Although the ACC Championship game did not end well for Carolina, the new deal announced earlier Saturday between UNC and Larry Fedora was far more reaching and, in fact, bodes well for the Tar Heels getting back to Charlotte.

In making a seven-year commitment to each other, UNC and Fedora have agreed that Carolina Football has such potential to become a regular ACC contender (and, by virtue, a national player) that neither has to look anywhere else for a long time. At 53, Fedora could conceivably be in his last coaching job.

Fedora will earn between $2.5 and $3 million a year, plus bonuses. Not Nick Saban money, but consider that less than 10 years ago John Bunting was earning about $750,000 as Carolina’s football coach. The commitment by Bubba Cunningham, the administration and those parties that are helping to foot the bill means UNC football being seen as a stepping stone job is effectively over.

More important, Fedora’s long-term entrenchment sends a strong message to recruits and their families, the too-casual Carolina fan base and the oft-dismissive media that this is a job worth having. If he has no hesitation about staying there, why should I about signing there, supporting the players there and portraying the program like it is a glass half full rather than empty.

And those relatively few numb-nuts who are still hoping, or telling uninformed recruits and their families, that Tar Heel football is going on probation, getting the death penalty (which no longer exists, by the way) or losing another coach can skulk back to the conversations from which their misinformation came.

The upperclassmen and underclassmen Fedora and his staff put on the field shows how well he has recruited under the NCAA cloud for two-plus years. Imagine how well they will do when the cloud is lifted, as expected this spring or summer when the NCAA Committee on Infractions finally adjudicates the case.

Fedora has done it by signing kids who can help right away, like Ryan Switzer, Elijah Hood and Andre Smith, and those who have been “coached up” from 3-star or 4-star status to become studs as juniors and seniors. Once you stockpile that kind of developing talent, your program can sustain success for a long time.

Perhaps those few still riding the Butch Davis bandwagon will jump off and get on the right train. Butch never won more than eight games (16 of which were vacated by the NCAA) and made it to Charlotte for two bowl games, losing both in fourth-quarter meltdowns.

While Davis and his media mules continue to insist he had nothing to do with the academic-athletics scandal, Butch can’t get a sniff from any coaching jobs that have come open since he was whacked by Holden Thorp in 2011. Whether or not Davis should be blamed for something in his program that he says he knew nothing about, he was really fired for hiring John Blake, whose bad-ass reputation seemed to elude James Moeser, Dick Baddour and the three trustees who were all tripping over themselves getting Davis to accept $1.86 million a year.

Not only did he arrive in Chapel Hill with most of the $25 million he had been paid by the Cleveland Browns, Davis wrote a letter to Baddour before he had held his first practice complaining about Roy Williams’ contract. Being Butch Davis, I guess, meant no one should make more than him, not even a national championship, soon-to-be Hall of Fame coach at a school where basketball will always come first.

Fedora gets that, but Williams would love to see football share the national spotlight with basketball because it would be the best scenario for both programs. Florida has done it. Michigan State is doing it and a number of other schools are on the same cusp. Now that Fedora is here for the long run, you can add UNC to that list of potentials.