The sudden silence surrounding UNC’s search for a new athletic director is anything but deadly. In fact, it’s a sign that the process has taken a step in the right direction. As a large list of qualified and sitting AD’s from other schools has been narrowed down, the names have, for the most part, remained […]

By far, the most damaging allegation from the NCAA into the UNC football scandal is on pages 62-63 of the 111-page response by the school, released Monday. It speaks to what, so far, the university has escaped – the dreaded lack of institutional control, or at least Butch Davis’ failure not only to monitor his […]

Saturday’s less-than-satisfying victory over Rutgers could be considered a microcosm of Carolina’s entire football situation. Let’s call it unfulfilled potential. First, the stadium. You would think, after the Tar Heels’ exhilarating opener over James Madison on Labor Day Weekend in a near-sold out Kenan, the second Saturday crowd (listed at a generous estimate of 53,000) […]

For the accomplished chemist, Holden Thorp, the first phase of the “Butch Davis Experiment” went off like another everyday application of E = mc2. With mass, energy and velocity, Carolina sent James Madison hurtling into the September night.   For whatever reasons, some of which we may never know, UNC’s young chancellor jettisoned his four-year […]

The pressure is immense on Holden Thorp to make the right hire for Carolina’s next Director of Athletics. Thorp remains under heavy criticism for firing Butch Davis a week before football practice began, and that scrutiny comes from wealthy donors who feel they were misled to average Tar Heel fans who want to win and saw Davis […]

Roy Williams’ “lamp story” best illuminates how much in need the UNC basketball offices were of expanding and upgrading.   “When we moved into the Smith Center,” Williams said of his days as an assistant in 1986, “I carried a lamp into Coach Smith’s office and put it on his desk.   “When we moved […]

This notion of “Football First” or “Basketball First” fans at Carolina amuses me. Having graduated from UNC and been around for four decades, I am hard-pressed to think of a Carolina alumnus or rabid fan who roots passionately for one of the sports and disses the other. If you’re a Tar Heel fan, your pull […]

  Maybe his timing shocked people and maybe he did not do it with the polish of a senior statesman (inadvertently committing a minor NCAA violation, himself), but it astounds me how Holden Thorp has become the villain in the firing of Butch Davis, who as the facts continue to seep out was, at best, […]

You remember the classic Kevin Costner movie in which he seemingly had No Way Out of his pickle as a double secret agent?   Carolina avoided that dilemma in the first phase of a path to restore its reputation and integrity. It can also keep its football program on track as a contender in the Coastal […]

UNC can still begin moving beyond its regrettable football scandal of the last year, regardless of its final fate from the NCAA. Ohio State has conveniently provided Carolina with the model it should use in order to separate a scandalous past from a brighter future.   The Buckeyes, whose transgressions aren’t nearly as severe as […]