLfreak]

lets all post

[BULLfreak]

like smazza

[E.T.]

I sure am glad we play them this year and not 3-4 years from now.  Davis will bring that team around, but for now he has quite the mess to clean up.  I still wouldn't be surprised if these guys give us some fits during this year's game.

I don't expect UNC to ever pass USF.