Caulton Tudor wrote an article today about how Carolina could conceivably make a strong play for Butch Davis and hire him now instead of waiting. Since Davis isn’t currently working, there’s nothing stopping him from accepting a job now. If UNC goes after an active coach, they’ll probably need to wait until the season is over to gain approval from that coach’s athletic director to talk to him (not that that’s required, per se, but it’s expected these days).
While I get the reasoning, why would Davis go for this? Clearly he’s a man who thinks highly of his abilities – I mean he felt that Miami wasn’t a big enough stage for him when he ditched a great team to head to the NFL. Wouldn’t he want to wait to see if he couldn’t land a first tier job, possibly back at the U? On the flip side, there may not be any first tier jobs open this year. Miami is really the most likely opening and even that’s not a sure thing.
All that aside, would it really be a good idea for Carolina to go after Davis? For one thing, I have a hard time believing he’d be happy in Chapel Hill. If he is as successful as some folks think he’d be, he’d probably bolt for the first better opportunity he saw. I’d bet that Davis would like another crack at the NFL.
And has he really proven that he’s that great of a coach? Can’t anyone win at Miami? I’m convinced that they could hire me has a head coach and I could find enough good assistants and great players to go at least 7-5. Davis’ records at Miami – 8-3, 9-3, 5-6, 9-3, 9-4 and 11-1. Now they were on probation for a few years there, including that 5-6 debacle, but I’d bet that Miami on probation can still recruit talent about equal to what UNC can land now. The two years after Davis left Coral Gables, Larry Coker went 12-0 and 12-1, missing out on consecutive national championships by just one pass interference call. Sure, those were mostly Davis’ players, but does that say good or bad things about Davis that another coach did better with his players? As a point of comparison, the folks in Miami are ready to lynch Coker, but yet he’s won more games than Davis did and lost about half as many.
So I don’t know, there’s no way to know for certain what will happen with the Carolina coaching search, but I bet they don’t end up going Butch.