I didn’t link to any stories earlier in the week, but in case you missed it, there were rumors circulating that UNC was going to reassign athletics director Dick Baddour to another job. Of course, “reassign” is friendly-talk for “fire.” Almost as quickly as the rumor got out, UNC put out a statement (sorry, you need to register) saying it wasn’t true.
As with any rumor of this sort, there probably is some truth to it. Caulton Tudor put up a pretty good editorial talking about why they might want to get rid of him.
Actually, the case can be made pretty simply. Baddour has screwed up both the basketball and football programs.
In basketball, he failed to land Roy Williams when Bill Guthridge resigned and then turned it over to the green Matt Doherty. You remember how that turned out. Yeah, he got Roy Williams the second time, but honestly, that was an easy hire.
In football, Baddour hired (and then fired, didn’t really fire and then fired again) Carl Torbush after Mack Brown left. Torbush promptly drove the program into a tree. To replace Torbush, Baddour went with unproven pro coach John Bunting who has managed to make things even worse.
So, here Carolina is. They need a new football coach, but the man who is responsible for hiring one has proven that he’s not up to the task. So, the proper thing to do is to get a new AD. The new AD’s first task will be to find a good football coach. Despite Carolina’s claim that the rumors aren’t true, I don’t see things going any other way.